If you have to list some of the most brutal tragedies of the world, these would make it to the top four – The Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Native American genocide, and the African slave-trade. The kind of racial bias that was prevalent then has been passed down for generations. However, thanks to the several movements demanding racial equality, that bias has come to a close, almost.
I say ‘almost’ because there is still a stigma attached to people of colour. And this stigma becomes apparent by certain acts by people from first-world countries. Like a recent incident where class-5 students were given a test asking them to write down the price of slaves. According to a report by News18, the students were given worksheets and one of the questions mentioned, ‘set your price for a slave’.
Have a look at the worksheet here:
A friend of a parent of one of the students posted the picture on Facebook and wrote, “A friend of mine’s child brought this home from Blades Elementary School, 5th grade. It is so wrong on so many levels. What do you think the plan of action should be? This was supposedly a westward expansion lesson. Some were given food, wood, water, and…slaves!”
Read the post here:
A friend of mine’s child brought this home from Blades Elementary School, 5th grade. It is so wrong on so many…
Posted by Lee Hart on Sunday, December 8, 2019
The school and the teacher have received severe criticism for their “culturally insensitive” remark. According to a report by CNN, the principal of the school sent out letters to the parents of the students explaining the situation. He said that the exercise “attempted to address market practices.”
“Students were learning about having goods, needing goods and obtaining goods and how that influenced early settlement in America,” he wrote.
 He further mentioned that the exercise was culturally insensitive and that he has decided to train his teachers about “cultural bias”. The teacher who designed the assignment had been given leave.
“Racism of any kind, even inadvertently stemming from cultural bias, is wrong and is not who we aspire to be as a school district. I am sorry and disappointed that this happened in our school,” the Principal further wrote.
This goes on to prove that racism still exists at a significant rate in the world. To combat this, people need to be educated about racial bias and how it affects kids when they encounter such insensitive behaviour.