A high school teacher has told students that “to be white is to be racist, period.”

The comment was captured during a recording that a student took of a lecture her teacher was giving at Norman North High School in Oklahoma, supposedly on the topic of “how to heal the racial divide.”

The student, who didn’t wish to be identified, said the lecture started with a video about the “Mistreatment of Native Americans” which showed a man using white-out on certain areas of a globe, where he then wrote his name on the area. According to the student, that was a demonstration “comparing what he had done to the globe to what we did to America.”

When the video was over, the teacher told the class that “to be white is to be racist, period.” The teacher went on to claim, “Am I racist? I say yea. I don’t want to be. It’s not like choose to be racist, but do I do things because of the way I was raised?”

The student was obviously offended by the heavy-handed message, saying “Half of my family is Hispanic so I just felt like, you know, him calling me racist just because I'm white... I mean, where's your proof in that?”

The school released a full statement on the incident, which reads:

Racism is an important topic that we discuss in our schools. While discussing a variety of philosophical perspectives on culture, race and ethics, a teacher was attempting to convey to students in an elective philosophy course a perspective that had been shared at a university lecture he had attended. We regret that the discussion was poorly handled. When the district was notified of this concern it was immediately addressed. We are committed to ensuring inclusiveness in our schools. - Dr. Joe Siano, superintendent of Norman Public Schools.

But as the student’s father aptly asks, “Why is it okay to demonize one race to children that you are supposed to be teaching a curriculum to?”

Racism is definitely something that needs to be addressed and taught about in schools, but not by someone who will instantly label half of a classroom as racist simply based on the color of their skin.

You can see the original news report below: