'black book' as punishment book :( in primary school.

[noonar]

my dd1 is 9. her friend stayed for a sleepover last night as she has moved to a new school in a nearby town.

dd's friend dislikes her new school and it seems very authoritarian from what she has said. she then when on to tell me how children who misbehaved went in the 'black book'.

i was totally shocked that the school thinks it's ok to have such a negative connotation attached to the word 'black'. this was esp noticeable to me, as dd's friend is black.

she was telling us about some racism that she had experienced at the new school, then told us about the 'black book'. my knee jerk, gut reaction was to be appalled that the book has been given this name. i am not saying that i had time to reflect and then decide to be shocked in a politically correct way. i was instantly taken aback.

to those of you who may say i'm overthinking this...we have a golden book at out school for good behaviour. things golden are considered good, no? what then, does the black book suggest?

i have many years teaching experience and have years of experience studying multi-culturalism, so may be a bit 'biased'.

what do you think? just genuinely interested in your personal reaction to this.

As the majority of the country are white European and the majority of the negative metaphor in language is racist in terms of black = evil, dead, dark, void
It would seem clear that the few bits of negative metaphor directed toward the word white would have little or no effect on the collective, majority psyche

I would hope that that is apparent?

So what you want is different rules about the use of the words white and black?
I really don't like special case argumnents. You don't want race equality you want positive discrimination. Do you accept that the uses of white I gave use white in a negative way? If you do then your own argument says they are wrong?

In my opinion that is a poorly thought out point of view. A few negative examples of the colour white when it is thought of predominantly as pure good innocent saintly in a white european country....

Through the development of language and course of time this majority white, christian country has built negative connotations around a colour through metaphor. In many ways this language reflected the racism or xenophobia felt by the people of the day

Over time the "race" of Britons have changed to include a great number of different ethnicities but the language has remained and still includes many of these derogatory terms. We now inhabit a fairer society with equal rights afforded to all but the slur of this racism remains in the use of these metaphors and sometimes in purely lazy actions.

It is fair that we examine the language we use and try to eradicate anything that would cause offence or the perpetuation of racism. That is why I think that a naughty book shouldn't be black and the marks should never be described as black if describing naughty. They should have used more thought.

I do follow your arguments and I can see you are talking sense and I am aware of the power of language carry meaning that is both intentional and unintentional. However for me the use of the terms black book and black mark should not be considered unacceptable. I can see why you disagree with but my opinion is you are taking one step too far to sanitise language.

Fair enuff