Hooey.

Stick it to 'em Charles! The teacher needs to somehow show in a blind test, a observable reaction to the product, but not to other cosmetic products, or state the real reason the child was asked to leave.

I just made a pie crust with olive oil. It's one of my favorite foods. How can anyone not like olive oil? I use Napoleon olive oil.

Most people are idiots because they think "Extra virgin" green olive oil is the best. But it's not. Regular yellow olive oil is!

The Seattle School System is in a shambles...and they probably use Canola oil which is why everyone there is fat. Therefore, you have a good case.

@3 - Actually most people use "Extra Virgin" Olive Oil because of additional health benefits.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/food-an…

"'The last thing you want to happen to your daughter is for a teacher to faint or vomit at the mere sight of her.'"

Zing! Great quote!

The teenage version of me would have though it was pretty fucking cool to make a teacher faint or vomit whenever I was in the room.

@6

That's why the 20-something version of you always smells like hamburger and bleach.

I highly doubt one child in a classroom of 20 or 30 is enough to make a teacher feel ill - if it is, what does the teacher do when they are out in public? walk around holding their nose? Also, it could just be a coincidence - eat some bad food, feel gross, and because of your own racial insensitivity, blame it on a kid. I might find the teacher's story more believable if she had sent the girl home, or to the principles office, or to the washroom or something, but to put the kid in a class, where there are more children of color.... yeah. that implies there was some racist thinking going on.

God, have you ever spent a day with adolescents? They smell to high heaven. Just how could ANY hair product smell so bad as to overpower the sickly ripe aroma of surging pubescence?

Seriously!

@7 yay!

Please keep after this one. This may be an actual teachable moment, unlike the one on Glee.

It seems like they could have anticipated interview questions better (especially given Charles' public posts) and prepared for it. I suppose these are better answers than "I don't recall."

Thank God I got out of school before Axe Body Spray came on the scene. Though the spray-on deodorant and cheap colognes of all the guys too scared to shower after gym, coupled with the ladies and their copious amounts of "body spray" and hair products.

Sorry, I really feel for your girl, and kids should not be subject to whatever bias or issue the teacher was having in such a manner, this is most definately worth an investigation, BUT...

That isn't cooking olive oil, it's a hair product. Google reviews for it, you'll find complaints of the smell and warnings to those with odor sensitivities. (Walgreens has the ingredients posted for that product, which contains DMDM Hydantoin [a formaldehyde releaser] and a host of perfume agents. What, did you thing "organic" actually still meant something?)

Regardless, I hope this gets settled with as little stress to the child as possible. She's not at fault.

I should add, those nasty chemicals are common in beauty products, I wasn't attempting to be conclusive, just saying it's entirely possible the teacher is telling the truth, regardless of how she handled the situation.

Also, "think", not thing.

I don't think the teacher was being intentionally racist, I think she (might have) smelled something she didn't like, was already pissed about SOMETHING, and her inner racist (that everyone has) took over, and she assumed it was the girl with the different (black) hair. Everyone, without exception, has some race-based emotions: it's how you handle those emotions that classifies you as a racist or not. And she handled her emotions TERRIBLY. She could have sent the girl to the nurse, to the principal, anywhere... but she sent her to another, lower-placement class. I'm sure she felt better once her class was nice and white again, but she knew right away that she handled it poorly.

I am so glad that Charles and family spoke up about this. Lots of smells annoy/irritate/cause me migraines. I'm Black. If I were a teacher with a medical condition that prevented me from smelling certain smells, I would alert students/parents at the begining of the year as to my medical condition. To kick a student out of AP class and into the lower level class based on supposed offense of a hair product is racist. Intentional/unintentional-- who the fuck cares? The teacher is a racist whether or not she knows it is inconsequential.

The offending product, Organic Root Stimulator Olive Oil Moisturizing Hair Lotion, contains dimethicone, an ingredient The Environmental Working Group's cosmetics database rates as a high hazard for allergies/immunotoxicity. SCCNFP (The Scientific Committee on Cosmetic Products and Non-Food Products Intended for Consumers), 1999 claims dimethicone is a known human immune system toxicant.

