Mom Says Math Homework is Racist

I have seen many issues of racism in the media, etc. However, this pictures bothers me only because I really wouldn't want to look into this man's mouth. I am a Black woman and must say that I don't think this teacher meant this picture to be offensive to anyone. I think, in light of the fact that there is only one black student in his class, that he might have been more judicious, but we all do things once in a while that we might not have done given a little more thought. I say cut this fellow some slack!

You still don't get it, but coming out of pennsylvnia this doesn't surprise me . The kkk was started in pennsylvania , not in the south as many believe

Having fun went away with lawyers sueing the be- Jesus out of every honest worker. Hence, the nanny state of America. Just read the new healthcare bill.

Reba, is it?
Your ignorance is ASTOUNDING! Having FUN? What part of THAT is supposed to be FUN OR pertain to the assignment at hand? JUST WHO is this FUN supposed to BE for the benefit of? WHOSE FUN is this?
If this is just harmless fun, I guess girls should stop dressing like whores and "asking for it" and after all "boys will be boys", right? And kids who are bullied should just learn that "kids an be cruel".
I would ask how many cartoons or images of Deliverance porch dwelling hillbillies this teacher has EVER pasted to a math assignment. WHY are photos which have nothing to DO with MATH being put on a middle school MATH assignment.
Personally, I would rather you and all of your fellow BIGGOTS would just put your hood on, so I KNOW who my child is dealing with on a daily basis.

Reba: The only thing ridiculous is your response. Did you ever think that maybe the picture was perceived racist due to the history that the parent had witness in her lifetime. It's very easy to be insensitive and as you say "having fun" at the expense of someone's history based on factual derogatory images which you are not aware of. Or are you? This United States (which) I love so well only scrims through what other cultures feels hurt them without true resolvment. Maybe I will tell children of color that slavery happen so long ago it shouldn't matter now; lynching never existed and that black-face was only done to make people laugh, but even though it is a part of your history don't look back!!! Oh and for the record...just the fact that we are having this discussion on what is considered racist, bares close resemblance of just how far we've come in this society.....KARMA is a MOTHERFU***R!!

The only racist i read about was that kids mom.

Sorry, littleblackshack, but i think that the mother has probably never witnessed any of this racism in her lifetime. Most of these racist things happened over 60 years ago. I am sorry about what our (white folks) ancestors did in the 17 & 1800's, but I have only been alive since 1979, and i can tell you that the country has come a long way when it comes to racism. You tell me what is right. White people can't have their own clubs or scholarships or anything given to us just because we are white, but you have NAACP, and United Negro College fund just because you are black. I wish white people could have a college fund, but we DON'T. So most of us have to rely on our grades, our SAT scores, and our parents' earnings to determine whether or not we can get a higher education. We white peopl are still paying for the sins of our forefathers. When is it ever going to end?!!!!!

Reba,..Can you please tell us why that image is on the math home work?..then again do you know if that woman and her son has been facing several other racism attitudes in the past from the school? and the community?..you can't just blame her to reacting to this one.Did you read where another student asked the boy is the man in the picture is his father?..Also did you read that the boy is always being racially insulted?..You need to get a life yourself!..That image is scary let alone be included on a math home work and it has nothing relating to maths in any way.You need to sit and think about this thoroughly ok!

Racism is when you take a test for a job and outscore the other applicants, and you don't get the job because points were added to the scores of the less qualified applicants simply because of the color of their skin, their gender, or both. This is why our government is so inefficient. They fill their ranks of good paying, high quality jobs with great benefits with people who scored lower on the employment tests, but were hired ahead of the more qualified people simply because of race or gender. Then we wonder why we stand in line so long at the DMV and have to deal with pompous, inefficient, borderline incompetent DMV employees who treat us like we are beneath them.

Reb, your post exhibits the sensitivity of a brick.

unless you've experienced racial discrimination, u will never know how it feels.some white people just can't wrap their heads around the fact that minorities have a disadvantage in life. they are secure in their bubbles and as long as obama and oprah are on tv they think that all is well. they are not an accurate representation of black progression in this country.

...and the word "racism" becomes even more meaningless again.

Well, Lizzy - I am part of the "subgroup" and that term I feel is not only racist, but unintelligible. That parent needs to go back to school and learn what a "subgroup" means or at least look it up in the dictionary. And it's interesting that every time a black person doesn't like something, they go crying to the NAACP or the ACLU and a teacher who is trying to bring humor and fun into homework and school work is chastised and considered racist. Has anyone else noticed that it's always the African American "subgroup" that constantly yells "racism" or "racist;" you hear it from the Hispanic "subgroup" every once in a while; rarely from the Asian and Native American "subgroup." And have you noticed that the NAACP and ACLU never comes to the defense of the these "subgroups."

