Some people need to not open their mouths ever, and a Georgia fourth-grade teacher apparently needs to be added to the list after she apparently used a racial slur in exactly the same breath she used to dismiss another student’s controversial comments.
A perfectly teachable moment, ruined.
According to WTVM, the incident unfolded earlier this month when Nathan Frazier and his wife, Equisha, noticed that their daughter, Harmonie, was unusually quiet after a day at Reese Road Elementary School in Columbus, Ga.
When her parents asked her what was wrong, Harmonie explained that a classmate had made some troubling comments.
“She said another student said to her, she’s glad that she’s not black. She’s glad she’s white and not black like them,” Nathan Frazier told the news station.
Harmonie, 9, told her parents that she and two other students were chatting in phys ed when another student jumped in to make her remarks.
At that point, nothing really came of it, with Harmonie and the others she was originally talking with going back to their homeroom teacher’s class. However, one of the other students decided to bring the conversation up with the homeroom teacher, who then fixed her mouth to say some dumb shit.
She actually opened her mouth and apparently said, “At least she didn’t call you a dumb, black nigger,” according to the Fraziers.
“The thing that really really shocked me was when the teacher leans into the girls and she kind of caressed my daughter’s face and says, ‘Oh, you’re a beautiful girl, but at least she didn’t call you a dumb, black and the ‘n’ word. … When my daughter told me that, I was completely shocked,” Nathan Frazier said to WTVM.
The family reached out to the school’s principal for a sit-down. At that meeting, the family said, the principal acknowledged that the unidentified teacher did admit to using the alleged racial slur.
The Fraziers said that the interaction left a lasting, harmful imprint on the students.
“She hurt my daughter and the other young lady while enabling the other little girl to continue doing it. To our knowledge, they haven’t really done much of anything about it,” Nathan Frazier said.
“For a child who doesn’t see color, she just sees people. It just hurts. It hurts a lot,” Equisha Frazier said.
The Fraziers have since removed Harmonie from the school and are currently coordinating with the district to send her to another school.
The school district said that human resources conducted a thorough investigation and followed up using appropriate measures, though they declined to discuss what they referred to as “personnel matters.”
Read more at WTVM.