An Arkansas elementary school teacher has been suspended on full pay over a social media post describing her pupils as “monkeys” at the zoo.
With the school having a majority of black students, the post stirred allegations of racism.
The 4th grade teacher has since deleted her Facebook account, but not before screenshots were shared with the school district in Little Rock, which promptly suspended her, pending investigation.
“The monkeys to my zoo came back today,” the teacher from the Watson Elementary School allegedly wrote on Jan. 1, the day that pupils returned from the break.
“I’m tired! It’s difficult to train monkeys again,” she added.
The Little Rock School District said in a statement on Jan. 4, “The Little Rock School District takes these matters very seriously and as soon as we were made aware of the incident last night, the District immediately began taking appropriate action, per LRSD protocol.”
Although used by many parents and adults as a playful reference to children, the word “monkeys” was used in the past as a term pejorative term for African Americans.
‘That’s What Monkeys Do’
“Kids are kids. They’re not animals. Monkeys? My god, that’s ridiculous,” Southwest Little Rock resident Christopher Easley told KATV, adding, “I didn’t think that type of thing still went on today.”“This is 2019. That kind of stuff I heard back in the 60s and 50s.”
One local woman, who does not does not have children of her own at the school, started a four-day protest outside the school, demanding that the teacher lose her job.
But like many social media commentators, Chanquella Brown, a parent at Watson Elementary doesn’t think the teacher was being racist.
Brown told the KATV that it’s common for her to call her own children monkeys: “Look at my little monkeys over there on the playground. They’re climbing. That’s what monkeys do, they climb. They fool around, they laugh.”
“You never know. If you weren’t there to see what was going on in the classroom ... you can’t judge a book by its cover,” said Brown.
As long as her children are are physically safe, Brown said it doesn’t matter what names they are called.