Once again, Black humanity became collateral damage – trivialized and tossed aside – when a West Valley High School Spanish teacher, Matthew Mastronardi, reportedly chose to read the N-word aloud from the pages of “To Kill a Mockingbird” after a student dared him to do so in his Spanish class. The novel is part of the English curriculum – not the Spanish class where this incident occurred. The teacher was fired. On Tuesday, the West Valley School Board voted against renewing his contract.
Now, students and Mastronardi alike are rallying for his reinstatement, claiming his rights have been violated – even using the recent Juneteenth holiday to hold a press conference that co-opted the language of freedom, liberation, and civil rights. But let’s be clear: this is about preserving power and posturing – a soapbox from which to pontificate without accountability, to participate without humility, and to critique without understanding. That is the essence of privilege. This moment is an entire flex.
No intellectual or patriotic bravery is being demonstrated here – only cultural dominance, cloaked in democratic ideals. There is no championing of truth, just self-aggrandizement on a stage built to deflect from impact and consequence. And it is strategic.
We live in a city where Mead High School football players allegedly sexually assaulted Black students while hurling racial slurs – an act the district tried to soften as mere “hazing.” Atlanta Black Star reported: “Three of the Black football players were allegedly called racial epithets including the N-word, ‘monkeys,’ ‘chocolate praying mantis,’ and ‘dirty Q-tip,’ and told they need to be ‘leashed.’” When the videos circulated and more details became public, the Black players were labeled “snitches” and told that “Blacks squeal.”
In March, it was reported that a recent audit by the legal firm representing those students found the district refused to turn over evidence and “deliberately withheld internal documents related to its failure to inform parents about years of hazing and abuse in its football program,” KREM-TV reported. These actions aren’t new – but they send a menacing message: damage control replaces truth, and power controls the narrative.
The emotional intelligence of an educator who cares more about his “right” to say the N-word – as a so-called “teachable moment” – ignores the weight of the dehumanization experienced by the very people that the central character of To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robinson, symbolizes. Tom, a powerless Black man, stood at the mercy of a white savior and moral hero, Atticus Finch. He was crushed by a racist Alabama community, a biased white jury, and a lying incest victim who accused him of rape. Reflect on that power dynamic. Whose privilege was centered? Who had agency? Black psychological safety has never been a priority under white supremacy and unchecked privilege.
And I dare ask: How much unpacking of historical and cultural trauma was actually done in that moment – beyond a shallow disclaimer to not use the word in a discriminatory way?
How much truth-telling was offered about the N-word’s roots in slavery and racial terrorism? The lynchings depicted on postcards? The Bloody Back? Human breeding farms? The fiery destruction that renamed Birmingham to “Bombingham”? The burning crosses lit with malice in the name of patriotism and Christianity? Was there any consideration for how this lands in the hearts of Black students – hearing it spoken aloud in the authoritative voice of a teacher?
If the goal were truly to educate, heal, or reckon with the legacy of that word, it wouldn’t have been delivered with a generic disclaimer. That was cheap and lazy. It dodged the real work. It bypassed the history, the harm, and the emotional baggage that word carries for Black people.
One must also wonder: how much personal awareness, training, or culturally responsive professional development has Mastronardi actually received? It’s doubtful he understands the full weight of the word. No, this wasn’t a teachable moment. It was grandstanding. And the N-word was a prop for performance.
When teenagers cajoled him into saying the word, their motives should have been challenged. The real lesson should have been about emotional maturity, cultural humility, and the value of Black life.
How can a single novel truly unpack the ways cultural and historical trauma appear in everyday life? Or show how white supremacy lives in subtle, everyday nuance – especially to someone who’s never had to live it? What about the music and film industries – how they profit, year after year, from normalizing and commodifying a word rooted in dehumanization? A word that continues to create confusion, double-mindedness, deep cognitive dissonance, wrapped in flawed logic and hollow justification for many.
When schools fail to teach the roots of racism, colonization, and systemic oppression with intentionally, progressively, and comprehensively, that kind of dissection – the cultural, historical, and psychological unpacking that the N-word demands – cannot be done in one class period, one unit, or worse, on a dare.
And a censored version of the American story is actively maintained – a successful model of indoctrination.
In his 1968 sermon “A Proper Sense of Priorities,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
White privilege leaves festering wounds, even when unconscious. For those on the receiving end, this moment isn’t about education – it’s about narrative control. Power is never truly shared with those considered disposable.
Want to have a brave and necessary dialogue about a racial slur that was often the last word my ancestors heard before being murdered? Then talk about it outside the teaching of a single novel.
Schools: create a viable hate speech and slurs policy – with teeth. Center Black voices – Black educators, Black experts with lived experience. Step outside your own lens. Stop tokenizing and look for the truth, even when it hurts.
Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” explores racial and social class dynamics in Maycomb County, Alabama. But it’s still a story told through the lens of a Southern white woman. The portrayal of Black oppression lacks the psychological depth of the lived experience of Black people. It doesn’t fully convey what it means to endure systemic racism – it merely observes and reports it.
The literary canon has long excluded substantial Black authorship. And when educators defend using the N-word by citing literary fidelity, without fully grappling with the trauma behind the word, its use becomes an act of erasure. Historical relevance must meet Black identity with care, context and cultural responsibility – especially in the classroom.
Teaching literature that includes racial slurs or anti-Black violence requires more than curriculum alignment. It demands humility and anti-racist, trauma-informed social-emotional pedagogy. When it doesn’t, educators reproduce the very harm they try to expose. If this cannot be done by qualified people, the text should not be taught. And by qualified, that must intentionally include Black educators who understand the full complexity of racism.
We live in a society that still pretends the past didn’t really happen. So when a teacher tries to pack a punch with the N-word – a word that’s been capitalized, commercialized, mocked, and diluted – it’s dismissive and tongue-in-cheek.
For legions of Black bodies, it was never vocabulary.
It was violence.