What Did Midlands School Board Decide on Racial Book Controversy?

A split vote by a Midlands school district will restrict usage of a controversial worksheet that led to accusations of racial insensitivity, even as the works by a celebrated Black author on which the lesson was based remained untouched.

The Lexington-Richland 5 school board voted on a formal challenge brought by a parent over a high school English lesson based on a book by author Zora Neale Hurston. The complaint said the lesson included the use of racial slurs and stereotypes that had left students disturbed.

After hearing from critics of the plan and supporters of academic freedom, the board voted 4-2 to restrict use of material on Hurston’s “Harlem Slanguage” to approved uses by instructional staff only.

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The complaint came about after a Dutch Fork High School lesson on Hurston’s 1928 essay “How It Feels To Be Colored Me,” an examination of the author’s experience moving between Black and white spaces in segregated Florida and its impact on her understanding of her racial identity.

While Hurston’s work is an approved classroom resource, a subsequent letter from the district acknowledged in an in-class worksheet also included “Harlem Slanguage” terms from Hurston’s glossary of African-American slang of the period.

That material did not go through the district’s approval process, the district later said, and led a parent to file a complaint over its use of “racial slurs, offensive stereotypes, and degrading classifications of African Americans,” including derogatory references to African Americans’ color, appearance and behavior, according to the complaint.

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