News · moment 2 of 15
The Cotton-Picking School Lawsuit
from Private Prison Penthouse | The Tim Dillon Show #312 · #312
5 min
News
Tim reads a news story about a Black mother suing LA Unified after her daughter's school set up a cotton field for students to "experience" slavery, and rants about well-meaning people doing horrifying things in the name of teaching lessons, comparing it to building a gas chamber to teach the Holocaust.
- Tim recalls sending the article to Ben and notes it's a legitimate lawsuit case, unlike the frivolous 1-800-Sue-Them billboard mentality of American litigation culture.
- A Black mother sued LA Unified School District over a cotton-picking project at an elementary school designed to teach students about slavery.
- The affected 14-year-old daughter experienced emotional distress after the project at Laurel Spann School, where a social justice teacher claimed it would give students a 'real life experience' of slavery.
- When the mother saw the cotton field on campus and spoke to the assistant principal, she learned her daughter's class was reading Frederick Douglass's autobiography and the field was meant for authentic slave experience learning.
- Tim points out the daughter didn't have to pick cotton herself but had to watch other students pick it while she was assigned to tend vegetables in the garden.
- The school's logic essentially forced a Black girl to tend vegetables while white students picked cotton as an educational exercise about slavery.
- Tim argues this is actually one of those rare lawsuits that makes sense—if your Black daughter came home saying she picked cotton at school to learn about slavery, any parent would reasonably be upset.
LA Unified School DistrictReshunda PittsLaurel Spann SchoolAmy Diaz