By Alexander Wilson-
The viral video of a teacher who wrote All Lives Matters on a blackboard has sparked debate, after she was confronted by angry students, but stood her grounds on her very controversial actions.
The teacher, who was a teacher assistant at a school whose identity has been withheld due to the sensitivity of the story, wrote the message on the whiteboard, after seeing that the routine teacher of that class had put up a Black Lives Matter sign in the room.
The teacher who put up the Black Lives Matters sign has faced criticism for turning the classroom into a political scene, without necessary cause.
But it was the other teacher who took offence with the anti-racism sign and replaced it with ‘All Lives Matter,’ that sparked both uproar and debate substitute teacher was confronted by a number of students in the class, who began questioning why she’d used the slogan . The saying All lives matters is often quoted by those who feel black lives matters followers are excluding the white race and every other race from their call to value black lives.
One member of the school told The Eye Of Media.Com: ”it was immature of the teacher who put the Black Lives Matter Sign up in the classroom.
Racism is not tolerated in this school or I should imagine any other school, but talking to children about the equal treatment for all and training them to respect all races is always going to be more effective than putting up a slogan that is controversial in the classroom.
Speaking about the teacher who put the All Lives Matters sign, he said: ”That wasn’t appropriate either because it sets off a hostile environment straight away. She should just have reported the teacher to the authorities and left it at that”.
Advocates of the BLM movement say those who counter the BLM name with All Lives Matter, fail to appreciate the intended message behind the name.
But some critics disagree and say then name is problematic.
Life coach and writer Sheila Mckenzie, said: ”The message of the Black Lives Matter Movement is clearly to fight racism and eliminate injustices for people from minority groups. But the name doesn’t make this clear. It is perceived to be excluding other races from the value attached to life in its slogan.
People really ought to understand that the group’s message is to fight racism, but it has become a symbol of division because of some of the violence that has accompanied its many protests, and other known facts that have accompanied its name. A better name would have been Black Lives Matters Too- that would have been clearer and eliminated the need for people to defeat the purpose All Lives Matters”, she said.
Others have pointed to an alleged hypocrisy in the name because of the historical record of black on black killings both in the U.K and the U.S.
Researcher Sharon Bolton said: ”I ofcourse appreciate that the Black Lives Matters was formed to address and defeat racism, but its name is at odds with what you see going on in the black community. You have black teenagers killing one another in many numbers, and this has been going on for years. The stab each other, they shoot each other, are very divided, and then cry Black Lives Matters. Its hypocritical”.
Institutional Racism
The Black Lives Matters Movement was set up to combat institutional racism in the U.S police force, due to years of brutality against Afro Americans
The movement has since lost focus on its original purpose, with its call for the defunding of the police seen as one of its discrediting aspects given the well established need for more police in every country to effectively combat crime.
Racism by the American police force has long been a disease the force has struggled to defeat.
As the video showed, though it’s since been removed from the original post, in response to the students’ criticisms the teacher became increasingly irate, and attempted to excuse the role of white people in slavery, saying, ‘Who sold who into slavery, did you know African Americans sold African Americans into slavery?’
Image:Reddit
After a back and forth in which one student left the classroom, towards the end of the lesson another student got up to the whiteboard to erase the ‘All Lives Matter’ message, which angered the teacher even further.
After being shared on Reddit, the video of the ‘Karen’ teacher sparked outrage as people called for her to face repercussions.
‘Did she get fired? I need to know that she got fired!’ one person commented, while another wrote ‘I feel bad for kids growing up and in HS right with such heated political topics and such complete a**holes feeling emboldened to proudly display their hate towards others.’
‘Who wants to bet white Karen white Substitute has a Trump/MAGA bumper sticker on her car out in the parking lot,’ someone else posted.
While the teacher in question hasn’t been identified, the original poster claims she was removed from the class shortly after the incident.