Teacher mocks Native American culture in attempt to teach math lesson

[Dacia Ultan]

This is just aggressively, deeply incorrect.

What's being mocked here isn't ancient traditions, it's current cultural practices.

The Viking era ended nearly 1000 years ago.

Kudos on demonstrating you have no understanding of what you're making fun of.

And just to ice the cake? Vikings didn't even wear horned helmets. Wagner's costume designer pulled the idea out of his ass.

[Elegiac]

So..this is racism as well?

Does it come with a side of systemic oppression and erasure? No?

Then stop trying to be a victim. I as a Greek have more right to bitch about cultural appropriation, and you don't see me complaining that you use our script for math.

[Endus]

And just to ice the cake? Vikings didn't even wear horned helmets. Wagner's costume designer pulled the idea out of his ass.

That was what my earlier crack about them cosplaying as 19th Century German opera actors rather than 10th Century Norse warriors was about.

[Dacia Ultan]

That was what my earlier crack about them cosplaying as 19th Century German opera actors rather than 10th Century Norse warriors was about.

That's what I get for clicking on "jump to latest post," I suppose.

[Iliena]

IMO from watching the vid I don't think she is racist, she look's hyper and things need calming down with medication,

I had a teacher one year who seemed to think giving 250% while teaching history was a good method! It looked like the vid, standing on desk's using the metal pole thing used to open the higher windows as a sword while acting out events. To the point other teachers in classrooms nearby would come by to check up on him when thing's started to get loud ...looking back he was quite clearly ill and he didn't return to work the following year, which was a shame because he was at calmer points one of the better teachers that year.

[Aurgjelme]

Does it come with a side of systemic oppression and erasure? No?

Then stop trying to be a victim. I as a Greek have more right to bitch about cultural appropriation, and you don't see me complaining that you use our script for math.

Seeing as English is a form of Scandinavian and Germanic, who is appropriating who right now?
Not to mention you use our gods names to name the days of the week :P

[Endus]

Seeing as English is a form of Scandinavian and Germanic, who is appropriating who right now?
Not to mention you use our gods names to name the days of the week :P

You continue to demonstrate what is either a zealous amount of willful ignorance, or intentional malice levied against anti-racist efforts. Since there's no way what you said there is a reasonable response.

[Aurgjelme]

And just to ice the cake? Vikings didn't even wear horned helmets. Wagner's costume designer pulled the idea out of his ass.

Not quite out of his ass. A lot of "barbarian" tribes used horned helmets. But that was in older times than the viking era. And not only
northern ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veks%C3%B8_Helmets

It's a nice way to signal that someone is a barbarian, or uncivilized.

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You continue to demonstrate what is either a zealous amount of willful ignorance, or intentional malice levied against anti-racist efforts. Since there's no way what you said there is a reasonable response.

In what way? I replied kindly to someone else about "abusing" language. Which I took as a joke to be honest :P
And wtf does that sentence have to do against anti racism?

[Endus]

In what way?

Willful failure to understand what "cultural appropriation" means.

You're either grossly ignorant and pushing someone else's disinfo about it because you've never bothered to question anything your leaders tell you, or you're lying about it on purpose to push disinfo yourself.

Edit: Specifically, a failure to grasp the difference between cultural appropriation, acculturation, assimilation, and so forth.

[Dacia Ultan]

IMO from watching the vid I don't think she is racist, she look's hyper and things need calming down with medication,

I don't know. Dressing up like an ethnic caricature is rarely either attributable to an excess of energy, nor remedied via medication.

[Nihilist74]

I don't know if she is racist or not but I think she is pretty stupid to think this was a good idea.

[Aurgjelme]

Willful failure to understand what "cultural appropriation" means.

You're either grossly ignorant and pushing someone else's disinfo about it because you've never bothered to question anything your leaders tell you, or you're lying about it on purpose to push disinfo yourself.

Edit: Specifically, a failure to grasp the difference between cultural appropriation, acculturation, assimilation, and so forth.

Ok so....

Both native Americans and The Norse people where victims of the colonial powers of their time.
While the Native Americans had to deal with the Christian Europeans, so did the Norse.
Both cultures where stripped of their creed and beliefs, through violence and force.

Both had a rich history with many customs, where much has been lost, some of it has been kept, and the descendants of
both cultures are still practicing many of the customs.
Heck, even you Endus, are probably practicing some Nordic custom that are millennia old.
Even talking the Germanic tongue that the English adopted.

But here in Scandinavia, the grave mounds are still tall. The customs that have been done for thousands of
years, surviving inquisition and Christian threats, are still being practiced.
We still have our religion.

If the history channel makes a whole show with hipster looking vikings, falsifying the history and customs,
playing on the stereotypes of vikings and Norse people, is that worse than a kid dressing up as a native American and doing a rain dance across the floor?

