A teacher in Georgia thought it would be a good idea to have her students do a film on racism and dress up like Ku Klux Klan members. So the students wore the costumes to school and walked around like that, which was an even better idea. Naturally if you’re going to do a film about racism and the Klan you need to include a re-enactment of a lynching, so of course the students asked another student, a black student, to help them out with that one. Can you believe he actually got upset about that? Because as a black person, I would be glad to participate in a mock lynching in order to help out some white AP students with their school project.
The teacher is on leave with pay over this. She states she’s just trying to teach her students about racism because “[...] we have to discuss racism in our society because if we don’t, we are condoning it. And I don’t cover it up. And you can’t discuss racism and not include the Klan and that’s what we were doing.” A discussion of racism necessarily involves dressing in homemade Klan costumes (not that there’s a company that manufactures official Klan costumes, but you know) and parading around the school. There’s really no other way to discuss the Klan other than doing that! You couldn’t like, show your students documentaries about the Klan, or documentaries on racism period, or just have an actual discussion that DIDN’T involve dress-up.
So now the Rev. Markel Hutchins, Lumpkin County Georgia’s local Al Sharpton, is involved (I’m sorry, but why is it when these things happen a preacher is dispatched from the black community to handle the situation) and demanding diversity training and meetings with the superintendent and sheriff’s office to make sure there’s no retaliation against black students who were upset by the incident. You brought that on yourself, Dahlonega, GA, so no complaining about the race card because you straight played the race DECK. And what has the teacher learned from this? “I would tell the students that if you are going to film the Klan, do it on your own time and out of school.” Yes! Because what we need are more extracurricular lynching re-enactments!
This goes in the Hall of Fame of Bad Ideas on Dealing With Racism.
