racism discussion in history class.

In my history class we generally get off topic and have a discussion about random things and facts. We even have this thing we call "Weird News" Wednesday where a student in our class gives us the dl on some weird stuff that has happened recently. I think I should also mention that my history class also has a student teacher from Montevallo University who for safe precautions we are going to call Debbie. My class takes great joy in making fun of, harassing, and generally lowering the self esteem of Debbie.

I tell you all this so that you can get a better idea of why my class got on the topic of racism. I think the only way to tell this tale is from the very beginning of the period that day.

It is an ordinary day and I walk in the door of my history class and take a seat and watch the rest of my classmates pile in one at a time into the classroom. After the bell rings and everyone is seated we have a short discussion about something not important and to be honest I do not even recall what it was about. Thats when I notice that our teacher is out and we have a sub that is a black woman (I say this so that you may get a better understanding of how the upcoming events occurred). Anyways, Debbie begins giving us our notes for the day and they are about the Civil War (which is nothing special because we have been on this topic for about a week now). To be more detailed, they are on the Emancipation Proclamation.

Well during the notes the sub gets onto the class because she said we were greatly disrespecting

Debbie. To be completely honest, we were not really harassing Debbie that day and I didn't know what the lady was getting all mad about, but right then was when the whole class started to not like the sub. Later, we leave for lunch and we all discuss how we do not like the sub and Debbie. Nothing too out of the ordinary.

Well we get back to class from lunch and start taking notes again. We make our way to the last slide of the notes and it poses a question to the class and it was something about what you thought about President Lincoln because, even though he freed the slaves, he meant to send them back to Africa later and he was extremely racist.

We discussed the question and end up getting on the subject of racism. It was a huge heated debate between Debbie and the sub v.s. the classroom.

Debbie and the sub kept trying to say that pointing out someone's skin color was racist because you are only looking at their skin and looking at nothing past that. That was basically their whole argument. During the argument though, the sub picks out all the students in the class that were not white and asks them "Have you ever had someone tell you 'I am not racist, I have a black friend?". To me that is racist because she excluded a certain color in her question and was talking about white people in a negative way.

Anyways, the class kept trying to say that it was not racist to point out the color of someone's skin if you were describing them and that pointing out their skin in a negative manor was racist. Which I believe is true. Lets say that you are looking up someone be it on the computer or in a book. It is going to tell you if they were black, white, Asian, Mexican, and etc. so that you may grasp a better understanding about that person. Not only because of how they looked but also that you could get a glimpse at their day to day life. So, is it racist for someone to give you a description of someone? I see describing the color of someone's skin is the same as saying what kind of shirt, pants, or anything related to how someone looks as describing them.

Description and discrimination are two totally different things.

What do you think?