37
"Just last week, my daughter-who is 8 and happens to be the only brown person in her Accelerated Progress Program class at Thurgood Marshall Elementary-was ordered out of the classroom because her teacher did not like the smell of her hair."
-Oh Lord. A little Organic Root Stimulator's Olive Oil Moisturizing Hair Lotion has become a really huge mess.
This would never happen at Clarence Thomas Elementary.
I see the "THE BROWNS" have been left out of the tags. Typical.
But did she like the content of her character?
Part of me wants to believe that this teacher is both genuinely allergic and also so fucking stupid that she didn't realize kicking the lone black child out of class over her hair products was racist. I really don't want to accept that people evil enough to enact their racism on eight-year-olds can continue to function in our society.
Also, please forgive me for "enact their racism." I was writing under the influence of rage.
I expect the teacher was claiming the imaginary chemical sensitivity ailment as her health issue, stating that something in the hair care product made her ill. These are very touchy for employers and unions to deal with, because the alleged sufferer can bring in all kinds of quacks to insist that the problem is real (trouble is, when exposed to the sickening substance without their knowledge, these folks invariably fail to react to it).
So now you have a child and her parents who justifiably feel terribly singled out, probably because of a neurosis masquerading as a medical condition, and the district is caught between conflicting accusations. They have to try to accommodate the teacher's "health condition" while respecting the rights of the child. However they try to sort this out, it is going to be a long and angry process.
(I care about this issue because I had a coworker once try to pull this power play on the entire department. Management knuckled under and gave us all a list of products we were forbidden to use AT HOME because the allegedly chemically sensitive employee claimed she reacted to traces of them when we came to work. We worked out a better solution, which involved isolating the employee from everyone else, until she decided she didn't have chemical sensitivity syndrome anymore.)
My mother used to pull this shit. Somehow, when she decided she didn't need everyone's full-time attention any longer, the chemical sensitivity just magically disappeared.
But also can I say… girl, just PUT SOME OLIVE OIL in your hair. There's not much in here, besides the coconut and the peanut oils, that you really want in your hair.
She is EIGHT. She doesn't know science yet!
In no-one's defense that shampoo ingredient list made me a bit ill.
Seemed like quite a brew of heavy oils, glycol and perfume.
I was reading the story and thought, oooh, she needs Carole's Daughters. Unsurprisingly, a commenter at the linked post brings it up.
The same can be said about most every other shampoo on the market
Olive oil is good for your hair but you will end up smelling like salad for a week, and that's the last thing this kid needs.
Worked with a girl once who told me white people smell funny when they get wet. Like dogs or something.
many years ago i used two organic root stimulators at the same time. they were vietnamese prostitutes and it was a lovely weekend.
There is a guy in my office who is a serious cologne abuser. You can smell him miles away. I would love to assign him a cubicle with all the messengers who somehow share is passion for fragrance abuse, all of whom make me gag and all of whom are white.
He's already been made aware of this issue and persists his daily stink fest. If anyone has some helpful hints to get him to stop let me know.
Vomit on him.
60 percent of the time, it works every time.
I once had a crazy hippie math teacher who smelled like organic mothballs.
I tried to get her fired, not because she smelled but because she was batshit crazy and regularly insulted her students.
She used to do tai chi on the soccer field, and wore masks in class and would take about eating her placenta.
She was one of those people who couldn't look you in the eye because they had 'The Stare' – one you typically see in war veterans and/or Tom Cruise.
"And the square root of 796596759764674 is MY PLACENTA."
Those were some fucked up word problems.
If I started with four wombs, and the patriarchy took away one womb every two months, but the moon regenerates them daily at a percentage proportional to the moonphase, then how long before AAAASOLIUGHSDFLJKSDKF.
There were dances.
As in 'The Dance of Pythagoras.'
This woman had the Golden Ratio of insanity.
sounds like it would've made an amazing math show actually. wow!
@HiredG: You say she wore a mask in class? What root stimulant were you using then?
I didn't start using stimulants until college.
As someone wildly sensitive to smells — my brothers used to chase me around the house with hard boiled eggs — I wonder what I would have done in the teacher's place. My conclusion? Not This.
Just thinking about that made me gag. (As can middle school memories of egg salad trapped in people's braces. MY GOD.)
Some mean mom tried to make me eat egg salad at a party when I was six, and I threw up IN THE PINATA. (It was behind a bush awaiting filling, and I complied.)
I saw a guy wearing a shirt with a picture of a pinata on it and the statement "I'd hit that"
Racism against Charles Mudede's daughter?
He's gonna tear them a new one, with words.
Yeah, in some ways, he's been training for this his entire career.
So we all agree that every adult in this story is dumb, yes? Poor kid.
Can I get a "Fuck you, Seattle!"?
fuck you, seattle!
Seattle's public school district is awful in so many ways. I've seen too many kids lose their minds and all hope getting churned through that thing. 30% of kids in Seattle attend private school (I think it's 10% in NYC), but not because their parents are hung up on sending their kids to Catholic school or are Bill Gateses who think it's a status thing. It's just that Seattle's public school district is in such bad shape that lower to mid income parents take on extra jobs and eat ramen to send their kids anywhere but.