My White Teacher Was Racist And It Nearly Ruined My Life

Or when teachers don't realize that their words can perhaps destroy lives

Photo by Leonardo Toshiro Okubo on Unsplash

When I moved to Switzerland in the early 80s, I was one of the few black students at my school. I had moved from Sierra Leone in West Africa where most of the children in my class were black to a classroom where almost everyone was white. At the time, there was not one black or brown teacher at the school eithe…