MASON, Mich. (WLNS) — Back in September, students were given questionable reading materials to study for a class about the Holocaust at Mason High School.
Rather than teaching students about Nazis and World War II, the sheets had songs, riddles, and terminology used to intimidate Black people for many years.
One student from that class told 6 News that she feels the Mason school district is not doing enough to protect those of color.
“You can’t tell me how you think this is wrong because you’re not Black, you’re literally white,” said the high schooler. “Like you can’t tell me how I feel.”
The student asked to remain anonymous while sharing her experiences.
Within the first week of school starting, the class, titled ‘The Holocaust and Other Modern Acts of Genocide,’ was not focused on World War II.
The student was given articles with the “N” word featured more than 50 times on just two pages.
According to the student, the teacher is one of the school’s diversity advocates.
The student says she was kicked out of the course after a debate in front of the whole class with the teacher about the racist reading materials.
“The article is about all the words that these white people came up with to call us and drag us down with,” continued the student. “She thinks that just giving this to a whole bunch of white kids, who literally have no sense of diversity like they don’t know anything about anything. And they’re literally just reading all of this. Like that’s wrong.”
The worksheets were found on a website belonging to The African American Registry. The site sells courses to school districts to help students learn about diversity.
But the non-profit’s CEO said this article was not part of the teacher’s forum.
“You could pick areas of our history that have to do with the Middle Passage instead of that word,” said CEO Benjamin McHie. “If you are going to do a compare and contrast. And I don’t see that being done if that’s the only thing from our website that he or she used.”
“It just doesn’t seem like it’s something that should be allowed,” the student’s father said. “Somebody had to approve it or know.”
The Mason school district sent 6 News a statement, that reads:
“The article was intended to illustrate the impact of harmful language on marginalized populations and how the use of this language can lead to prejudice and persecution.“
The district confirmed that it won’t use the worksheets anymore, but the student said that mistakes like this should not be happening in the first place.
“I don’t wanna make people think that it’s okay cause at some point like they’re just gonna keep doing it and nothing is gonna happen,” said the student.
The entire article that was handed down to students can be found here.
