Somehow I Don't Think That Beating Racism Out of Young Kids is the Answer

My grade four class was hard at work this afternoon. I had given them word searches and they were perfectly silent for a good twenty minutes. It was delightful. Peaceful. Relaxing. I sipped tea and felt pretty pleased with myself. Then one little boy(for the sake of the story we'll call him "Jeff"), reached over and pinched his neighbor. I told him to stop and get to back to work. Clearly I didn't use my scary "I mean buisness voice", and "Jeff" decided that using his rather large and thick English text book as a blunt weapon was a good idea. Kid number two had a bloody nose and I had minor chaos in the classroom.

It gets worse.

I decided that the suitable punishment for "Jeff" was to stand in the corner for the remainder of class. This is considered a degrading punishment at my school and I'm only supposed to use it for the very worst offenses. It was also made clear to "Jeff" via my co-teacher's Korean translation that he could expect to be punished by his homeroom teacher after English class was over. "Jeff" glared at me, threw his kitbag at my face, and called me a "dirty nigger". I caught the kitbag before it hit me and thought to myself , "Okay this is a teachable moment". After punishing Jeff further(lines and lots of them) I launched into a speech about why it's not okay to use racist terms like the "N" word.

This confused every child in my class and at this point turned the classroom into a racist slapstick Wayne and Shuster routine. Awkward questions were thrown at me from all angles and my teacher had to translate at break neck speeds. The kids seemed to think that the problem with the above described situation wasn't the use of the "n" word, so much as the fact that "Jeff" had used it on a white person. They weren't concerned with the ethics of the situation, just the inaccuracy. I tried to explain to them and things began to go awry.

Here are a few of the questions that my impromtu anti-racism speech warranted.

"Why can't we make fun of people from Africa, everyone knows they don't have any money and they have dark skins?"

"but teacher dark skin is not as good, everyone knows that!?"

"but teacher everyone is not equal, some people are dumb!"

At this point I felt incredibly guilty. I had no idea how to convince these students that all people are equal. I felt like a hypocrite because I know that some people are born with advantages that others lack. I had lost all control of my classroom, was in way over my head, and had begun to realize all the ethical problems that surround the fact that I'm a white Westerner lecturing a class of young Asian students on Racism. Basically, I was reduced to watching the hands on the clock and praying to God that there would be a fire drill, something, anything, to end the class early. The kids kept firing away with the questions and my co-teacher grabbed my elbow and said, "do you want me to hit the next child that speaks out of turn?"

"No" I said pretty quickly "no, that's okay"


It seemed I hadn't said it clearly. A little boy, who has always been well-behaved and who tries really hard in my classes, raised his hand and called out, "But teacher if Nigger is just a word, the same as other English words, why can't we say it?" I was suitably impressed with this question and my mind rased to try and find a way to answer it that wasn't total bullshit. My co-teacher, meanwhile, barked something in Hangul at him, reached across the desk, and shook his shoulders with both hands. When the bell rang he was still crying.

This isn't even an unusual classroom scenerio. This is an average day.