To the parent who refused to give her name for this article - Get off the teacher's back and put your child back in school. Teach your son some resilience and how to handle comments like that with humor, wit, and intelligence and not to constantly yell "FOUL." Pulling your son out of school because of these comments and "until it's safe" is just as ignorant because whether you like it or not, this world is not safe. What your son did by staying in class and enduring those comments, is probably the smartest thing he did that day. He did not run away, like you wanted him to do. He faced it and he still made it thru the day. He wanted to be successful and he followed the rules and he finished his work. Good for him - He's learning what it's going to be like for him in the adult world and facing obstacles as opposed to what you wanted him to do, which is run in the face of adversity. Shame on you for teaching him to run as opposed to confront and teach.

Of course if you are white you do not understand, only non whites have to deal with these types of racial indictments it is unfair and will continue because whites cannot feel the pain of racism they are not victims only perpetrators.

I bought jellybeans one day last year and when I mentioned to my friend that I hate the "BLACK" licorice ones. The woman in line in front of me turned and called me a racist.... WTF! She was not joking! She meant it! I'm white and she's black so her perspective gets more weight in the political correctness scale? Wrong...the fact is, she is either a fool, or a racist herself, or at least she was having a very bad day. If you hate someone for their race you are a fool no matter what color you are.

i completely agree Reba. so the picture displays someone with out all of their teeth. it was intended to be humorous enough to get the kids' attention. i'm sure the culturally over-sensitive would not have uttered a whimper had it been a white toothless wino. if anyone is offended by the photo they should take two baby aspirins and don't call me in the morning. grow up America!.

His comment was racist. If it had been a picture of a Vietnamese refugee, like the man I married and had a biracial son with, I do believe that I, in spite of my Master's Degree and strong social upbringing, I would have been at the teacher's throat. My son had enough diverse racist experiences in elementary (even skipping over him for gifted for four years and kept using him as a helper in the library or office as he had a strong foundation in spelling irregular words by first grade) he could take calls, file alphabetically and numerically, help the art teacher prepare her cart for the day being able to read her list and find the items to stack in the cart for her. But when we moved for my graduate work, they identified him right away, tested him in a couple of days and had him in gifted within the first week. Do you think at the old school that they didn't test him because he wasn't white caucasian? You bet I think so! And when we moved to Clearwater from Daytona, he was immediately identified as gifited. What was the difference, you think? Well for graduate school the student loans then were 3 X as much so we lived in a much better neighbrhood, and first day I let them know I was in graduate school so if something came up and they needed escorts, I could arrange my schedule to fit it, and my ex let them know that he was an architect just down the street and he also could arrange to take off any time he could help. So I guess we looked the no-nonsense kind of people. And turns out his IQ put him way over the edge, which I always thought, getting achievement tests scores in the .999 area but the other school didn't want to even know. So finally in 5th grade he got gifted training. What a waste all those years. Why? Well you tell me. At the first school, my son, who had art training from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts from 18 months to 3 1/2 years, was told by the kindergarten teacher who also told me that he was color illiterate, he didn't know what the right color of things were, he kept coloring things, as he told her "the colors he liked" and so she decided he didn't know better and got failing grades in art. What can I say! Then in kindergarten and 1st grade, he kept spelling irregular words right, not phonetically, like "dinosaur" and so he got a low grade for language arts for using the correct spelling when they were still on phonetics, and I got a mouthful from his 1st grade teacher for that. She also had words for me for teaching him to add, thank goodness she didn't know he could subtract and multiply, because adding was introduced at the end of 1st grade, and he was not prepared mentally, according to Piaget, for what he knew??? Oh, I had to take a lot of guff, meanwhile, my over educated bi-racial child, who they rather expected to know half what he knew, knew too much to be where he was. Had I been a stay at home mother I would have home taught after the 1st grade and the days I took off to help in the classroom and saw prejudice in the actions of the teacher and the words she used at the mixed children in her class, not to my son, at least while I was there, but I got laid off =) and was in her class every day and I missed nothing, the unfriendly sentiment particularly to the darker children, the darker the more unfriendly she was, she would even make nasty remarks about these children about their personal hygiene, she "could smell it." Truthfully, she was very unkind to these children, and I could have reported it, but I know after being a teacher myself, just how far these complaints go and how they are recorded on file, and also knew if I created a stew, my son would suddenly be getting caught for things he didn't do, I knew that is another way education and the medical system works when they have the file and you are dependent on them to write the truth that may incriminate them. Yeah, I suspected from the birth of my son, which was very hard, with lots of conflicting information going on, I asked my obstetrician to get my file and please read it to me of the last three days, and the first thing he told me was that there was a lot of erasures on the pages of the last 3 days culminating in the emergency birth of my son. It looked like a lot of material had been changed. One thing he noted was that I was heavily smoking it said, and he wondered about that since I was in the intensive care for premature babies, and it would have been on the records if I had been going out a lot to smoke and he had not noticed that before on my charts, and he went to get my charts and it seemed like I was going out once or twice a day, so he said he'd have to write a note refuting that from my charts. It also said I was an iritable sort. Well I reminded him that he said that the nurses in intensive care would time my contractions and would have the baby at all times hooked to the monitor, which he wasn't, and I told him that one of the nurses gave me a watch to time my own contractions. And he noted this on my chart. And he said that was a part of being in intensive care, and the whole point of the monitor was to ensure that the baby was doing ok while in there, and he noted that. Then he went outside and had a talk with the nurses and said he would be back later. And he said that I would be set up more cautiously by the nurses and gave me 2 sheets of paper, one to keep track of contractions and if a nurse came in to monitor it, and the other to keep track of the times I smoked, date and time, so he could have it for his files.