Did any of the parents research the toxicity or hazard potential of the ingredients in Organic Root Stimulator Olive Oil Moisturizing Hair Lotion prior to launching a suit? Does the teacher/respondent wear fragrance, or does s/he require a fragrance-free environment?

Some people do have chemical sensitivities. I worked with someone who could not abide aldehyde. Another person had an olfactory sensitivity and could not be in the same room with someone eating cooked fish. I'm working with someone now who needs extra ventilation in the room if bleach in any quantity is used.

Way to go Charles. You have managed to become part of the type of story you make your living on. I guess your life work is done now and we will not have to hear anything from you again? I can only hope.

but charles - are you SURE you don't hate crows because they are black?

I also have gotten instant migraines from strong smells that could be considered “minority” smells (the strong, spicy perfume many Somali ladies wear, foods that contain nam pla, to name two). So I have had to have conversations with a few people where I work because it really was a case where several times I had to leave work and take a sick day to recover in bed, in the dark, with a trusty bucket next to me, just because someone used the upstairs microwave instead of the one in the lunchroom, or drenched themselves in perfume as had been the custom back home (where they perhaps had not had the opportunity to take a shower as regularly as they could and did in the US).

But I never, ever would have sought to have them removed from my area as my primary solution. I just spoke to them when it was appropriate and asked them to keep me in mind. They saw that many strong smells made me ill, most of them liked me as I liked them, so the problem slowly got resolved. I also started keeping some Vick’s vapor rub in my desk and now, when microwave popcorn burns or there is some other strong, harsh smell when I’m feeling migraine-y, I swab it inside my nose.

It goes both ways, too – I recently bought a floral perfume which I apply as one small squirt. Most people who catch a whiff seem to love it -- I’ve had strangers chance me down in public to find out what it is -- but my closest officemate at work doesn’t like it (she doesn’t like the smell of fresh flowers, either) so I don’t wear it at work anymore, unless she’s on vacation.

@28: Nicely put, and it accords with my take on the whole situation as well. Whether the teacher is lying or not about the sensitivity, she tried to put the entire burden of the problem on an innocent child who certainly wasn't attempting to make the teacher ill. If the teacher really was becoming ill, it would have been a lot better to excuse herself rather than march the kid out of the classroom. And while that would be humiliating for any child, the fact that it's the only black kid in the room makes it a racial issue for the child EVEN IF it really truly wasn't for the teacher. If.

I'm not a Charles fan at all really, but I think he's absolutely right to pursue this.

@22 "To kick a student out of AP class and into the lower level class based on supposed offense of a hair product is racist."

Having an aversive reaction to a hair product does not make someone a racist. However, jumping to conclusions about a teacher's attitude simply because she's white is racist.

Let go of your biases, prejudices, bigotry, and hate - they are doing you wrong.

Um ... can't comment on the perfume content of this particular product compared to others in the class but dimethicone is in almost all conditioners unless you specifically go looking for one without "cones" (they make hair shiny but also more prone to breakage). Finding ones without is a big pain in the butt, and in general the more expensive the product the higher the cone content. Almost any girl in that class and probably a lot of the boys, not to mention the adult staff in the school, are wearing hair care products that contain dimethicone. Sure, she could have migraines, she could be pregnant, etc. but the way she handled the issue was at a MINIMUM racially insensitive, and most likely does reflect some racial bias. I've never heard of a teacher behaving in such a manner, I would bet that the teacher has never kicked any little blond girls with strong perfume or a ton of hair care product out of class, and if anyone had dared to single me out, humiliate me, and then toss my little blond butt out of an advanced placement class for something so trivial I am sure my mother would have presumed it was for some other reason (socioeconomics, race, strong personal dislike) and the teacher would likely have been vaporized to a fine bloody mist by the force of her fury.

