Your class is reading the novel The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn which takes place in the South in the 1840s. You can probably imagine (if you’ve never read the book) that the word nigger is use quite a few times throughout the book.

You are a 16 year-old black student sitting in your English class waiting for the lesson to begin. What do you do when your teacher walks past and says, “What’s up my nigga” to you? No student could ever imagine an authoritative figure calling or referring to them as a nigger. This was supposedly done to start a discussion with the class about the use of the N word in Huckleberry Finn.

Destinee said the class was completely silent and she felt “uncomfortable and embarrassed,” as any student would have felt if this happened to them in class. Initially she did not tell her mother but racial discomfort and tension is something that often occurs in this which lead her to telling her mother. In a separate incident a student was threatened with lynching.

You would think that a school that is ranked 2 in the state and 38 nationally would have some type ethnic or cultural sensitivity. Yet the English teacher has not been reprimanded or even addressed about what occurred, leading students to believe that this is ok. The ethnicity of the teacher was not revealed but even if the teacher is black this behavior is unprofessional and unacceptable. And if the goal was to teach the students how inappropriate the use of the N word is, I’m sure the teacher could have thought of a better approach.

Both Destinee and her mother are upset about the situation and Rosalind Wornum is pushing to ensure the teacher is fired.