On the surface, the removal of an 8-year-old African-American girl from her classroom had to do with a hair product and her teacher's physical reaction to it. But for her parents, the incident that has kept the girl out of Seattle's Thurgood Marshall Elementary School for two weeks is a lesson in what can happen when people won't communicate.
Charles Mudede said he had a lot of questions when his daughter, the only black child in her advanced-placement class, came home from school last month and announced her teacher made her leave the classroom because the girl's hair was making the teacher sick. The girl was moved to the hallway, then another class. Why did the teacher think the problem was his daughter's hair? Why hadn't the school called the parents? How could the girl return to her own class if they didn't first figure out what had made the teacher sick?
What investigation was being done to pinpoint the source of the problem? And, finally, why did the school seem oblivious to the racial overtones of a white teacher singling out her only black student? Mudede said the situation escalated because no one at the school or the district would answer his questions about what happened in the classroom and why.
That left the parents with an 8-year-old's version of events and concerns their daughter would process the situation in a way that left her feeling diminished. "The issue I had, and still hold," Mudede said, "is there should have been a little more cultural sensitivity in this issue." On Friday, the NAACP announced it would file a complaint about the situation with the U.S. Department of Education.
6 comments:
I don't follow very many blogs, so I have to say it is quite a surprising coincidence that two blogs I do follow are connected like this. You see, Charles Mudede contributes to Slog, the blog of a Seattle newspaper the Stranger, which is among the few blogs I visit quite regularly. References between blogs and bloggers are not unusual, of course, but this story was about a blogger I "know" but had nothing to do with their blog or any of their internet activities.
This is a tiny world, indeed.
I too saw this online since I live in Washington..I look forward to learning more of this but for now it would seem racist. I hope the school is doing more to look into this situation.
First of all, I thought that Advanced Placement classes were college-level classes for high school students. To address the hair, many African-Americans use chemicals for straightening or "freezing" that might be unfamiliar to a Caucasian teacher.
The product in this case was a moisturizing hair lotion.
If the teacher is actually allergic to something in the hair product (e.g. fragrance), why couldn't she just send a note home with the parents explaining this to them and requesting that their daughter refrain from using certain products?
I guess that would have been far too reasonable.
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