Actually I think the nurses thought with his broken English, my Vietnamese husband would make no big deal about anything, ah, but after I explained everything to him, well, then he was about to be after the nurses throats until I reminded him that the obstetrician was on top of this, and if we want to do anything we should take notes. But he wasn't as pleasant as he had been with the nurses as before and I think they could sense something was wrong, as I had told him earlier, when I called out for a nurse after pressing the button and after 15 minutes no one came, and I told the nurse I had been having a hard contraction and couldn't keep track of it myself as I was concentrating on breathing, and she went out to get me a watch as I had mentioned, but how could that help me... I couldn't concentrate on the watch, I told her. And so she told me to try, as there were 15 beds in the unit...I knew that only half were full... so please be patient. Then my water broke, and that was time, no matter what, or how early my tiny baby was, after the water breaks it is time, so I didn't call over to the nurse, who knew when she would get to me, and I wasn't looking for a reason to sue the hospital, I just wanted my baby to survive, as the first resulted in a miscarriage. So I unattached myself from the wires giving me a wierd line, and went to the nurse and told her to her f ace that I was leaking water and she said to go back to bed and she would come back to me with some wipes from which they could determine if the water was amniotic fluid and it was time to have a baby~!!! Well the time went pretty slow waiting for her to come back with the wipes, so I called out to the nurse, it's still leaking and don't I have to be connected again to the monitor...so some minutes later after discussing her plans for the night, it was a Saturday, oh boy, can I remember that because the wait for her to end her conversation was so incredibly long, and when she did come back I was in another contraction, long and hard, and no I didn't know how long, stupid nurse that was her job to time them. Then she swiped me and said only a little positive. Now in college I had studied enough of philosophy and enough of lingistics and philology and the philosophy of philology, that I knew that positive was utterly, no more, no less, and I told her to get me down to the emergency delivery room pronto or I was going to call my doctor and if anything happened to my child I would sue the pants off of Harvard's Medical Teaching Hospital, and all you nurses here just heard me so I have witnesses because some of you all are Christians and will have to tell the truth, my son is dying in there and I need to get to emergecy delivery ASAP!!! And so with little time left to be at stake, I picked up the phone and said I'm dialing my doctor, and I did and left a message for him at his home, and told him that they wouldn't help me save my child and I needed him NOW. And then they took me to the emergency delivery room, and I noted the time I got there, and they hooked me up and then there was no heartbeat, and by then my husband had arrived and they started talking medical code to each other and they said we need you to answer these questions NOW and I started crying, and I said has my doctor been called, and they said yes, and we need these answers right now (while I'm crying), and they said to stop crying or my baby wouldn't be getting oxygen, so I tried very hard to stop crying and after a minute (according to my husband) they put an anesthetic mask on my face as I held my husband's hand and while they were still asking me questions I fell asleep. Is this not the most hideous treatment for a patient in intensive care or have you heard worse cases? It was like they had researched all the wrong things to do, and chose my Asian husband and myself as the enemy to target. This, too, is prejudice, pretty awful prejudice, and they had to be threatened to act in favor of my son's and my life.

