Instead of posting a meme on Black Twitter, a Louisiana high school teacher took to White Facebook to offer her well-thought-out solutions for some of America’s toughest challenges by suggesting that you-know-who “quit acting like animals” and cease “voting for handouts and pay taxes.”
There. She fixed it for you.
Valerie Scogin, a high school mathematics teacher in Slidell, La. is under fire after parents discovered a Facebook post by the amateur social media sociologist and Melissa McCarthy lookalike, ranting about why America is no longer great, according to The Advocate.
“They don’t have to live in that country, they could go back,” said Scogin, beginning her post with a ‘go-back-to-Africa,’ before delving into a mashup of all the racist white arguments at once:
“But it was their own people selling them into slavery and tearing them even worse in their own country of origin,” she continued, ignoring the fact that the Transatlantic slave trade began in the 15th century when Portuguese and other European kingdoms “began to kidnap people from the west coast of Africa and to take those they enslaved back to Europe,” according to the BBC.
Aside from misspelling the word “treating,” Scogin also conveniently overlooked the fact that the majority of slaves sold to America were not slaves in Africa, and were usually captives of war or judicial proceedings, although some were kidnapped with weapons given to them by European slave traders who told the natives they would be paid handsomely for their human chattel. Those slaves were almost never enslaved for life, were allowed to keep any earnings and their offspring were not usually consigned to a life sentence of slavery, according to the University of Houston’s Digital History.
But why would Scogin let facts get in the way? She’s only a teacher.
“Want a better neighborhood? Move. You don’t have to choose to live in those zip codes,” Scogin wrote, before saying something I agree with:
Want to not be stereotyped, tell people of that color to quit acting like animals and perpetuating the stereotype. Many are average people; the few ruin it.
Finally, someone said it! If white people don’t want to be considered virulent bigoted douchenozzles, then they have to quit acting like racist animals and tell their fellow whites to stop perpetuating that stereotype! I know that Caucasians are often white supremacists who terrorize the world with their colonization, war and casserole recipes. But as I often say: “Not all white people...”
And some, I assume, are good people.
Not Valerie Scogin, of course.
She’s an idiot.
After parents noticed the Facebook post and reported it to the school, education officials decided to take a firm stance against racism and disciplined Scogin very harshly. They won’t won’t say what exactly they did, but, according to WWL TV, St. Tammany Parish Public School administrators said they took the “appropriate disciplinary actions,” even though Scogin was in class on Monday teaching students.
However, Scogin did apologize on Facebook for her racist post.
“Recently I posted a comment that may have been hurtful to some of you,” Scogin wrote. “In my reaction out of frustration at another Facebook post, I made some remarks that were against my better judgement [sic] and sensibilities. I now wish I hadn’t.”
Scogin added that: “the last thing I want to do is hurt anyone. I apologize for what I said and sincerely wish to avoid this in the future.”
There. She fixed it for you.
Updated: 8/12/2018, 8:46 a.m. GMT: Valerie Scogin has ironically raised the historically-low job numbers of her lord and savior, Donald Trump, after the St. Tammany Parish School District announced that she might be willing to conduct an interview at the Kenner, La. unemployment office.
According to the Times-Picayune, the school issued a statement that did not say if Scogin was fired or resigned. Officials would only say that Scogin had been afforded due process after writing a racist Facebook post and was no longer employed after a thorough investigation, which presumably went like this:
School System: Did you write that Facebook post?
Scogin: Yes I did.
School System: Do you also have a LinkedIn profile?
Scogin: Yes, I do.
School System: Great! You should update your employment profile with Slidell High school as a “previous employer.”
“This incident does not reflect our district’s values, mission and vision, and we remain committed to providing a school culture that is inclusive and meets the needs of all our students, employees and community,” the district said.