A future teacher or the end of education?

Dad complains about books with 'N-word'

   SOUTH TAMPA, FLA - A black father has complained that two of the books his daughter was assigned at her Florida elementary school include the same racial epithet.

   Both books, "The Land" by Mildred Taylor and in "The Starplace" by Vicki Grove, have been praised for promoting racial understanding. "The Land," which won a Coretta Scott King Author award in 2003, is set in Georgia after the Civil War, while "The Starplace" is set in Oklahoma about 1960.

   Darryl Brown thinks fifth-graders like his daughter, Ashyaa, are too young to deal with epithets like the one usually referred to as the N-word. She is a student at Turner Elementary in New Tampa, and he says that another student who was also reading "The Starplace" told her there was nothing wrong with the word.

   "My daughter was physically shaking when I picked her up that day," he said.

   Brown, a doctoral student in education at the University of South Florida, said when he first complained about the books he was not told how to get them reviewed. Link

   I defy you to Google the word 'nigger' in image search. What you will find is approximately 10% is devoted to vintage images of days long gone by, 20% is outright white racism and the remaining 70% is of album covers, posters and other rap and gangsta paraphernalia - all originating directly from black culture. One wonders if Darryl Brown eschews that.

   Unless you live in a cave, you have heard Barack Obama's 'spiritual adviser', Rev. Jeremiah Wright, use the word 'nigger' many times. He has also used terms equally as offensive about other races and spewed things which are blatantly false about other races - one wonders how Darryl Brown feels about that.

   Black entertainers like Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, Damon Wayans, the list goes on forever and only stops short of Bill Cosby, all use that offensive word. Everyday conversations between black folks are peppered with the word. How do you suppose Mr. Darryl Brown addresses that in public?

   The very best literature to have ever been penned in this country uses the word 'nigger' profusely. I speak of course, of Mark Twain. How old were YOU when YOU read Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn? Fifth grade, I suspect. What will Darryl Brown do to protect his daughter from the 'racism' of Mark Twain?

   The frightening thing about this story is that Darryl Brown is an education major. He will become a teacher some day. His insistence that the word not be used is to deny truth and truth is all a teacher has standing between them and the ignorance of their students. That Darryl Brown would choose to keep his daughter ignorant of that offensive word in the face of all the many ways she is surely exposed to that word he finds so offensive should scare you. It speaks volumes about his own ability to delude himself, his inclination to blame others and his absolute unsuitability at teaching - much less learning.

   In short, Mr. Brown personifies exactly what is wrong with black culture today. They spend far too much time placing blame for their real and perceived problems and not nearly enough time on fixing them themselves. Instead of demanding the books be removed or the reading list modified, Darryl Brown could use the opportunity to teach his own child how to react to that offensive word so to make it a learning experience in of itself.

   Instead, he wants us all to be blissfully ignorant of the existence of the word, in the misguided hope that will somehow remove its meaning from our cultural lexicon and our nation's history. And just where do you suppose Darryl Brown came up wth this method of rewriting things? Where did his moral outrage originate? The Left, of course. Wasn't it Stalin who said, 'he who controls the press - controls history?' And isn't being 'politically correct' the brain child of the modern liberal?

   Allow me a couple of quotes. 'Those who would forget history are doomed to repeat it' - Santayana. Here's another one from that famously bigoted spewer of racist hatred and offensive language - Samuel Langhorne Clemens ...

...'Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself'...Spread the word!

Comments

[Oldcatman]

No words should ever be banned!

[Phoenix]

No words should ever be banned, but some people should be banned from being parents. What does this father think he's doing to 'help' his kids? The help would be to calmly explain the origin of the word, explain about how the music industry uses it despite the word being out of use because it morphed into a cruel epithet. Back in the plantation days it wasn't even frowned on.... it was just a word.......... without the look of fire as Twain so aptly puts it.

[Ron]

It's bad he will be a teacher. I think it's even worse that he might "teach" teachers, or become an administrator who will enforce his own version of stupidity on many other teachers. I feel for his daughter.

[lelo]

I know this guy he is just trying to get money out of a sue. He is so ridiculous I would i agree if it was directed towards him/family but not in a book. Come on now. Lest band all music with word N musicians would go broke.