According to the online reporting a White male school teacher in Texas was fired after telling his mixed-race middle school class that his (white) race was “superior.” Here is the heart of his statement as “captured on video.”
“Deep down in my heart, I’m ethnocentric, which means I think my race is the superior one. I think everybody thinks that. They’re just not honest about it. I think everybody is a racist at that level.”
Perhaps “superior” was not the best term for expressing the teacher’s point that most of us are happy with the race assigned to us at conception. “Black pride” is encouraged and lauded while “White pride” is condemned. To prefer one’s own race is like rooting for the home team. Your blogger’s intuition is that the teacher meant that his (white) race was “better for him” but not necessarily “superior” to other races. One thing clear to me is that there are racial differences. Whether such differences amount to superiority or inferiority is beyond the scope of this article.
I find myself at odds with the teacher’s usage of the term “racist.” “At that level” (deep down in one’s heart) there is that ethnocentricity or satisfaction (at least) with one’s assigned race. The teacher seems to have regarded that as a bit of racism. I disagree. The term “racism” should not be so broadly construed as to include the proud acceptance of one’s own racial identity.
The best case for firing the teacher is that he should have known better. To so honestly address a taboo subject reveals a serious deficit in the common sense that a school teacher should have. If the teacher had been a Black man touting his perception of Black racial superiority, we would see the ACLU stepping in to defend him. That will not happen in this case of the fired White teacher who was too honest for school.
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