[Zython]

It's amazing that a math teacher can, at no impetus and for no reason whatsoever, just engage in a racist caricature of Native Americans, and people will actively defend it. Just...amazing.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

In America everything is racist, sexist, and probably both. For sure if it can go viral while pointing it out. Because these things are bad but bagging up the acts and spreading them across the world for money is dope af am I right? Not only now do Native Americans that might have been in proximity get offend but we can get them ALL offended now. Why deal with ten unhappy people when you can make it three million and get dollars. At best this is a REALLY cringe act that probably needs to stop not only for being pretty insensitive but also because it's just not very good at getting the point across in the math lesson. So a net loss in either direction. Sure, the teacher probably needs to hear this from her boss. Now that it's all over social media she probably is going to need to take a little time off for optics. But in the end unless she turns her nose up and does it again I would consider it a lesson learned, give an apology, and don't do it again moment.

At the same time it's also a little cringe to rope it into mental health and drug abuse if you want to be all super sensitive andy's about it too. Are all mentally ill people racist or something? Do all people that do drugs do insensitive things about Native Americans? See how far this rabbit hole can get when anything can be a agenda.

[NED funded]

Apparently she's been doing this since at least 2012, there's a picture of her in the school's 2012 yearbook wearing the feathers along with a comment about her little skit. So administrators were likely aware of it and didn't care at all about it until it made the news.

She has been doing it since 2012 and literally none minded until some people with an inflated sense of moral superiority salivated at the opportunity of destroying someone's life

I hate cancel culture

[Biglog]

It was incredibly racist to perform that, in a MATH class, to NATIVE AMERICAN students. Our Western Christian culture tends to be overly forgiving sometimes, and the apologists for her behavior are seriously grasping at straws.

There is a small chance she's got mental issues or is possibly somewhat autistic and this lead to her poor decision making on this, but that's not really a defense. She's still responsible for her behavior though regardless, particularly as a teacher. This also I don't think is an isolated incident. I've heard quite a few stories of teachers lately letting their racism and/or political views come into their teaching of young students in different ways, which is kind of terrifying. There has always been a little bit of that. You always could tell if a teacher had a strong leaning view on things. But we're seeing behavior like this where it goes way over the line a lot more often recently.

Also, as is often the case, cancel culture is not what caused her to do that, it's the repercussions from doing something wrong. It's easy for someone not targeted by racism to downplay it. Get called out for something racist, don't take responsibility, and instead blame cancel culture. Her doing racist behavior for 9 years doesn't make it any better, it makes it worse.

[Ursus]

At the same time it's also a little cringe to rope it into mental health and drug abuse if you want to be all super sensitive andy's about it too. Are all mentally ill people racist or something? Do all people that do drugs do insensitive things about Native Americans? See how far this rabbit hole can get when anything can be a agenda.

I didn't say or even imply that mentally ill people or people that do drugs are racist or insensitive, so I'm not sure what you're on about.

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She has been doing it since 2012 and literally none minded until some people with an inflated sense of moral superiority salivated at the opportunity of destroying someone's life

I hate cancel culture

You have absolutely no idea how many of her students minded it. This is just the first time one of them thought to record it on video and share it with the public.

Also, even if you don't think it was racist or insensitive, this little performance piece of hers is not appropriate for a school environment at all. If I was a parent of one of those students, I wouldn't want my kid around her at all. Nobody has called for her life to be destroyed, but good to know that you don't think anyone should have to deal with consequences for their actions.

[NED funded]

I didn't say or even imply that mentally ill people or people that do drugs are racist or insensitive, so I'm not sure what you're on about.

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You have absolutely no idea how many of her students minded it. This is just the first time one of them thought to record it on video and share it with the public.

Also, even if you don't think it was racist or insensitive, this little performance piece of hers is not appropriate for a school environment at all. If I was a parent of one of those students, I wouldn't want my kid around her at all. Nobody has called for her life to be destroyed, but good to know that you don't think anyone should have to deal with consequences for their actions.

There are differences between consequences to your actions and starting a hate campaign online to harass one person

Sorry I dont feel the need to ruin someone's life over something that at worst comes off as racially insensitive

[Dacia Ultan]

There are differences between consequences to your actions and starting a hate campaign online to harass one person

Sorry I dont feel the need to ruin someone's life over something that at worst comes off as racially insensitive

Okay, but all of that is far less likely to happen to a racist than to happen because of racists. Going by the pattern: she's likely to get a minor ration of guff (mostly in the form of people calling bullshit on her), go crying to some outrage factory for pity, and become some kind of pseudo-martyr to their apologists after they blow it out of proportion for her—not have "her life ruined."

[Ursus]

There are differences between consequences to your actions and starting a hate campaign online to harass one person

Sorry I dont feel the need to ruin someone's life over something that at worst comes off as racially insensitive

People wanting her to be held accountable != a hate campaign to harass her

Maybe if she had joined the 21st century and realized this was not ok to do, or if the administrators who almost certainly knew about this for years now had told her to stop it, it wouldn't have had to be exposed to the general public. At least now it will hopefully make for a teachable moment for others who do similar shit.