On Nov. 21, a 9-year-old student of color at Palm Elementary School in Lorain, Ohio, didn’t want to eat the packaged waffles that had been put on her lunch tray. When she threw them away, a White cafeteria monitor forced the girl to retrieve them from the trash and sit at a table until she ate them. Within weeks, the monitor and the school principal were both fired. But the story did not end there. In January, the district released video of the event, and it is being used as evidence in a civil rights lawsuit against the district.
Whatever the outcome of the case, this incident has exposed cracks around race and class as they play out in the country’s long-standing commitment to feeding the more than 30 million public school students who rely on the National School Lunch Program every day....
ADDED: Sometimes your teaching of a lesson becomes the lesson.
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It’s the main focus of what schools are “teaching”. Compliance.
You will wear the mask. You will eat the vegan food we provide. You will read only the books we put in front of you. You will compete against the trans competitors we say are the same sex as you. You have no say in the curriculum that is presented. On and on.
Is it really about "race and class," or is it just about some people who like to boss others around, especially others who are younger and smaller and less able to resist?
Maybe it's more about the people who think of themselves as "adults" and then, by virtue of that status, are entitled to force children to do what they (the adults who are not their parents) think the children should do. Similar dynamic with wearing masks: you have to do it because we think it would be good for you to do so.
Maybe they should just back off and let kids be kids. Not eating your waffles is not disruptive to the school. If the kid gets hungry later in the day, she'll likely remember that discomfort the next time she gets handed some waffles.
There are starving children in China is the usual first try. Then you can't leave the table until you finish.
This child needs and deserves justice.
Where, oh where, was the WaPo when my mother made me eat a cold hot dog back in 1964?
Ice cold. With ketchup.
Whatever the outcome of the case, this incident has exposed that things fine to do to whites are verbotten when done to Blacks
"cracks around race and class as they play out in the country’s long-standing commitment to feeding"
Nice little morality play going on here. White ladies worried about food waste more than being nice to black kids. The country's commitment being paid for mostly by whites. The commitment to feeding stymied by kids who don't want to be fed. 30M kids (WTF?) who cannot depend on their own families. Black hurt feelings turned into a lawsuit. So many angles, I mean, cracks.
It's racist to treat some children the exact same way you would treat your own.
Forcing a kid to reach into the trash and eat discarded food is abhorrent and the cafeteria worker should be fired for forcing the kid to do that. And if the principal instituted this policy the principal should be fired as well. Forcing a kid to eat food from the trash sounds like a violation of her civil rights. I just have no idea why race was even brought up. Is there any evidence that the child was targeted because of her race? It is funny because I remember the media talking in the 90's about how they would no longer report the race of criminal suspects because it wasn't relevant to the story and portrayed the black community badly. Now, whenever anything bad happens to a non-white person that person's race is brought up.
The real thing being exposed is more universal..
People can be, and often are, jerks.
Especially when responding to other jerks.
(Heck, despite my intent not to be, I may be acting like a jerk right now!)
"made me eat a cold hot dog back in 1964"
My brother was (and still is) a very strange eater. He used to sneak into the refrigerator and take out a cold hot dog, put about 1/3 of a bottle of ketchup on a plate, then scoop up the ketchup with the dog and lick it like a popsicle, when the ketchup was gone, he'd eat the dog!
Eat your waffle!
“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
Terry McAuliffe, debate
'I don't really understand this idea that parents should decide what's being taught.....'
Hannah-Jones, Meet the Press
Just for the record, my school provides three free meals a day to all students. They also provide food over the summer and winter breaks.
The amount of waste is stunning.
I was more horrified by the story when I pictured taking a waffle out of the trash and making a child eat it, then I focused on "packaged." The food she was forced to eat wasn't touching any trash. Just a point of fact that matters as you decide how outraged to be.
What I'm not sure of is whether she chose the waffle only to turn around and throw it away. The article says the package was "put" on her plate, but was it put there because she asked for it or because she didn't exercise an option to say "no"?
The cafeteria worker should be canned.