Um ... can't comment on the perfume content of this particular product compared to others in the class but dimethicone is in almost all conditioners unless you specifically go looking for one without "cones" (they make hair shiny but also more prone to breakage). Finding ones without is a big pain in the butt, and in general the more expensive the product the higher the cone content. Almost any girl in that class and probably a lot of the boys, not to mention the adult staff in the school, are wearing hair care products that contain dimethicone. Sure, she could have migraines, she could be pregnant, etc. but the way she handled the issue was at a MINIMUM racially insensitive, and most likely does reflect some racial bias. I've never heard of a teacher behaving in such a manner, I would bet that the teacher has never kicked any little blond girls with strong perfume or a ton of hair care product out of class, and if anyone had dared to single me out, humiliate me, and then toss my little blond butt out of an advanced placement class for something so trivial I am sure my mother would have presumed it was for some other reason (socioeconomics, race, strong personal dislike) and the teacher would likely have been vaporized to a fine bloody mist by the force of her fury.

"Well, we really have no idea why the teacher kicked the girl out, BUT IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH RACE!"

Jesus Christ.

@30: "If the teacher really was becoming ill, it would have been a lot better to excuse herself "

Really, you think that having the teacher leave and stop instruction for the entire class is a better solution than asking one odorous child to leave?

You're probably right - better to screw over the entire class than risk being accused of racism.

Charles is going to be rich.

However, jumping to conclusions about a teacher's attitude simply because she's white is racist.

How about jumping to conclusions based on her behavior?

I'm still waiting for any proof of the racism that Charles alleged. I don't think I'm going to get it.

You know, there are going to be a lot of moments in her life, Charles, when she's the only black person around, and bad things will happen to her periodically. I can't help but wonder if she won't pick up her father's tendency to blame racism at the drop of a hat, and how unhealthy that's going to be.

I got treated like shit by teachers when I was in school, too. I'm glad you weren't my dad.

This little girl is lovely, has great hair & smells good. I know her family and I also have kids in this program (plus my own immune issues). Regardless of whether or not the teacher was having racist feelings, no one is mentioning how the girl felt about being singled out. Also, I'm fairly certain that all the other children made an unconscious note to themselves about why they weren't moved to the other room.

@36: No. What I said was that she should not have burdened an innocent child with this kind of humiliation over her own illness. If I were to get the shits or start puking while at work, I wouldn't try to pin it on some random client: I would go home. And I said that race was an issue for the child even if it wasn't intended as such by the teacher.

Your willful obtuseness is staggering here. It doesn't MATTER if the teacher hates negroes: she responded to the alleged problem in a completely inappropriate way. And in a way that reinforces racial biases. Again, that's true whether or not there was a thought bubble next to her that said "Jeeze I despise those darkies. They smell bad." Even if the only thought that passed through her mind was "God I can't stand that smell, get that kid out of here!", the way she (allegedly) handled this was disastrously inappropriate, and even the district's lawyers admit that. Get your head out of your rectum.

@47, so let's make my daughter imperfect. does that changer her age and her teachers age?

@6, 9 + whoever - the child is 8 years old.

@47: Except for the whole part about the school's legal counsel saying the district doesn't condone what the teacher did, and thinks the concern about the odor was mishandled.

@46: I'm not accusing the teacher of being a racist. I'm saying that if the events transpired as reported, she is not qualified to work with children. And yes, I'm also saying that, if you have one child in your classroom of 40 or so who is visibly different from all the rest and is 9 years old and learning to navigate the waters of being a minority, then singling them out for humiliation may not be racially motivated, but it sure is racially insensitive.

But my main point is that singling out a child for humiliation because they smell weird is a very, very bad way of handling the fact that you smell something you don't like.

Again, regardless of her motivation, if the teacher is that sensitive to smells, she should be in a different profession. Teachers have very little control over the environment they work in. Sometimes they get stuck with classrooms that are too hot, or too dark, or right next to the bathroom or cafeteria, or whatever. They need to adapt to that, and they need to adapt to whatever smells the kids bring into the classroom with them, which includes not only hair product and things like body spray, but laundry detergent and fabric softener. Unless the school allows her to send home a note to parents asking them to wash their children and their clothes in fragrance free, natural products, she needs to just deal.

