Ms. Ariemma's class.

Hold up folks, I just put on my Air Rs (those are my racism track shoes) and I am running something down real quick. Let me check out this story:

"When Georgia high school Advanced History teacher Catherine Ariemma asked her students to dress up in costumes for a project re-enacting different historical periods, four of her pupils dressed up like the Ku Klux Klan.African-American students at Lumpkin County High School became upset and angry, especially after some of the teens dressed in KKK robes asked one Black student if he would help them re-enact a lynching for their project. Ariemma has been suspended with pay and could possibly be fired. She defended her decision to hold the re-enactment. "We have to discuss racism in our society because if we don't, we are condoning it and I don't cover it up and you can't discuss racism and not include the Klan," she told CNN.

[Check out the CNN story]

Hmmm, I have to be careful with this one. The thing about my man racism is that sometimes he can send decoys for your ass. I mean sometimes you know it's racism, like the latest crap in Jena, or this kind of ignorance. But sometimes.......I don't know.

See folks, it's like this: I have no problem with Ms. Ariemma using visual aids to teach history. The klan is a part of our history and we can't just close our eyes and pretend that they didn't exist. They did and they still do. So I am not mad at Ms. Ariemma for trying to teach her children about the klan.

Still, when I heard that there were no African Americans in her class, and that she just let the kids go out into the school population with their robes on, I have to admit that I started to have second thoughts about Ms. Ariemma. (And, as if to make matters worse, she lives in Georgia.)

So I don't know.....OK, I thought about it: I don't think Ms. Ariemma should be terminated, and I don't think that she is a racist. I think that she is a clueless Southern women from the majority population who was trying to do the right thing. I think that the powers that be should get with Ms. Ariemma and let her know in no uncertain terms that she handled this in the wrong way, and because of her carelessness something really ugly could have happened. (Yeah, I am sitting in the cafeteria and some kid comes in with a klan outfit; please believe that we are going to get all Marvin Gaye with each other.)

So no harm here, we are moving right along. I guess I can take off my Air Rs now.

Ms. Ariemma was a decoy.

*Pic lifted from Essence.com