Photo: TikTok
This little girl did not deserve this.
By John Sundholm — Written on Jun 01, 2023
A video of a Texas teacher seemingly excluding a Black child from her hugs has alarmed parents.
It's become a well-worn cliché for a reason—children remember the impact their teachers make on their lives forever. But in the case of one elementary school teacher, many feel her impact has been decidedly negative after the way she celebrated the end of the school year with her students. Her unequal treatment has left many feeling the teacher showed clear bias against minority students.
The New Waverly, Texas teacher gave every student a hug goodbye except for one Black student.
The video, posted by special education teacher and TikToker Miss A, known as @missasworld, was filmed on another teacher's final day of work before her retirement began. It shows her walking down the hallway of her school flanked by tons of excited children seeing her off. The teacher gives every child a warm goodbye hug, except for one young Black girl, who she gives a pat on the arm and a polite smile instead.
The teacher ignored another Black student entirely, skipping over him to hug other students.
The video sparked outrage among many viewers, who noticed that the young Black girl was not the only student the teacher seemed to pass over. Another young Black boy standing nearby got ignored entirely—the teacher simply walked past him without any acknowledgment whatsoever.
Some commenters dismissed the notion that the teacher ignored the Black students, with one claiming that it appeared that the teacher similarly ignored a white student at the end of the footage. But what is visible of the teacher's movements with that child suggests that she was moving in for a hug just as the video cuts.
Photo: TikTok
Many noticed that the young Black girl looked back behind her as the teacher walked away from her, seemingly saddened by the way the teacher skipped over her. This led to many discussions about teachers' racial biases and the ways white teachers frequently tend to treat Black students differently, often without realizing they're doing it.
Many felt the teacher's actions showed a clear case of bias against Black students.
Miss A was not the person who recorded the video, but she said she felt compelled to post it because of the racial dynamics apparent in the video and the tendency white people have to not believe Black people when they report teachers' racial biases in schools.
"No one seems to believe us," she said, "so I thought, why not post it here as proof that we're not making this up, that there are... teachers walking the halls of schools who don't care about our kids and are blatant about it." She went on to point out the fact that the teacher knew she was being recorded and "did it anyway."
And she rejected out of hand the notion that the whole thing could have been explained by the teacher simply not being familiar with those two Black students.
"Do you know how many kids I've never talked to... [who] come up to me in the morning, hey, Miss A," she said, "[and] want a hug?" She went on to explain that she always obliges, "because children are children, and they just want affection at the end of the day... How do you walk past her seeing that she wants a hug, then kind of give her a little back pat as an afterthought?"
Photo: TikTok
Many viewers were reminded of their own childhood experiences with teachers' racial biases.
"Twenty-seven years later and I still remember how my third-grade teacher didn't like me," Miss A said in another video response. "You might feel like she is not going to remember this microaggression, but if that was indeed her teacher, I'm sure that wasn't the only microaggression she had...and she will indeed remember what her teacher did."
For many Black people who saw the video, the little girl's face as she watched the teacher walk off without hugging her was unmistakable, and they firmly agreed. "Little girl was hurt and embarrassed," one person on TikTok commented. "I was that girl in elementary school. She’s going to remember this moment."
Others explained that incidents like this are often the first formative moment when a Black child first gains lived experience of the realities of racism for the first time. "That action of the adult towards the child planted a seed that will forever be an impact on the child," one user explained.
Photo: Twitter
One person summed the situation up in a way that all white people should consider. "It's so subconscious and natural they don't even realize they do it," the person wrote. But even if it's an unwitting mistake, the impact is unavoidable. As another user added, "Sadly, the children always notice."
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.