And if she did have a migraine or stomach bug, or whatever...well, that's what subs are for. Even if it came on during the school day, they can call a sub in. Her version of the story (as told here, since we haven't heard from her firsthand) just doesn't wash.

@53: If you'll read a little further down, my point was that this was a shitty way of treating any child. It's just made worse by the circumstances. But, and please read closely here:

It's a shitty way to treat any child.

Any person, for that matter. I wouldn't treat you that way, and you deserve it for fuck's sake.

@38: "How about jumping to conclusions based on her behavior? "

Unless it's based on racist behavior (and an aversion to a smell is not racist behavior), calling someone a racist simply because they are white are you are black is indeed an act of racism.

Yeah I'm not giving the teacher much benefit of the doubt. Isn't demoting a child to a lower class level an awfully *permanent* consequence for an issue that could have easily been fixed by at least the next day?

@55,

Christ, you are a pathetic little shit.

@ 48 - Good Lord, I don't know how you can wade through this thread. It's bad enough this happened at all, but now you have to read all this bullshit. I'm real sorry this happened to your kid. If it was my kid, I'd be livid too.

For what it's worth, I think I'd be enchanted to think of my child as a perfect little angle. There's something "Little Prince"-ish about it.

As for the rest of the story, Charles, your writing drives me mad sometimes. But this is some shit. How often bewildered kids are made to suffer because of "grown-ups" being jerks. This teacher was clearly in the wrong (I've spend a lot of time in both K-5 and 6-8 classrooms, and the idea that one could pick out a single offending chemical in the shifting sea of odorific crap kids plaster on themselves these days is absurd. I have no doubt that something, some chemical sensitivity, got to her. It's the instant zeroing-in on the one kinky-haired kid that's the giveaway.

Argh. Failed to close the parentheses.

You guys are all smart and good at school and all right?

I need a word.

What's a word for when, you click on a file in windows, and like you just want to edit it in Notepad or some fast shit, but then it brings up a giant goober like Visual Web Studio and puts in like a thousand formating options and like once it starts loading you can't stop it ever...no matter how many times you click on the little black 'x' in the upper right.

What's the word for that?

Lorran @ 43: For the win.

2pearls @ 42: The girl's feelings have been commented on numerous times in the other comment threads on the same topic.

err, make that Lorran at 34 (and dyslexia FTW!)

Can't we all agree that hair products in general (AXE, I'm looking at you) smell pretty bad, but that rarely do they justify any action beyond a wrinkled nose? But I'd say this teacher's not a racist; this teacher's just a colossal crank.

Charles, I suspect your daughter is a perfect little angle and can do no wrong.

No doubt she is acute to the nth degree, but it seems deliberately obtuse of you to underline such an oblique point.

Charles, so sorry your little girl has to endure this. Stick with it (and I know you will)!
Do any of you commenters know the difference between an "angle" and an "angel" (or am I missing some fine point--as I admittedly do a lot around here)?

@57

Kesh, rocking the civil discourse yet again.

Ugh.

As both a former grade school teacher and now "medical person," I can say that:

1) Charles is a bit ridiculous to demand 'medical evidence' that his daughter's hair/hair product created the teacher's nausea. Malaise and nausea are subjective, and there's really no medical test that "proves" someone is experiencing it. The best you'll be able to do is establish a prior history of nausea in association with smells, but linking it to just one person or product is not really possible in any definitive way.

2) I once asked a child to leave class because he had drenched himself in cologne. I wasn't about to vomit, but he reeked so badly that it completely disrupted everything. Think "stink bomb" level of intensity. I'm just saying it happens. I didn't send this kid to another classroom (because that would have been just as disruptive to those students), but I did send him to the phys ed department to take a shower. He admitted he overdid it (first time with cologne).

The only other smell that makes me literally want to heave is betel nut (bad experience). Fortunately that's not in the classroom much.

3) Getting a substitute requires work and advance notice. The teacher can't just run out of the classroom and leave everyone unsupervised. Each child needs to be in a place where there is an adult watching over them. It's a tough call. Do you send your ENTIRE class into the classroom next door because you feel sick? You're completely destroying that teacher's lesson plan, you're sending kids into a room where there's no place to sit, and you're probably violating the fire code. Do you just walk out and leave all the kids in the room alone? Nope, that's not safe either.

