A Black ninth-grader in Fairfax Country, Virginia was reading a Langston Hughes poem in class when his teacher instructed him to read it blacker.

As Jordan Shumate recalls the incident, the teacher didn’t hold back in punches in expressing her displeasure with how he was reading the poems. “She told me, ‘Blacker, Jordan — c’mon, blacker. I thought you were black’.”

When he refused to comply with her ridiculous request, the teacher read the poem herself.