OTOH, the real lesson that whities have yet to learn is that disciplining a black child is tantamount to touching the third rail.
haven't kids been throwing most/all of their lunches (either homemade or purchased) into the trash since time began? At least that is how I remember it in the 60's. Also trading for something you thought was better that someone else had? My elementary aged granddaughter is horrified at the thought of trading. Things are very different now. (And that is not a compliment.)
Kids used to have to worry about. being bullied by other kids.
Now they have to worry about being bullied by the teachers and administrators.
You can't eat your pudding if you don't eat your meat.
-- Loren
Government can be forced to make you breakfast, but you can’t be forced to eat the breakfast government was forced to make.
NO WIRE HANGERS!
Where, oh where, was the WaPo when my mother made me eat a cold hot dog back in 1964?
Ice cold. With ketchup
Substitute fried liver for cold hot dogs and that is what I had to deal with as a kid. I lost a lot of blood in an accident and the doctor said I didn't need a transfusion, but should eat liver twice a week for a few months..
I would rather eat a waffle out of a garbage can.
The waffle being packaged does make it seem dramatically less gross. Though I would still label it as gross. Now if forcing a kid to eat a trash adjacent waffle is a violation of their civil rights, what about forcing a kid to eat vegan food? Does it matter if that kid being forced to eat vegan food is non-white? Something tells me the Vegan lunch program was praised by its supporters as a way to fight childhood obesity in people of color. In keeping with the school lunch theme maybe there will be a forthcoming article "Fish on Fridays and Matzah during Passover reasonable dietary accommodation or violation of the establishment clause?"
The food supply chain has spoilage and the mismatch of supply and demand but the lecture is zero waste. People are finicky eaters but we’re lectured on when, what, how much. Clean your plate. Don’t get obese…
…an insatiable appetite for virtue…
Obesity is a problem among the black population, as is diabetes. Maybe, instead of packaged waffles, how about an apple.. Free lunch is not as valuable as a lunch packed by your parent. If this was a white kid, would it also be an article in WAPO?
The food she was forced to eat wasn't touching any trash.
Maybe. I'm not sure that's clear from the article. Maybe they used the word packaged to were tell us the waffles were not fresh made in a waffle iron from batter, but were those disgusting pre-made frozen waffles no self-respecting WaPo reader would eat or feed to their own kid. In my experience, you remove packaged waffles from their wrappers to heat them. Maybe they have some leave in the wrapper. I haven't had a waffle of any kind in years, so it's certainly possible.
Anyway, fishing them out of the trash is still really gross to most people, even if they were still packaged.
Did the girl's family pay for that waffle?
If they did, the girl can do what she wants.
But if the taxpayers paid for the waffle, the girl should have more respect for it.
She shouldn't have been forced to eat it, but she should have been 'educated' about the significance of the food.
I hear that minorities and women like to have 'conversations' and 'teaching moments.'
Voila!
"The unjust shaming of a little girl ... "
Is there "just" shaming?
Is it my imagination or has use of the word "unjust" skyrocketed over that last few years? If so, is the increased use justified?
"NO WIRE HANGERS!"
Funny you should say that. I was just writing a new post, based on this post — with a poll about required eating — and I illustrate it with a film clip from "Mommie Dearest." Not the wire hangers one, though. The bloody steak.
It will be most interesting to see what goes on in public school cafeterias in NYC on Fridays now that vegan is being served. Did they not learn anything from Michele Obama’s school lunch program. And how much food was tossed out by white and black kids. This isn’t about race…it’s about what kids like to eat.
"Unjust shaming"?
No, shaming in this case is perfectly just and justified. The girl-of-color's wanton disregard for the people who pay for her to have food, her disregard for those who work to bring it to her, and her wastefulness should have resulted in shaming. Shaming is how group morality is maintained and poor behaviors are reduced without the need for legal action or physical coercion.
Making her eat the waffle - that is improper. And now the ("White") lunch monitor is being shamed in her turn.
I don't remember the school caring at all about whether or not we ate our food. Is this a new thing that's come into fashion with all the other bossing?