In other words, I can understand why this woman might have decided that the least disruptive thing to do was to place this child in another classroom (where presumably nobody else was bothered by her hair product). The fact that there were more black children in that classroom was unfortunate but probably purely incidental - I doubt she deliberately shopped around for the classroom with the most black kids in it. Obviously a lot of people think she made a bad decision, but a lot of the other options aren't controversy-free either.

4) I wonder if Charles is helping improve his daughters self-esteem (not to mention that of the other kids, white and black, in that school) with all this fuss, or if he's just making things worse with all this coverage.

5) The school will do everything possible to both throw the teacher under the bus and save face simultaneously, while denying any specific wrongdoing. They love the word 'inappropriate' because it's so vague. I know, I know - it doesn't make sense and it never works, but that's how they operate.

6) Maybe everyone should just give each other a little benefit of the doubt in this case, shake hands and apologize for all the drama and hurt feelings (BOTH SIDES), and try to be adults and put this episode behind them with some lessons learned. It might be a great thing for the kids to see.

Did school just start? If a regularly used hair product is creating nausea in a teacher, when did the nausea start? I have no idea when kids are in school and such so maybe this was like the third day. ALSO teachers could easily ask a student to try a different hair-whatever if it is making them sick. was the move-to-another-classroom the first the student has heard of the situation?

@67: I just now reread your post. I guess I'm the one who's not very sharp, (especially at 5:54, Pennsylvania time, LOL)!

So, the teacher's actions could not have *possibly* been racially driven because the school district would not employ a racist.

Um, logic much?

@57
Why do you lash out against those who respectfully disagree with you?

Even without fixating on race or pseudo-scientific allergies and sensitivities:

The teacher used poor judgment: she effective shamed a child in front of the class. Leave race aside, children at that age will crucify a child for being asked to leave because they are "stinky". No need to search for racial bogeymans: this was a shitty teacher. A smart teacher, who was truly bothered by a child's hair product, cologne, etc would have sent a discreet note home to the parents with something along the lines of "just to let you know, I have extreme sensitivities.....yadda yadda".

You would think someone with a degree in education would have some common sense here. She deserves disipline for this poor judgement.

Charles: be honest. If your daughter had come home with a kindly worded note about the hair product would you have tried to be accomodating? Just curious.

PS: I shouldn't have used the word "fixating" in the above post. It implies I don't think there is a racial element here. There clearly is, I just think the action taken by the teacher in and of itself was wrong regardless of racial insensitivity.

@56 and the others who have suggested that Charles's daughter was "demoted" to a "lower level": No, she wasn't.

She is in APP, placed there because of her high performance on two tests (and no doubt, she continues to excel). Teachers can't kick you down to a non-APP program. I don't know all the details, but it sounds like the teacher (rightly or wrongly, racist-ly or not) had Charles's daughter leave the classroom for the moment. (Likewise, when a teacher "sends you to the principal," you are not evicted from your program.)

The girl was not sent down to the non-advanced program because the teacher didn't like something about her.

This is not how it works.

In our rush to brand the teacher a hateful racist (one who managed to keep her racism under wraps until the last month of the school year), let's not compound things.

I fwould figure that Charles wouldn't be happy with his daughter being the only one of color in the class. It seems that the move is a good thing.

@68: My geometry professor, the late great Ron Sellke, told us that we were allowed to use "vertical angles are congruent" in proofs, but only so long as we spelled it correctly. No "verticle angels"!

Much of the teacher's potential wrongdoing depends on the finer points of how she handled the situation, and the context of her behavior throughout the school year.

Did she loudly announce that the girl "stinks" in front of all her classmates and then order her out of the room like some sort of pariah? [cruel, horrible]

Did she say "I really don't feel well. I think you might be wearing something that is making me feel sick?" [not deliberately cruel, but clueless unless extreme urgency of illness]

Or did she discretely ask the child to step out of the room and then explain her reasons to the child (or her parents) privately?

