I genuinely never understood the "trauma" aspect of this story.
Lets help.
The school had a racist incident involving a teacher and a learner.
Which was investigated and the teacher was cleared but due to pressure still had to leave the school. So the kids have already seen what can happen to any of them if they cross the wrong people.
The school with the help of the Western Cape government, decided to initiate a programme where the learners would have a discussion about race.
The discussions where to happen after this meeting and the parents didnt even know it was happening or where asked to comment. So the parents where exlcuded from this alienating the students.
The programme had a programme director with crazy views on race like "Black people can't be racist", and now wanted children to learn about this view.
The speaker didnt want them to learn about racism but to inform them that black people can not be racist as if they where we would be in Apartheid. But this is only black on white racism. White people can be racist at any turn.
This tells these kids that black people can do anything they want as it wont be racist so any laws surrounding racism and those comments will never be brought forward on anyone other than white people.
So this implies that the laws are biased against them.
The children went and reported this, but what I believe was "racial discomfort" from the White parents, they were riled up into outrage and I suspect that's where words like "trauma" were spat out.
The kids where not allowed to leave and one of them had to pretend to be sick to call a teacher for assistance and they kicked the teacher out. Showing the kids that they have the ulimate authority and when some kids did speak out they where sidelined by the speaker and told that no one else could comment.
This also shows the kids that there worries and voices do not matter.
The point of error to me seems to lie at the programme director, and some aspects of the programme itself.
The moment you walk into a room and say black people cant be racist you need to throw out the whole book. You cant start a discussion by saying only one side can do something while the other side is punished for it.
Other than that, I agree with the premise that race has to be discussed, especially if it affects the progress of learners.
Knowing the school and listening to the kids, no one had issues except for this teacher and some kids within the school. So there was nothing effecting the progress of the learners other than this program.
We can look and see how the implementation of this has been done and learn from it, but other than that, race is something that should be behind us. And we should discuss it once and for all.
Fine, but then all rules and policies need to be equal, we cant start a discussion while treating one side with kids gloves. If you really want to have a conversation you cant say to one group this does not apply to you and then start attacking the other group about how horrible they are because of no other reason than the color of their skin.
So lets see, the kids had trauma because they where locked in a room with people they didnt know, told to sit down and shut up, told that they can not experiance racism becauce they are white, their teachers where excluded and then booted when one tried to help their students. This allows students of color to hold power over all the white students because now they know they can be as racist as they want and just report the kids they dont like to the teachers and this will happen again, that sounds rather traumatic.