It's not always a race/class thing anymore. California gives free lunch and breakfast to anyone. We were well able and willing to pack lunches but my kids begged for the school lunches, which aren't nearly as nutritious as the press suggests. Lots of processed foods, like packaged waffles, etc. But even in our resort mountain community the social pressure and seeming fun of the school lunch won out. The schools hand out free lunches all year long so you can pick up a weeks bag of lunches during the summer. After the covid closures the lunches were amazing, lots of fruit and such because I think districts had supply contracts and were left with way too much
Sotomayor: “ the government is paying for the medical services so they have the right to dictate details of those services.”
I imagine it is the same for government buying lunches. You will eat what we serve to you.
I understand that the “5-second rule” is a myth, not true. And children remember shames, slights, for a lifetime. I would share advice from my mother: “ Well, consider the source” about the cafeteria worker who is a bully.
Unfortunately the only lesson being taught in this case is that black kids are victims. What a horrible injustice to black kids.
In the year of our Lord 1963,I was banned from the lunch room when I asked for and was given two desserts but threw one of them in the trash (it was dry and I was full). I was reinstated when I personally apologized to both the food service supervisor and the nice lady who bent the rules by giving me two to start with. Race was not involved since one would have had to drive 30 miles to see a black person But I assume apologizing and asking for forgiveness must be a white thing.
Public schools are filled with people who've fallen far short of their youthful dreams and are full of bitterness and resentment. So they work it out on defenseless little children and internally revel at their sense of power.
No free school lunches when I was a kid. We all brown bagged it. In high school one guy had only a bologna sandwich with one slice of bologna so we would trade sandwiches. The school did have a cafeteria line but that food was worse. There was one old lady with a red wig. We all swore she made the tomato soup with her wig.
Hahaha. Extra credit to the student for having put it in the garbage instead of leaving on the table, throwing it on the floor, throwing it at another student and not telling the adult to "fuck off".
In my large urban parochial school in the 50's the cafeteria was supervised by a nun way beyond retirement age, no longer fit for teaching but still mean enough to insure that all trays were clean before returned to the dishwashing crew. There was no bargaining. Race was not an issue.
Shut all public schools. Provide every child with a computer and internet. Fire teachers and replace with the best in their fields who will have teach remotely. Instead of 4000 teachers and God knows how many administrators a district might have 100 of the very best and very well paid teachers. Oh, and there would be no whining about the rich versus poor because everyone would have the exact same education.
I was never forced to eat anything, but there weren't any substitutions either. I either ate what was provided or I didn't eat. Most of the time that wasn't a problem, but my dad loved liver smothered in onions. As an adult, I won't allow it my house. So I would drown the liver in ketchup to disguise the taste as much as possible.
Cafeteria workers should not be forcing kids to eat anything, they're cafeteria workers for God's sake.
White capitalized just looks nasty. Big and mean. I wonder if Black people feel that way about their name too?
Their mistake was not serving chicken with those waffles. Or having lots of Syrup and butter on hand.
Now, I'm going to have to go get some waffles.
Thanks althouse. I'll send you the bill.
God help the poor white educators who have to deal with black students. It must be like walking on eggshells.
"Sally said...
In my large urban parochial school in the 50's the cafeteria was supervised by a nun way beyond retirement age, no longer fit for teaching but still mean enough to insure that all trays were clean before returned to the dishwashing crew. There was no bargaining. Race was not an issue."
The above is my experience, except that we were brown-bagging. To get out to recess you had to pass the lunch monitor, a lady stationed by the trash can. If you threw in a bag with food, she knew by the sound of the weighted bag and she stopped you, took it out and sent you back to eat it. Then you smooshed the sandwiches up against the underside of the table or rolled the apple across the room under the tables which is what you should have done in the first place and left again. But sometimes she retrieved the bag and then came and stood over some miserable kid and watched her eat and the kid either ate or never got to go out for recess. (No force feeding, episode over when lunch hour ended.) The rest of us ran out throwing away whatever we wanted while the monitor was busy. Those kids who were caught that way were unhappy because they missed recess and had to eat whatever they hated but they weren't shamed, there was a lot of sympathy for them.
