{"id":660075,"date":"2013-05-24T12:12:33","date_gmt":"2013-05-24T16:12:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.webpronews.com\/?p=232183"},"modified":"2013-05-24T12:12:33","modified_gmt":"2013-05-24T16:12:33","slug":"spanish-teacher-fired-for-using-the-word-negro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/660075","title":{"rendered":"Spanish Teacher Fired for Using the Word \u2018Negro\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Talk about getting lost in translation. <\/p>\n

A Bronx teacher claims that she was fired for using the word “negro” in reference to a student. I must admit, it sounds reasonable at first – except for the fact that the teacher in question was teaching a lesson in Spanish. <\/p>\n

65-year-old Petrona Smith, formerly a teacher at bilingual PS 211, says that she was instructing her students on how to say colors in Spanish. “Negro,” of course, is Spanish for “black.” She claims that she was fired after a seventh-grader reported the incident. Smith is black, and a West Indies native. She has filed a lawsuit over the firing. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey haven\u2019t even accounted for how absurd it is for someone who\u2019s black to be using a racial slur to a student,\u201d Shaun Reid, Smith\u2019s attorney, told the NY Post<\/a>. \u201cTalk about context! There\u2019s a lot of things wrong here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith even claims that she differentiated between “negro” (black) and the Spanish word for black person, “moreno.”<\/p>\n

According to court documents, Smith was also accused of calling some students “failures,” but she says that this is also untrue. Apparently, she asked students who had failed a test to move to the back of the classroom. <\/p>\n

In fact, Smith claims that the slurs were coming in the other direction. The Post notes that she reports being called a “f*cking monkey” and a “n*gger.” <\/p>\n

As of now, facts in the case are pretty one-sided. A spokesperson from the city told The Post that they will review the papers – but that’s all they had to say. <\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Talk about getting lost in translation. A Bronx teacher claims that she was fired for using the word “negro” in reference to a student. I must admit, it sounds reasonable at first – except for the fact that the teacher in question was teaching a lesson in Spanish. 65-year-old Petrona Smith, formerly a teacher at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7357,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-660075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7357"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660075\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}