Singled Out: Why Are Teachers Using Humiliation To Guide Black Kids?

June 6th, 2012 - By Brande Victorian

If there’s one phrase almost any black child can recall being said to them during childhood, it’s you better quit doing x, y, or Z before I embarrass you. Nobody wants to be embarrassed, and when your parent gives you a warning like that, you know they’re going to make good on it. But for some reason that sentiment has seemed to tip-toe out of homes and into the classroom, with embarrassment tactics being the go-to solution for teachers, particularly when it comes to black students and it’s something I have a hard time accepting.

I should start out by mentioning I’m not a fan of negative reinforcement. I recognize for some people it works, but it’s an approach that has never sat well with me so I have an inherent bias toward some of the situations I’ve come across in the news lately. Two days ago, I wrote about Bria Persley and how she was told by a teacher to sit her nappy-headed self down. You can argue all you want that nappy was a descriptive adjective and one would only find it offensive if they had some sort of ill personal feelings toward having coarse hair but 99 percent of us know that no such phrases like sit your curly- or stringy-haired self down exist in the realm of English colloquialisms and that teacher said what she did to embarrass that girl. We’ve probably all heard someone tell another person to sit their black a** down and while the person referencing may have in fact been of that race, the word black was thrown in their not as a description but as a taunt. This is no different.

A few moments ago, I came across another story of ninth grader Dionne Evans who apparently forgot her binder for school recently. The teacher attempted to teach her a lesson by telling the student to come to the front of the class and she was asked if she’d ever seen “Bridesmaids,” after which the teacher reportedly began acting out one of the scenes from the film in which one of the characters tries to “knock some sense” into her friend by hitting her on the head. When the girl and her mother complained to the school, the teacher wrote a letter of apology, saying:

“I want to tell you how truly sorry I am. My intention was never to hurt you or embarrass you. Rather, I was trying to reach out to you and help you focus on your school work and motivate you.

“Even though I thought my intentions were honorable, they did not come out that way and for that I am so very sorry. Please know that I feel terrible about causing you pain and would like the opportunity to make it right.”

Teach needs more people. Though I can see her somewhat comically hitting the girl over the head, how she considers that reaching out and being motivational is beyond me. Where is the lesson in that? She knew it would be embarrassing despite backtracking and claiming that wasn’t her intent, and I’m sure she thought that the girl would never forget her binder again because she wouldn’t want to be shamed in front on another occasion.

From reading comments on each story, there seems to be two main responses—outrage over the teacher’s behavior or support for administrators because if these kids were somehow troublemakers they deserved whatever came to them. The latter I can’t get behind. Children most definitely should have consequences when they don’t handle their responsibilities in school. We called those demerits and detention when I was coming up. What bothers me is I’m not only finding these stories because I’m perusing black sites, I search MSN, Yahoo, and other mainstream outlets and I’m not finding instances of white children being berated like this to learn some sort of lesson. And though I’m willing to lend some of that tipped scale to the fact that black people can have a tendency to look for racism in things that might not really be an instance of such, I get the feeling when these stories hit that our children are being treated like this in class because they’re already thought to be throw-away kids. This theory supported by studies that already show minority students are given less feedback than others.

I may be a tad sensitive to these things, but in my opinion grade school and even high school are tough years and not periods where liberties should be taken to belittle student’s self-esteem. The hair comment in particular is wrought with all sorts of confidence-damaging implications that even most grown women can’t get past today. No one should be allowed to demean someone’s physical appearance because of any transgression they committed. The point of school is to prepare children for the “real-world” but no company in the world could get away with an executive speaking to an employee like that and it shouldn’t fly in school either.

I’m not saying that children don’t need to be taught lessons but the subtle and sometimes overtly prejudice ways our children are being disciplined is not acceptable. For Brea to be dismissed from the school because her mother complained about the teacher is baffling to me. Had her response warranted police intervention or something of the sort, I could see the expulsion being necessary but how could you not expect this mother to be irate at the teacher’s actions and the principle’s response about mean kids needing to be taught a lesson. If parents don’t stand up and advocate for their kids who will?

It doesn’t matter if kids used to be spanked, paddled, or put over one’s knee in front of the class to teach them a lesson. Those days are gone and the embarrassment tactics previously used shouldn’t be replaced with the one’s discussed here. I can’t imagine the stresses teachers are facing in with unruly students in overcrowded classrooms but at the end of the day, we are still talking about children. If these teachers can’t handle the pressures like an adult without resorting to demeaning tactics they are the ones who should be embarrassed.

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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  • Kimster

    I’m sure negative reinforcement happens in numerous schools among different races, but what’s sad for black youth is that they are hardly ever able to start fresh. They either have the negative stigma of being “trouble-making black youths”, thugs, or stigma carried over from parents and siblings attached to them. And no, this is not a victim card. Let’s be honest, they often receive harsher treatment and negative reinforcement from both white and black figures of authoritiy because of these negative pre-conceived notions. School is difficult enough with peer bullying, which often escalates into physical abuse. And many would argue that blacks bring it on themselves, but that mindset is part of the problem. While some young blacks strive and succeed to excel beyond this negative scrutiny, stereotypes, and treatment, for many it’s a perputual, sad cycle.

  • http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&search-alias=digital-text&field-author=Peaches%20The%20Writer PeachesTheWriter

    Teachers view some students as an “inconvenience” and I believe they will do whatever they think will work to get that child in sync with the rest of the class. Yes, some are racist and classist, but I wouldn’t overgeneralize.

  • monitorette

    I don’t know for those who have seen this Bridesmaid scene, but I found it particularly violent while watching it, because this hitting and slapping was somewhat unexpected.
    There are many things to say about the inaccuracy of transporting this movie scene into a school room : in the film, the 2 characters are friends, there is no subordination link as the one between the teacher and the pupil. So what’s next, playing the Back to the Future scene where a character bully Marty Mc Fly by knocking on his head and asking if there’s someone out there?

