“Everyone is racist regardless of skin color by definition,” wrote The Tennessean last year in a piece co-authored by an ex-Fisk University professor. Accepting this claim, often made by leftists, has been considered by many an intellectual, enlightened position. Yet a Texas middle-school teacher who made it has now been removed from his position.
It surely didn’t help — and, in fact, hurt immensely — that the unnamed educator tried cementing his point by saying, “Deep down in my heart, I am ethnocentric, which means I think my race is the superior one.”
The conversation took place at Bohls Middle School in Pflugerville, a suburb of Austin, and was caught on video, footage that later went viral. The teacher, whose comments have been deemed racist by parents, “is no longer working for the district, according to a letter from Pflugerville Superintendent Douglas Killian,” reported KXAN on Election Day. The outlet then continued:
The video shows an unnamed teacher sitting with students. The teacher can be heard saying “deep down in my heart, I am ethnocentric, which means I think my race is the superior one.”
“Let me finish… I think everybody thinks that, they’re just not honest about it,” the teacher said.
Following the comments, a middle school student can be heard saying “I am not racist. I like all kinds.” Another student said, “I actually respected you for a while, but now I don’t got no more respect for you.”
“It was my first time seeing, hearing someone say they were racist and admitting to it,” Rhema Benjamin, who was in the classroom when the comments were made, said.
… Rhema said the interaction last week started when he walked in wearing a BLM sticker on his shirt.
“He told me I couldn’t come in his class wearing it so he made me take it off,” Rhema said.
Rhema, an eighth grader … said things escalated from there.
“And then a student threw a pencil across the room and me and my friend said if that were us we would have gotten in trouble so we asked him if he was racist,” Rhema said.
While the above testimonial and the video (below) provide only limited context, it appears the educator tried turning the episode into a teaching moment; unfortunately, it was at best a clumsy effort.
Most of the commenters under the above video condemned the teacher. A few saw matters differently, however. For example, “Copernico Felinisi” opined, I “just pointed out that he also added that all races think [they’re] … the superior one, and that he might have been trying to stimulate critical thinking in the students.”
If he was, the irony is that the teacher was merely relating what’s considered “enlightened” leftist dogma (except by the Racial Agitators 5.0, who claim blacks can’t be racist). For instance, the aforementioned Tennessean article states that “it is impossible for any human being to not be racist, regardless of skin color, because everyone has biases, likes, intolerance, preferences, and traditions that are different from others.” True that — I have a preference for white rice over brown rice.
(Then again, I have a like for chocolate ice cream but not vanilla.)
“Therefore, everyone is racist regardless of skin color by definition,” the Tennessean continued.
Next, the BBC wrote in 2017 that few “people openly admit to holding racist beliefs but many psychologists claim most of us are nonetheless unintentionally racist.” Then there has been article after article after article after article about how “babies are racist,” even if their first word is “mamma!” and not a racial epithet.
Really, though, most sad about this incident is what the reaction to it says about society. While, again, context is lacking, it’s quite childish thinking the teacher is some kind of hateful bigot and was copping to it. What should strike people is what the classroom environment reflects about today’s state of education.
As is common now, the teacher appeared to have poor control over the class, and the kids exhibited little respect. Discipline was lacking; epitomizing this was that the students felt free to use their phones in class. (Admittedly, though, this practice has provided useful video evidence of left-wing indoctrination in the recent past.)
Moreover, that the teacher had a social-issues debate with the kids brings to mind a story. A bit more than five years ago I hosted for a month two boys, then 11 and 12, with whom I’m close. While most of our time was spent on summer activities (e.g., camping, target shooting), one evening a political topic arose. Since the lads were very passionate in espousing a position I disagreed with and were getting emotional, I immediately realized that engaging them in debate would be folly. While teaching and inspiring thought has value, getting down “in the mud” with kids still too immature to tackle certain adult topics can undermine their respect and hence your authority. So I calmly but firmly told them that they could believe what they wanted and had a right to their opinion, but that the topic was closed. It ended there and everything was fine.
If the teacher understood the principle the above story reflects — the importance of maintaining proper authority figure-subordinate boundaries — he’d still have his job.
Schooling today has become a joke, with virtue absent, propaganda and vice rife, and the three r’s being relativism, revisionism, and racism. And the reaction to the Texas video illustrates why this won’t be changing anytime soon.
