Maryland student’s essay about exterminating Black people has parents outraged
Parents and students who attend North County High School are upset at a satirical essay that calls for the extermination of Black people.
Many parents and students at a Maryland school are speaking out after a student wrote an essay that many are calling racist.
Parents and students who attend North County High School are upset at a satirical essay that calls for the extermination of Black people. The student was writing as part of an assignment to mimic Jonathan Swift’s satirical A Modest Proposal, according to reports.
“A young healthy child well nursed,” Swift wrote, “is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.”
The student’s essay said a response to racism in America is to send African Americans to the Sahara desert to be killed. That essay was followed up by a racially offensive term about African-Americans written in the school’s bathroom.
“It was very wrong. It was inappropriate and it was offensive,” said one student, according to CBS Baltimore.
One Black parent took the side of the student who’d written the essay, however.
“I don’t fault this young man, he met the rubric of the assignment,” a man at the meeting told the attendees.
“You are not in the school, you don’t know what we go through,” another student yelled.
Julie Cares, principal of North County, responded to the concerns of parents in a statement.
“Just as one could argue that the content of Swift’s piece was ill-advised and insensitive, such is the case with the content of the student’s piece here,” Cares wrote. “I want you to know emphatically that North County High School embraces and supports all students, with no exceptions. Conversations around sensitive topics such as this, however, are critical to our growth as a school and, ultimately, as a society.”
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