Not long ago, there was an incident at UC Irvine, where I teach, involving a video made by Asian-American members of a fraternity that included one of the members in black face portraying himself as a rapper. The video sent shock waves through the campus. There were protests, apologies, and sensitivity sessions. I remarked at the time that the offending students probably were simply ignorant of the history of black face in the US.
Now come this story out of a Michigan middle school in which a teacher has been suspended for teaching his students about the history of black face and showing them images.
http://news.yahoo.com/middle-school-teacher-suspended-showing-video-white-actors-122027921.html
It seems to me that this suspension is outrageous. Had those UCI students been educated about the history of black face, I doubt they would have ever made that offensive video. How do we prevent future occurrences if we can't educate the kids about it in the first place?
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Its not clear from the report, but I would bet that the assistant principal who intervened is
a) white
b) ignorant of history generally, and black history specifically,
c) sensitive to the vague notion that if anything "racist" happens on his watch he could get in trouble over it, and since he doesn't know any history, he had a knee-jerk CYA response.
Funny... when all is said and done, the assistant principal will probably have to offer profuse apologies and take sensitivity training... and he'll resent the fact that he got in trouble when he was just trying to make sure nothing racist happened in his school.
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