A Virginia high school is divided this week after a chemistry teacher was suspended for using a George Floyd pun for a student quiz, with students of color saying they felt unsafe as a result of the casual reference and white students complaining that the entire incident has been overblown.
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The quiz, given virtually on Tuesday, was part of a lesson on the periodic table of elements, reports ARLnow.com. โGeorge Floyd couldnโt breathe because a police officer put his ____ Georgeโs neck,โ the fill-in-the-blank question read. The answer 10th-grade students at H-B Woodlawn in Arlington, Va. were expected to fill in: โneon,โ a chemical element.
Screenshots were taken of the question by shocked students and their parents, who then went to school administrators. On Wednesday and Thursday, the schoolโs principal and Arlington Public Schools Superintendent Francisco Durรกn sent separate emails to families and staff apologizing for the incident.
โThe content referenced the killing of George Floyd in an unacceptable and senseless way, which hurt and alarmed our students, staff, families, and the community,โ Durรกn wrote. โThe reference showed extremely poor judgement and a blatant disregard for African American lives.โ
โThe teacher has been relieved of classroom duties while an investigation related to this matter takes place,โ the superintendent continued.
One student who shared the post on social media noted: โthere was a bunch of white silenceโ when the question was shared with the class.
โWhite students were making excuses or seemed โtoo tired to talk about itโ shame on those people thatโs disgusting.โ
Another student, 15-year-old Sofia Miller, who was in the class at the time, told the Washington Post she was shocked at the question, which immediately called to mind the time her grandmother had police pull a gun on her while she was driving.
She confronted the chemistry teacher about the question. At first, he responded by saying he used the Floyd reference because it was something everyone could understand. But Sofia pushed back, and the teacher agreed to change the wording of the question.
โAthletes protesting for Black Lives Matter & Racial Justice put a ____ the ground at the beginning of a game,โ a later version of the question read, according to the Post.
A majority of the students (just under 58 percent) at H-B Woodlawn are white, according to data kept by Arlington Public Schools. Meanwhile, only 4.4 percent are Black, well below the 11 percent average across all APS schools, ARLnow.com notes.
Students who spoke to the Post said that thereโs been a backlash to the teacherโs suspension from some of their white classmates, who argue that the pun wasnโt offensive and have started campaigning to save the teacherโs job.
These efforts elide the deeply personal pain students like Sofia experienced when they saw a Black manโone who died a violent death at the hands of the stateโreduced to a topical reference on a chemistry assignment.
โIt hurt that I was there to learn, and I had to see that, and I had to call out a grown man who thought that would be okay,โ Sofia told the Post. โI just wanted to learn about chemistry. Iโm there to learn, Iโm there to feel safe, and I just didnโt.โ
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