    In the Bridesmaid scene, the friends were alone in a room, there were no other characters to witness this ‘hitting’ scene, when we know that the teacher made her one woman show in front of the kid school friends.

    And not to say that a school is somehow a sacred place, where the teachers are there to accompany the children in the road to adulthood, not to bring them down.

  • Raquel

    If someone says “sit yo black a** down” that person is insulting you. In my household that I grew up in if you wanted to insult someone you call them black. Those are basically fighting words.

  • Ai

    These teachers sound like bullies. They don’t tolerate bullying in schools from other children so no child should be treated like that.

  • nappy and happy

    hmm not to downgrade these instances but just because you dont see instances of this happening in the media with white children it most certainly does. When i was in 1st grade there was a white boy who peed himself after asking to go to the bathroom, but he was a troublemaker and the teacher told him to hold it. he ended up being put in a garbage can in the corner for the rest of the day. HIs mom knocked him upside his head in front of us when she picked him up from school cause she was called and told that he was being disruptive by peeing himself . The difference is that we go to the media when are kids are embarrassed while white people cosign on all the measures that are taken to keep there kids in line.

    • FromUR2UB

      What???! And you think that this boy who was not allowed to go to the bathroom when he needed to, and then was publicly humiliated for peeing on himself, by both the teacher and his mother, turned into a model citizen after that? I imagine he became worse because his treatment was so unnecessary. Do you not understand the difference between discipline and cruelty? Discipline, executed properly, should correct behavior without breaking a person’s spirit. Cruelty demeans and diminishes a person, so that they become hardened and uncompassionate as the result of it. The teacher should have removed him from the classroom by sending him to the office to wait for his mother, not had him sit in a garbage can, like a piece of garbage. I’m guessing this was a teacher who did more damage to her students than good. If you condone this, then please don’t have children, and don’t teach, because society doesn’t really need the adults who were screwed over like that as kids, unleashed on it.

  • LaLaLaMeansILoveYou

    Also may want to keep in mind that a lot of “teachers” nowadays themselves are young, inexperienced, fresh out of college kids themselves…they don’t have the wisdom or even good sense that a lot of the teachers from yesteryear had.

    Just look at all of these cases that keep popping up about these teachers, male and female, that are having relations and relationships with their students. They’re so close in age they probably don’t see it as a problem :-/ they’re still young and aren’t yet ready to behave as “grownups” do just yet.

    Not sure of what the stipulation is (if there is any at all) but I think that anyone wanting to become a teacher should have to perform in some sort of mandatory probationary “assistant” role for a number of YEARS (read: NOT left to their own devices). I know of too many getting top teaching positions within a few months of graduating, with no REAL experience outside of some watered down TA gig sitting in someone’s class for a couple of hours a day for a few months.

    • FromUR2UB

      They should make potential teachers undergo psychological testing so that they might identify, in advance, some with pedophilic tendencies. Some of those teachers who get involved with middle school students, aren’t so young.

      • Shaundra

        I’ve been saying this exact same thing .. Hell Police officer have to why not teachers?.

  • Danielle

    I am a teacher, and sometimes I do embarrass my students. Not in a way that demeans or degrades them, as in the above referenced examples, but if they are acting inappropriately I will not hesitate to call them out in a respectful manner. For example, I’ll say something like “Sarah is talking while I’m talking, so I’m going to stop and wait for her to finish her conversation so that I can continue teaching.” Everyone in the room then turns and looks at Sarah. Does it embarrass her? Yes. Does it let her know that behavior that disrupts the learning of other students will not be tolerated? Absolutely. I am by no means defending what these teachers did, because it was downright wrong. I can understand what they were trying to do, because it works when done effectively, but they definitely crossed the line, and deserve to be reprimanded.

    • FromUR2UB

      I agree with this form of discipline. The child understands that they’re being disruptive, he/she is put on the spot in a way where they come to realize that they don’t have anything to say so important, they should use class time to say it. The judgment from peers will effectively make him or her feel silly and correct the behavior. As long as you address the behavior without making the comments personal, then I think you accomplish your purpose. A teacher should never set a child up for ongoing ridicule from their peers.

      My parents grew up in the south, and used to tell us horror stories about teachers who called them a bunch of “black ugly kids”, or would haul off and wop them upside the head when she felt they were misbehaving. Understandably, many kids felt they didn’t learn much in school, and left as soon as they were able. This occurred back in the 1930′s before sensitivity and diversity training. But, to hear of teachers using these kinds of tactics today, makes them sound no less ignorant and unrefined than the teachers of those times in small southern schools.

  • Jenny J

    I think you’re a bit off base. Negative reinforcement has always been a part of education ever since public school has been around. One only needs to think back to the one room school house with a student sitting in the corner with a dunce cap on. Just recently in the news there have been several incidents of this negative reinforcement by white teachers with white students. Two that come to mind are a teacher that staples a McDonalds application to the test of students that fail. Another recently is a teacher that writes the word ‘Loser’ on all failing test to which one child’s mother complained. This isn’t just a black issue.

  • Anonymous

    blah blah blah there is always something about race.. stop being so sensitive!

  • Grace

    Thank you for this commentary. It’s been quite ridiculous on the part of some Blacks/African-Americans to use that story as an opportunity to make the point that we should be proud of our naturally coarse/”nappy” hair. A white teacher had the audacity to use a derogatory term to describe coarse hair for the purposes of being inflammatory/insulting. Disciplining a child and needlessly humiliating a child are TWO SEPARATE THINGS!
    #wearsdreadlocs

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