Fairfax County, Virgina high school ninth grade English teacher Marilyn Bart is under fire for last week reportedly telling the only black student in her class to read a poem aloud by the African American writer Langston Hughes, and then insisting he read it in a “blacker” manner. When the fourteen-year old freshman student refused, she attempted to show the class what she meant by reading it herself aloud. Days earlier, the student, Jordan Shumate, says she asked him to explain why black people like grape soda and rap music.
The Huffington Post reports:
Jordan Shumate, a ninth-grader at George C. Marshall High School in Falls Church, Va., says he was reading aloud Langston Hughes’ “Ballad of the Landlord” when teacher Marilyn Bart interrupted him.
“She told me, ‘Blacker, Jordan — c’mon, blacker. I thought you were black,’” Shumate told The Washington Post.
When the 14-year-old student declined to continue reading the poem, Bart read it herself to demonstrate what she meant.
“She read the poem like a slave, basically,” Shumate told the Post. When he asked whether she thought all black people speak that way, he was reportedly told to take his seat and reprimanded for speaking out of turn.
The poem was written in 1940 about a black tenant thrown in jail for challenging a landlord.
WAMU notes:
Shumate’s mother, Nicole Page, told WAMU that she is “very sad” for her “child’s loss of innocence” through the experience. The teacher had also previously asked the student to rap out a poem by black rapper and actor Tupac Shakur, Page said.
“We’re in 2012 with the first African American president,” Page told WJLA-TV. “In this era how could such a statement be made, particularly by an English teacher?”
The Washington Post adds:
Another ninth-grader, Kaila Denny, said she witnessed the incident. Shumate was “just sitting there reading normally like any person would,” Denny said, when Bart instructed him to speak “blacker.”
Shumate said that when he refused to continue reading the poem, Bart read it aloud herself, demonstrating what she meant.
“She sounded like a maid in the 1960s,” Shumate said. “She read the poem like a slave, basically.”
Shumate said he asked Bart that day whether she thinks all black people speak that way. She reprimanded him for talking out of turn, he said, and told him to take his seat.
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{ 7 comments }
Tap dance for me you n i g g e r.
This is tragic and brought tears to my eyes. No 14 year old student should suffer humiliation such as this. Hopefully the administration will address it.
I'm a great supporter of teachers. But, I support fairness and justice and decency more. Fire the teacher so all will understand, you do not demean another no matter what you believe.
That is soo wrong, she really should be fired. Apparently she has no empathy at all. Sounds like emotionally she is just 5 years old or something! I hope she reads this too!
Good grief, what an insensitive ninny.
This whole country is going insane.
Asia for Asians, Africa for Africans, White countries for everyone????????
Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into White countries.
The Netherlands and Belgium are more crowded than Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them.
Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY White countries to “assimilate,” i.e., intermarry, with all those non-Whites.
What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries? How long would it take anyone to realize I’m not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem?
And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldn’t object to this?
But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the White race, Liberals and respectable conservatives will just say that I’m a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.
They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-White.
Anti-racist is a code word for anti-White.
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