The doctor came and made some notes from what I said about the birth from the contraction self timed, to the reluctant nurses to send me down after the presence of amniotic fluid, to the threat to call my doctor, to calling my doctor, to the lack of heartbeat, to the enormous 18" scar that reminds me that God saved my child, they just slit an 18" hole for the no heartbeat child to get it out and another minute he would have either been gone, or the hospital would have a mentally challenged lawsuit on their hands. My MA is in special education, cause, care and education. I am more prepared than hardly any parents of a special child with God given adoration for their special place in our world that reminds us how important it is for us to make the peace we need so that we can concentrate on our special people, they need love and acceptance, too. They are a population that gets hugely abused, and the government has been taking the whole money issue out of their hide as much as they can get away with, because they cannot advocate for themselves, God shall handle those who take advantage, financially, intellectually, emotionally, and don't expect any breaks there, these are God's special people who work arduously to please, so either care well for them, or let the state, who now has apartments for those well enough to live on their own. And when they are having a psychotic episode talking to celery, it is not your business, inasmuch as it is not your business about any others' conversations' in public places. If you don't want to hear about their conversation with celery, then move on over a few aisles, but for God's sake, don't try your power to get them kicked out of the store. You believe it, my schizophrenic brother was kicked out of a college library he had every right to which was right next door, and even though he was whispering very quietly, which they admitted, the fact was he was whispering to his evil nemisis and it spooked them, so rather than change their location within the library, they got him kicked out. Now first of all, can you imagine the courage, strength and hard work it was for him to get a BA, with happy campers staring at him as he went along his business in and out of psychosis and had to control his nemisis. Not a happy vision, say what? And to graduate with honors indicates great effort and devotion to studying while fighting off his demons. Could you have done it? And if you must stare (which just makes them more likey to be homebound) stare with admiration; it takes a tough person with mental illness to even go out of the house, because they know about the stares, and the ugly comments, and the bids that they should go home and stay there, and could you go out after hearing that for years?

Being shunned by society, many psychotic people find other ways to fulfill their frustration, and yes this does include violence. People who have been shunned by their own society for decades give up hope that someday they might have a friend, and what is the best closure to a life of loneliness? What do you think?

So we have discussed race discrimination, intellectual discrimination, education discrimination, medical discrimination, disability discrimination, that's a lot of discrimination, but let's not leave until we discuss sex discrimination. I don't care how educated you are, but until you have space in your ethics for diverse sexuality, you are not educated enough. While I do believe that most sexually deviated violence is not committed by happy open and involved gays who have accepted their sexuality and have found acceptance within that society to find an emotional and sexual partner to live a committed life with, it is a pity that our unresolved society are so confused that they take their spare time to disrupt the lives of others of other gender orientation. This is a frightening scenario to sexually unidentified adults who would raather associate with the majority than the minority, even if it doesn't fit their sexual orientation. Society is so powerful, it can cause you to l oose your own identity just to belong, just remember to what group and what it stands for to which you are trying to belong, none too sympathetic or humane.

So follow your own human pathways. Just be aware of what they are. And enjoy life in your own way. You don't owe your life to anyone. Have a splendid Sunday!

Right wing America is full of homophobes. It is also full of Right Wing given God inspired Republicans to dictate laws over sex for All the People. Now it is a good thing that we recognize that these ways and means are driven by Neocon dribble and not the bible. There was no birth control or abortion during ...wait a minute...I don't know that for a fact...maybe there was abortion during Biblical times and we just don't know about it, and if there was, that makes abortion a custom.

Whatever, it is paternalistic, not giving full weight to the voice of women in this argument. And men, not being affected, except that if the women don't have an abortion, they are subject to child support payments, which a large majority cannot afford to pay, so that law is futile, a stupid law at best and a stupid law at worst. And for some reason, these Stepford Wives do anything (Oh, Lord, a mat on the floor) their husbands tell them, no hope of self-consciousness, self-image-, self-confidence, identity at all, and let us all pray for Cindy McCain, the poster girl for the wife of the 50's who stands there in front of the press while her husband Senator John calls her a C---, does she have any self-respect? Ladies and men who are sympathetic, let us pray for her, and the life she lives married to a mysoginist who delights in publicly shaming her in the worst possible way!!! And can you believe women actually voted for him!!!

We are not just mysoginists, as the men in our lives teach us to be and accept, we are emotionally suicidal, and to hang on we must have our men, so we do what they say and look what the way they want; we are our own greatest opposition to development.
When will we be strong enough to stand against our partners when they treat us like inanimate doo doo. We will not have respect until we demand it, that's just the way of life. Until we have self-respect, we will not command it from any others. Ladies, pick up your umbrellas, just like Mary Poppins, or your beach towel, like Kate Chopin, take your future into your own hands, it is your life, and you are a slaaave to no one. Say what you mean, and don't be afraid of the consequenses. Be real.

hey, Reba, are u a "subgroup" or in the majority? But I suppose with a hick name like Reba, you must be a character straight out of "Deliverance"

The photo is typical of the blatant racism of the 1930's, with images of "mammy" and such. If you have every watched a movie from the '30s or '40s this is how blacks were portrayed-- Ignorant and improper use of the English language. This is a racist photo, there is nothing funny about it and everyone needs to be aware that this IS racism. I can't believe everyone cannot see that! And I cannot believe an educator could not see that!! There is something wrong with the teacher for using that image. I am white woman in the typical white suburbs, and my children go a predominately white school, but if one of them came home with that assignment you can be sure the school and teacher would be getting a phone call from me!!!!

if the picture had been of a white toothless man,whites would not be able to say nothing.
let's have an united caucasian college fund!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

but we can't because black's would call it racist!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!