Students called ‘n’ word, chased through woods on school field trip as part of a slavery reenactment

[jesskat]

On a class trip in Connecticut, a girl and her classmates were chased through the woods and called the “n” word as part of a slavery reenactment

Comments

[sandstorm]

I don't have any words. What...?

[lithiumflower]

That is actually super horrifying and humiliating. I'm glad the parents pulled their daughter. I don't think I would have been able to show my face in that school and around those teachers without crying. They terrorized this 12 year old girl and they should be sued for child abuse.

[astridmyrna]

‘The instructor told me if I were to run, they would whip me until I bled on the floor and then either cut my Achilles so I couldn’t run again, or hang me.”

They pretended to be on a slave ship.

They pretended to pick cotton.

They pretended their instructors were their masters.

Those instructors need to be fired and banned from teaching again, and that school needs to be sued out the wazoo and the money given to the families so they can go on an all-expense paid trip to Disneyland. The fuck is this racist nonsense.

ETA: For some reason I recall one person from here saying how when they were kids they went on a cotton-picking field trip and had to give back the cotton they picked, so they kept a bit of cotton in their pockets that was discovered by their mom when she went to wash their clothes.

[jesskat]

You sure you're not thinking about this video?

[astridmyrna]

YES, THAT'S IT.

The story and how this dude tells it--no wonder it managed to stick in my brain for so long!

[bmh4d0k3n]

I was about to post this. Brilliant video.

[nextdrinksonme]

I took a civil war history class over the summer when I was in middle school where they did something like this. They definitely didn't call us the N word, but we were herded into small rooms and treated with disrespect and cruel things were said to us in order to simulate the living conditions of that time. However, I'm pretty sure my mom had to sign a permission slip and we knew going into it it what would happen.

I think that this kind of education can be beneficial to make the way some people in certain time periods were treated more than just words in a textbook, and for people to really internalize and realize how awful things were, because there are many people who just don't get it. However, there needs to be information provided beforehand and an actual ability for the kids to opt out, not just lip service to it.

[roseofjuly]

Um, I have to 100%, totally disagree. There are better ways to teach children this kind of stuff that doesn't have to do with mentally assailing them in an especially fragile and vulnerable period of life (middle school). ESPECIALLY if you are going to single out only the black kids for the treatment. Then what do the white kids learn? How awesome it is to lash other people with words and make them feel like shit?

[nextdrinksonme]

I didn't anything that said only the black kids were singled out (and already said that I thought this program was excessive and did it wrong). My class was all white kids because rural central PA, so that wasn't an issue.

I've been in several learning situations like that in middle and high school, both with that class and with things like a Holocaust museum, which gave you an identity of someone who was in a camp, exposed you to the situations they lived in, and you learned at the end if they lived or died irl. In every case, many kids who were joking and making fun and "didn't see what the big deal was" (their words) while discussing things in class or at the beginning of the trip left in shocked silence and their viewpoints in class discussions did total 180s. They were affected in a way and understood in a way that they didn't while just reading books and hearing stories.

[oystermato]

Wow. No. Nope. NOPE. People are STILL being treated like subhuman trash under global white supremacy, and I do not think you need historical reenactments to truly understand how people must have felt.

[thesilverymoon]

Really? Shit like this is just ridiculous. I mean, I'm a big fan of using reenactments to learn about history, but this absolutely crosses a line.