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Student: Conn. Class Forced to Re-Enact Slavery
http://abcnews.go.com ^ | September 20, 2013 | PAT EATON-ROBB

Posted on 09/20/2013 2:43:29 PM PDT by lowbridge

Middle school-aged students from Connecticut on a field trip last year were forced to re-enact slavery by pretending to be sold at auction and in fields picking cotton, according to a student's complaint. They were told they would be whipped or worse if they ran, and some were asked to dance for their masters.

"I had to hold my head down and could not make contact with the white masters," the 12-year-old student, who is black, said in a statement read to the Hartford school board this week by her father, James Baker of suburban Farmington. "I heard the instructor ask kids behind me to open their mouths so their teeth could be checked. Some were asked to jump up and down."

The girl, who was a seventh-grader at the Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy, asserts that she and her classmates were traumatized and subjected to racial epithets during the November field trip to the Nature's Classroom, an environmental-based outdoor education program in Charlton, Mass., about 45 miles from Hartford. The family has filed a complaint against the school district.

In addition to pretending to be sold at auction and picking cotton, the students participated as slaves in a re-enactment of the Underground Railroad and simulated being on slave ships.

Instructors, acting as the oppressors, told them that while on the ship they would be forced to go to the bathroom on each other and would be thrown overboard if they got sick, the girl said.

"I went into a dark room where I had to sit on my bottom with my knees together," she said in the statement. "My legs fell asleep and were hurting."

(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; US: Connecticut; US: Massachusetts
KEYWORDS: connecticut; liberalism; slavery
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1 posted on 09/20/2013 2:43:29 PM PDT by lowbridge
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To: lowbridge

I guess they felt the need to keep the hate going. No healing allowed.


2 posted on 09/20/2013 2:46:19 PM PDT by Dalberg-Acton
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To: lowbridge
"This is a re-enactment of a historical event that has relevance to their day-to-day interaction with their peers and classroom teacher," he said. "How do you feel when this is put upon you? How do you think you should feel when it is put upon someone else?"

How would you like to re-enact the crucifixion? See how that feels.

3 posted on 09/20/2013 2:47:08 PM PDT by lowbridge
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To: lowbridge

They might as well go all the way and demonstrate rape and beatings. It is essential to providing understanding.


4 posted on 09/20/2013 2:47:36 PM PDT by jimfree (In November 2016 my 13 y/o granddaughter will have more quality exec experience than Barack Obama)
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To: lowbridge

Just when I think the educrats can’t be any dumber . . .


5 posted on 09/20/2013 2:47:43 PM PDT by colorado tanker
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To: lowbridge

Why not practice to accept Islam?


6 posted on 09/20/2013 2:47:55 PM PDT by Paladin2 (h)
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To: lowbridge

I believe that teacher ought to feel what it’s like to have my mark branded into her skin.


7 posted on 09/20/2013 2:48:33 PM PDT by jimfree (In November 2016 my 13 y/o granddaughter will have more quality exec experience than Barack Obama)
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To: Dalberg-Acton

Need to re-enact slavery? Then live normally like an American voter under the obama govt.


8 posted on 09/20/2013 2:49:46 PM PDT by max americana (fired liberals in our company after the election, & laughed while they cried (true story))
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To: lowbridge

Bet they didn’t reenact the slavery of Billy Lee under George Washington. He lived better than most white farmers of his day.


9 posted on 09/20/2013 2:50:11 PM PDT by cripplecreek (REMEMBER THE RIVER RAISIN!)
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To: lowbridge

Sick.

What next, a reenactment of Auschwitz or Buchenwald?


10 posted on 09/20/2013 2:50:14 PM PDT by LucyT
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To: lowbridge

Just keep stirring the hatred and scratch open the wounds.


11 posted on 09/20/2013 2:50:25 PM PDT by muir_redwoods (Don't fire until you see the blue of their helmets)
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To: lowbridge
Real slavery going on in Africa and the Middle East and these clowns talk about two hundred years ago.

Why not something more current to portray race relations here in America. Oh I don't know.. maybe force the white kids to stand around and be targets for the popular Knockout game.

12 posted on 09/20/2013 2:50:49 PM PDT by WilliamofCarmichael (If modern America's Man on Horseback is out there, Get on the damn horse already!)
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To: lowbridge

The school administrators will use every chance they have to distort our history.


13 posted on 09/20/2013 2:51:14 PM PDT by Oliviaforever
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To: lowbridge

Stupid thing to do, but not racial unless black kids were singled out, which it doesn’t sound like they were.

This is, BTW, historically how all slaves have always been treated. Black slaves shipped across the Atlantic is only one chapter in a very long sad story.


14 posted on 09/20/2013 2:51:52 PM PDT by Sherman Logan (Mark Steyn: "In the Middle East, the enemy of our enemy is also our enemy.")
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To: lowbridge

I think this is a fine idea. As long as the kids understand that the slave-owner is a Democrat.


15 posted on 09/20/2013 2:52:17 PM PDT by marron
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To: lowbridge
"This is a re-enactment of a historical event that has relevance to their day-to-day interaction with their peers and classroom teacher,"

Exactly how is this relevant to their day-to-day interactions in 2013?

16 posted on 09/20/2013 2:53:34 PM PDT by Maceman (Just say "NO" to tyranny.)
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To: lowbridge

How about at least doing a few other things like:
Being a persecuted Christian in the middle east (or in today’s armed forces) and, of course, being tortured and killed (or just told to shut up in the case of the military).
Being a Jew forced into a gas chamber
Being a fetus that gets cut in two with scissors.
The possibilities are endless.


17 posted on 09/20/2013 2:54:00 PM PDT by NewHampshireDuo
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To: lowbridge

How about we put the instructor in a small plastic bag, then beat him with shovels...to simulate abortion.


18 posted on 09/20/2013 2:55:15 PM PDT by Huskrrrr
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To: jimfree

Sooner or later they probably would


19 posted on 09/20/2013 2:55:24 PM PDT by GeronL
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To: lowbridge
Re-enactments could be okay if it weren't just one topic like this, endowing a fake specialness on people because their ancestors were slaves.

Some of my Russian ancestors were serfs. The Irish ones nearly starved in the potato famine, and lived horrible lives as indentured servants when they got here. One of those darn Germans was terrified that he was going to be hung as a horse thief before he escaped and came to the US. Come to think of it, maybe a better workshop would be "Everybody's got issues. Get over it"

20 posted on 09/20/2013 2:56:04 PM PDT by grania
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