I can imagine different circumstances because after all everyone doesn't get a good Catholic education but I can't quite believe that kids today all like their lunches and are eating them quietly and so I can't quite understand why the kid felt shamed. Was she actually the first kid in her school lunchroom who threw away food and got in trouble?
If you want to tackle the problem of food waste, start with HOSPITALS.
One of the fascinating things about the last 2+ years is all the things we're finding out about what's happening in the nation's schools.
A few years ago I would have read a story like this and figured it was being overly dramatized or there was some missing information that would make it less of a head-scratcher. But now I believe we don't know the half of what the wardens are doing to the inmates once the big yellow bus rolls away.
50 years ago our school one day served beets as the vegetable. Yuck. It was expected, however, that we didn’t waste any food—we were all supposed to belong to the “clean plate club.” Also served those little single serve ice cream cups. Solution: Eat ice cream, hide the sliced beets in the empty cup, cover back over, toss in trash…problem solved … until the teacher made us retrieve from trash and gag-down the now ice cream covered beets.
I still don’t eat beets.
No big loss. About as empty a calorie as possible. Imagine how many behavioral issues in schools could be tamped down with diets that don't send them through insulin rollercoasters. See also "juice" boxes.
Same here. In Catholic school the nuns made sure the kids did what they were told or else! That was how we learned to respect authority. Law and Order…no fighting in school and no talking back, etc. We pretty much walked a straight line, except when we fooled around in class, then there was punishment
When I got to public high school…it was like blackboard jungle. I leaned a different lesson there.
I remember one day in 3rd grade the hot lunch that day was grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. (I brown bagged it that day as tomato soup is anathema) One of my classmates refused to finish his soup and the teacher who was lunch monitor that week forced him to finish it against his will. He promptly tossed his cookies all over the lunch table.
When I was in the 70s and 80s (elementary through high school) families still had to qualify for free/reduced lunches. I don't remember how it was handled in the lower grades but once you reached junior high you went to the cafeteria on Monday mornings before home room and stood in line to buy your tickets for the week. Those who qualified for free/reduced lunch were in one line and full freight in the other. Probably not the best system since everyone could tell who was getting what.
a 9-year-old student of color at Palm Elementary School in Lorain, Ohio, didn’t want to eat the packaged waffles that had been put on her lunch tray
I really hate the passive voice. The implication created here is taht someone ELSE put it on her lunch tray. If the article were from some place where teh writers were assumed to be competent, then one could gather from the use of passive voice that the implication was in fact false, since if it was true they would have just said that.
But it's WaPo, and while we can be sure the writer is a dishonest partisan hack, we can't be sure that the writer is competent enough to have avoiding passive voice if the facts were to teh advantage of the writer's agenda.
But since it is WaPo, and since the race baiters can never be trusted, the proper starting assumption is that she took teh waffles, and then didn't eat them.
Which would be perfectly fine, if she / her family had paid for the food. It's less fine if the food was paid for by someone else
San Francisco, as I understand it, has new rules about school lunches:
(1) You need not be a registered student;
(2) Anyone can pick up a lunch designated for students; no proof of kinship to a student or anything else is required.
Which means, of course, that SFUSD is a de facto soup kitchen, serving absolutely everyone.
Now, I understand that people want to get food into the hands of people who need food. But doing it through the school lunch program does seem a mite underhanded.
As for the WaPo's Ohio case: That the student is described as a "student of color" means that she was not Black, since they would certainly have trumpeted that if it were true. So I am assuming that she was Asian -- either Far East or Indian subcontinent.
Ceciliahere said...
It will be most interesting to see what goes on in public school cafeterias in NYC on Fridays now that vegan is being served. Did they not learn anything from Michele Obama’s school lunch program. And how much food was tossed out by white and black kids. This isn’t about race…it’s about what kids like to eat.
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did the ad campaign ask the dogs [err] kids what they like to eat?
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