An African-American high school student claims he was told to read a classic Langston Hughes poem “blacker” by his English teacher. Apparently, when 9th grader Jordan Schumate failed to do so, the teacher demonstrated how. The Huffington Post reports:
A Virginia high school English teacher is under investigation for allegedly asking the only black student in the class to read a poem in a “blacker” manner.
Jordan Shumate, a ninth-grader at George C. Marshall High School in Falls Church, Va. says he was reading aloud Langston Hughes’ “Ballad of the Landlord” when teacher Marilyn Bart interrupted him.
“She told me, ‘Blacker, Jordan — c’mon, blacker. I thought you were black,’” Shumate told The Washington Post.
When the 14-year-old student declined to continue reading the poem, Bart read it herself to demonstrate what she meant.
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