An African American teacher was suspended in a Wisconsin school after he gave his seventh-grade students an assignment to write an essay defending the white supremacist group Ku Klux Klan, which he argued was to teach them how to write “persuasively.”
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"This paper will be a persuasive paper defending Klan members on trial," said the assignment, for students aged between 12-14 years old.
The teacher sent a letter to the parents about the assignment, saying their children would be required to defend the racist group in their essays.
Some of the parents complained to the school which in return withdrew the assignment and took action against the teacher.
The Black teacher argued that his assignment was not meant to "teach the students the Klan was correct in their behaviour, but rather to teach the students to write persuasively", according to a statement by the Business and Economics Academy of Milwaukee (BEAM), the charter school in Wisconsin where the incident took place.
Charter schools are supported by public money, but operate outside the local state school system. The school said the teacher was temporarily removed from the classroom pending an internal investigation.
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"BEAM feels that the objective of teaching students how to write persuasively is important," the school said in a statement on its website.
"However, we feel that the choice of topic is inappropriate for a seventh grade class. A new topic will be selected for the assignment."
While it seems that the teacher had an innocent intention, the school’s cautious reaction to the incident came at a time when the U.S. is experiencing a national debate over racial injustice amid police killings of Black people as well as the rise of neo-Nazi and other far-right groups in the wake of the election victory of Donald Trump.