A junior-high school Spanish teacher was reportedly fired last year for using the word “negro” during class.
The teacher, 65-year-old Petrona Smith, has filed a lawsuit against the school saying that she didn’t use the word “negro” in a racial context and that the entire incident was purely a misunderstanding.
The NY Post reports that Smith said that she used the word “negro” while teaching a Spanish lesson about colors. Negro, of course, is the Spanish word for black.
But one of her students was so shocked by the word that they reported the teacher for using a racial slur.
Yes, a Spanish teacher was fired for teaching her students about colors. But wait, there’s more. Yahoo News reports that Smith is black and the high school is bilingual.
Smith’s attorney Shaun Reid said: “They haven’t even accounted for how absurd it is for someone who’s black to be using a racial slur to a student.”
The school hasn’t responded to the lawsuit yet so we really only have one side of the story at the moment. Maybe Smith was fired after using the word “negro” to describe a black student. Maybe she was overheard making a racist comment and tried to cover it up by saying “no no no, the Spanish negro.”
But as it stands at the moment, it looks like Smith has been the victim of the most politically correct accident of 2012.