The View Hosts Defend N-Word-Spewing Teacher’s Intentions As a Teachable Moment

The View co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar appeared to side with the Missouri math teacher who resigned after a student recorded him using the n-word during a class discussion.

The teacher is heard asking, “Is the word n***** not allowed?”

“I’m not calling anyone a n*****. I can say the word.”

The student, 15-year old Mary Walton, is being hailed as a “whistleblower” for bringing attention to the teacher’s use of the word. She was suspended for three days after the video made the rounds on social media, due to the school’s policy on cell phones in the classroom.

Goldberg and Behar contended the students — not the teacher — started the discussion that eventually drew the teacher’s attention.

“They started this conversation; he turned around and said, ‘well, what is going on? Why are you saying this?’ Goldberg said. “There’s a whole bunch of stuff — for me, this is problematic. Because, a) I want to know who was having the conversation before you started filming. Where did the conversation start?”

“Some children were discussing it,” Sunny Hostin answered.

Goldberg continued, “If these kids are using the n-word, why weren’t they included in this? I don’t look at her so much as a whistleblower, I look at this as one of those moments when a teacher says, ‘OK, well, I have this question.”

“I know that a lot of folks in the African-American community believe that by using it they’re reclaiming that word. I don’t have that belief. My belief is that it should not be used — because it’s a racial slur — by anyone,” Hostin said.

“You’re kind of on my side here a little bit,” Behar told Goldberg. “Because the guy as a teacher, he was trying to have a teachable moment, I think. He was asking the question. But, he used the word six times, and he didn’t really need to do that. The word is so abhorrent and it makes me nauseous to hear people talk about it, to use that word, that I think in that case, he was wrong. But I do think that he was trying something.”

Watch The View clip above.

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