Has this teacher treated the child kindly and fairly all year until this incident, or has there been a continuous stream of small cruelties and petty dismissals? Have there been complaints of bias from other non-white students about this teacher?

If we have to keep hearing about this, I would very much like to hear the details of exactly how the teacher spoke to the student in front of the class (there should be plenty of witnesses), and exactly how Charles pursued this issue with the school administration. Did they never respond, or simply not the way he wanted them to? There are very few details in his original article, and I have a concern that he may abusing his position as a journalist to punish this woman.

The fact that the school district is vague and calling the teacher 'inappropriate' but 'not racist' is classic bureaucratic doubletalk from an organization that is terrified of a negative media blitz when the city newspaper is condemning one of their teachers of racial bias. It proves nothing.

It is possible that this woman is a horrible racist who dislikes non-white students and pointedly went out of her way to humiliate this child. Or it's possible that she is deeply insensitive to the point where she should lose her job and not be allowed to teach or be severely reprimanded and shamed for what she has done. On the other hand, these are terrible, awful things to accuse someone of, and Charles - your word alone just isn't good enough. You should present some real evidence before dragging this woman's name through the mud, or at least a more compelling story. Right now it's impossible to tell if you are righteously infuriated or just another entitled parent who is behaving like a bully because he can.

@83: I was often the only black person in the extended programs in my class. I'd still have chosen to be there rather than lose the opportunities offered in those sorts of programs. It's hard being the only minority, but harder still would have been to accept a lower level of education in order to be with people who shared my skin colour.

Charles: please address the question of whether your daughter was, in fact, "demoted" to the non-APP program. That's the impression you've given a lot of commenters.

the girl should change hair products. pretty simple solution, but I'm sure Charles wouldn't agree.

Certain fragrances cause my eyes to water/itch or my sinus' to immediately become stuffed to a point where I can no longer breath through my nose. One product I was using for several weeks before I figured out it was the culprit.

I can totally understand that the teacher took some time to determine what exactly it was that made her feel ill. The teacher could/should have handled this differently - but to say it was only race motivated is ridiculous.

IMHO, Yeek is giving the most reasoned, thoughtful responses to this hailstorm of a story (#71 & 86).

And that is all I have to say. About this story. At this time.

The teacher's behavior was absolutely wrong. Charles rightly called her on it. The school district better resolve this. There's nothing else to say.

Shucks, thanks Merry.

The girl was removed from an advanced placement class, where she was the only black student, and moved to a lower-placement class with more black kids.

Sounds like SLOG and DH has already concluded that race WAS a factor. Otherwise why mention the fact that the lower-placement class has "more black kids"?

So the district can't claim that race wasn't a factor because they don't have all the information. But DH is happy to infer that race WAS a factor even though he probably has even less information.

SLOG - Judge, Jury and Executionor

Charles, WOW...I am SO SORRY that your family has to go through this crap!The person who should have been removed from the class should have been the teacher.It's simple...The teacher needed to have excused herself, gone to the office to take a "sick day" and drove her butt straight to the doctors to get her symptoms checked out if it was REALLY THAT bad to have a child REMOVED???!As a black woman with a bi-racial 7 yr. old daughter...I am angered by the ignorance of many who fear the "R" word("Racist").Oh, and of course it just HAD to be the advanced placement teacher...that one goes WAY back in the history of too many American schools/classrooms when it comes to very bright children of color.Ya' think maybe it's a little suspicous that a no brainer note/email WAS NOT sent home to the parents first,"Hey your kid's hair product makes me feel quessey...can you please use something else or I will have to ask her to go to the OFFICE."...no... asshole chooses to degrade,demote, and riducule a child's self esteem by basically kickign her out and putting her in the "average" class instead. Great problem solving skills ...HELLO?????This matter is SO not funny and I think needs to be pursued until the end. There are too many implications for so many other brown children if this issue just slides under the rug.Hair for black/bi-racial is about race...Do the best you can to help your daughter feel pride in her ethnic beauty while going through this.Please give updates.- Hilary Patterson (remember me?lol)