Long story short: students go to a weekend education getaway to learn about outdoor ecology, and are instead given a surprise simulation lesson about the Underground Railroad that’s a little too real, complete with white people dressed up as stereotypical redneck slave owners, complete with overalls and whips.
Seriously, I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried. This story is absolutely wrong in just about every conceivable way, but damn I’m an evil, evil person that thinks it’s hilarious. Come on now, a white guy in nothing but overalls carrying a whip? Did he have tobacco juice running down his lips into his spittoon as well?
But really, this is all so wrong on so many levels. Like how dishonest did the educators have to be to claim they were going to teach about organisms and scientific stuff, only for them to flip it around and scare the living shit out of a bunch of teenagers, by making them act like slaves?
The ironic thing about this story is that this has been apparently been going on for a while now, based on how the educators keep claiming that “it’s popular” with all students, regardless of demographic. But it isn’t until a class that’s almost exclusively black females, that this actually becomes newsworthy.
Ultimately, the student that acknowledges that it’s history, but it doesn’t mean people need to experience is dead on with her statement, but I do find it puzzling that this is just now becoming a problem when it just so happens to overlap with an exclusively black class, when it’s supposedly been going on for a while now.
Either way, this program should probably be eliminated, or at the very least, be disclosed and understood before sending students off to unwillingly take play in a slavery LARP.
