I was subbing for a middle school choir director, and the class of 6th graders was watching a video. Two girls kept getting into little fights, and being disruptive. One was Muslim and one was black. I didn't care about that. To me, they were just two noisy 6th graders who were causing problems for the class. I couldn' tell who started it, and it didn't matter. I have a low tolerance for the garbage that goes along with that. My usual policy is to tell kids to work it out themselves. I give them some examples of how they can do that, and then I leave them be. Usually it works. Only rarely do I have to intervene further. I told them to stop bugging each other (and everyone else) or I was going to seperate them. Shortly after that, the little Muslim girl walked up to my chair in tears. I told her to go sit on the other side of the room. As she walked off, the black girl shouted, "She gave me the finger!"

I didn't see it, the first girl's back was to me. I didn't feel like causing further disruption to the rest of the class searching for witnesses over a silly gesture. I told her to be a big person and ignore it. We could deal with it later. "You're racist," she said. She meant it, too. Or she thought she did. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. I'm still not.