Brown v. The Board of Education: The Sequel

The reason Mo and I had the discussion on the word is because he heard it at school and came home to ask me what it meant. What do you think the teacher should have done if she had overheard the word being used? Ignore it?

Personally I think they should use the opportunity to educate the kids on the history of the word and the harm it can cause.

If kids were passing around notes talking about bastards and the teacher went started a conversation about the changing nature of the word I wouldn't be upset.

However, principal Gregory Mason, who walked in during the discussion, remembers things differently. He says Brown asked, "can anyone explain to me why blacks can call each other a n*****, and not get mad, but when whites do it, blacks get angry?" He also describes a bizarre-sounding conversation in which Brown asked "have you ever thought about why blacks are killed in movies first?" Then he allegedly "began to explain ‘how I've seen many movies where whites were killed first'" and "continued by stating that, ‘if you believe in this you are no better than the media's portrayal of blacks.'"

As Joan Rivers likes to say, “Can we talk?”

Apparently not.

Not when it comes to the n-word. Not when it comes to talking to children about the ugliness of that word and its history and how it cuts like a knife.

And certainly not in a sixth-grade classroom in a Chicago public school, where a teacher with a record of commitment to progress for disadvantaged African-American children was suspended for five days for doing just that.

We may be wrong about this, but every indication is that the teacher, Lincoln Brown, was unfairly suspended back in October by the principal at Murray Language Academy for being the best kind of teacher — the kind who dares to teach the hardest stuff.

As the Chicago Sun-Times reported Friday, Brown has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the principal and school violated his civil rights by suspending him without pay after he tried to teach his class “an important lesson in vocabulary, civility and race relations.”

As he told a Sun-Times reporter — and this would be entirely our point as well — “It’s so sad. If we can’t discuss these issues, we’ll never be able to resolve them.”

In his classroom on Oct. 4, Brown said, he got on to the topic of the n-word when one student passed a note to another student with a rap lyric that used the word. Brown, concerned that his students might not understand what a dangerous word that is, then talked to them about how that slur has been used historically and in literature, such as in Huckleberry Finn, and its use in different ways by black people and white people.

When the principal, Gregory Mason, walked into the class to listen in, Brown says, he assumed Mason appreciated the point of the lesson — kids have to understand the ugliness of this word — and approved. But two weeks later, Mason accused Brown of using “verbally abusive language to or in front of students.”

It helps to know who Lincoln Brown is. He is the son of a minister active in the civil rights movement. He was named for the president who signed the Emancipation Proclamation. He grew up in integrated Hyde Park, learned what it’s like to be in the minority as a white student at Kenwood Academy High School and has taught in black neighborhood schools for 21 years.

It helps to know, as well, that quality studies say the best way to teach children about race is to talk about it, openly and at an early age.

“Children see racial differences as much as they see the difference between pink and blue,” write Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman in the book NurtureShock . “But we tell kids that ‘pink’ means for girls and ‘blue’ is for boys. ‘White’ and ‘black’ are mysteries we leave them to figure out on their own.”

We owe it to our kids not to look away.

“Speak openly,” advises Dana Williams in a parenting handbook published by the Southern Poverty Law Center. “When we are honest with children about our country’s history of bigotry, sexism and stereo­types, we help prepare them to challenge these issues when they arise. A child who knows the racial history of the Confederate flag, for example, is less likely to brandish that symbol out of ignorance.”

Best we can tell, that’s all Lincoln Brown was trying to do.

I also believe that teachers need to grab such opportunities to discuss this kind of thing.

So these kids are old enough to talk cogently about racism in our society, but you don't think they're old enough to know that the word 'nigger' is hurtful or what it means?

At the beginning of a grammar exercise in his sixth grade class, Lincoln Brown saw that his students were unsettled and arguing about the passage of a note which contained lyrics of a rap song. Lincoln Brown then conducted a discussion about how upsetting such language can be, attempted to give his own denunciation of the use of such language, and discussed how even such books as "Huckleberry Finn" were being criticized for the use of the "N-word."

Brown says he was having an important discussion on the problems of racism, that students were "engaged" and "excited" and that "if we can't discuss these issues, we'll never be able to resolve them." He added that he would "never, ever use such a hurtful word" except as a way to help students think about and combat racism.

However, principal Gregory Mason, who walked in during the discussion, remembers things differently. He says Brown asked, "can anyone explain to me why blacks can call each other a n*****, and not get mad, but when whites do it, blacks get angry?" He also describes a bizarre-sounding conversation in which Brown asked "have you ever thought about why blacks are killed in movies first?" Then he allegedly "began to explain ‘how I've seen many movies where whites were killed first'" and "continued by stating that, ‘if you believe in this you are no better than the media's portrayal of blacks.'

It's hard to tell what Brown's point was with the above, but it certainly doesn't sound good. Mason responded by suspending him for five days for "using verbally abusive language to or in front of students" and "cruel, immoral, negligent or criminal conduct or communication to a student, that causes psychological or physical harm." Now Brown is suing the Chicago Board of Education in federal court (somewhat ironically, his case is called Brown v. Board of Education).

"there was a note being passed around causing a disturbance among the kids. i could see they were getting riled u. i found it was a written rap song that was written by one of the students. i read it and realized quickly it was about a student in the classroom and i stopped. we started to have a discussion about many things about rap in my own personal experience are very negative and we were talking about the discussion of the fact that, you know, it's used -- that word is used continuously in many different venues, whether it be public, and i was trying to teach them that, you know, it really hurts if they don't understand the historical context of what they're saying.