Parents: White Teacher Should Not Teach Black History

http://www.newsnet5.com/news/2360897/detail.html#

Using a white teacher at Oberlin High School would send the wrong message to black students, said A.G. Miller, an associate professor of American and African religious history at Oberlin College.

"The message is that we are not concerned about the importance of your historical background ... that that is less important than a schedule conflict," said Miller, whose three children graduated from Oberlin High School.
Ahh! Excuse me but isn’t that the ideal that America is supposed to be striving for. That is, it DOESN'T matter what your historical background is, your country of origin or your ethnicity.

Jaqui Willis, a black Oberlin parent, said the teacher is a role model and that removing him from the class would be detrimental to students.
He's not being removed from the school!!!

Maybe children without the benifit of having American slaves in the family tree could also benifit from exposoure to what is apparantly an extraodinary teacher and human being.

Phyllis Yarber Hogan, a member of the Oberlin Black Alliance for Progress, said a white teacher wouldn't be well-suited to teaching students about subjects like slavery.

"When you talk about slavery, students need to understand it is not our fault," she said. "Our ancestors did nothing wrong to be enslaved.

"How do you work through that when the person teaching it is the same type of person who did the enslaving?"
I guess using Hogan's guidelines teachers of early American history would have to prove their membership in the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution before they could teach the subject for only they could understand the operession the colonists experianced. When the building of the Trans-continental railroad is taught a person of Chinese extraction would have to be brought in Etc., Etc.

Now there is valid reason for keeping this teacher in place. Seven years experience in teaching the subject. That would make him a very valuable asset in that classroom but the above statements quoted are as stupid as any I’ve ever heard and maybe, just maybe, this teacher would like to broaden his teaching experience by moving on to something else.