‘The school has failed’: Winnipeg teacher placed on leave for reportedly using the N word in class

An anti-racism advocate is condemning a Winnipeg teacher after a video appears to show the educator using a racial slur for Black people in the classroom, but she is also praising the students for standing up and expressing outrage.

The Franco-Manitoban School Division says the teacher at College Louis-Riel senior high school has been placed on leave after a video originally posted to Snapchat was widely shared online.

The video apparently shows a teacher using the slur multiple times and a student saying it’s disrespectful.

Blandine Tona, a member of Parents Against Racism, says the word should never be used in a school setting with children.

“That word still holds today a lot of weight, a lot of trauma, and it can still trigger a lot of people,” said Tona.

“We trust the school division, we trust the school board, we trust the school when we are sending our kids there, that they will be learning in a safe environment. So far the school has failed to offer that safe environment.”

Tona says she wants the students to know how proud she is of them for standing up to the teacher and showcasing the type of leadership she wants to see in the future.

“One of the reasons of me taking the time to speak to media is to let them know that we’ve seen you, we heard you, we trust you. We are so proud of you for standing up against all kinds of racism.”

The school division says it condemns all forms of racism and that it has sent support to the school to help students.

“Racism, like discrimination or bullying, are not new phenomena,” a spokesperson for the Franco-Manitoban School Division told CityNews. “They were part of the landscape of the first humans on earth. What should also be remembered is that these are not phenomena that are the sole responsibility of the school.”

Sharla Stevens, founder of Healing Racism in Schools, says situations like these occur because the foundation of schools and society is built on white supremacy and anti-Blackness.

Stevens believes it’s for those reasons the teacher felt comfortable enough in the first place to use the racial slur in front of their students.

“This is cultural,” she said. “And think about how many times this happened where a kid didn’t feel safe enough or have the agency to record it.

“What we tend to do is we just want to demonize this teacher. ‘If I could just get rid of this bad apple, we don’t have a racism problem.’ But that person is a symptom of a lager issue … it’s not this one teacher, it’s the culture of the school.”

—With files from The Canadian Press.