“She looked at me horrified”: Gen X teacher’s attempt at using old phrase backfires with 6th graders

A middle school teacher’s casual use of the idiom “pot calling the kettle black” took an unexpected turn when her 6th-grade class reacted in horror, assuming the phrase was racist.

Kids have never heard the phrase before

“Yesterday, a girl called out a student for not minding his business,” wrote u/ascaffo. I quickly quipped, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black? She looked at me horrified and then looked over at one of my black students.”

The Reddit user wrote, “Two thoughts went through my mind in an instant. 1st. How could that possibly be interpreted as racist. 2nd. How have they never heard that before?” u/ascaffo said she explained that the phrase refers to soot on cast iron cookware from the “really old days”—not skin color.

u/ascaffo’s post racked up 20,000 upvotes and 2,000 comments. Reddit users commenting on the thread shared their own cross-generational adage misunderstandings and complained that they have to “walk on eggshells” around “the language police.”

“We were losing instructional time at this point,” u/ascaffo concluded. “So I finally told her that she is the last person who should be calling someone out for not minding their own business. This she understood. Inside I was like, WTF just happened?!”

“No, the phrase is not problematic. What is problematic is that young people are so heavily programmed to be offended now, that you cannot describe the world as it is, nor use any number of benign and long-standing phrases, lest they invent an offense in it,” replied u/SheriffBartholomew.

u/josephrey commented, “While I applaud their readiness to stand up to what they think is wrong, they also gotta not be so reactive and think all us olds are ignorant trash just waaaiting to unleash our racist rhetoric on them. 🙄”

After despairing that “people don’t really talk to their kids much anymore” and “kids don’t really read much anymore,” fellow teacher u/JLewish559 complained, “What really bothers me is that kids (and people in general) these days are so primed to find the negative in things… Despite you likely never making such an overtly racist comment before…they just thought you came right out, put on your white hood, and said some racist nonsense.”

“And they did this instead of maybe assuming that what you said was something they did not quite understand.”

Boohoo. This country is built on racism (and ableism), and kids know it. Their misunderstandings about language offer everyone an opportunity to think and learn about it.

When OP’s student assumed it was racist, was she revealing that she harbors negative associations with being called “black?” Or was she communicating that she’s on high alert against anti-blackness?

Teachers have their work cut out for them.

What is the origin of the phrase, “pot calling the kettle black”?

According to Wikipedia, the phrase functions as “a retort to the person who criticises another of the same defect that he plainly has.” It refers to soot that builds up on cookware when it’s used in the fire. The pot calls the kettle black because the kettle is covered in soot. But because the pot is also covered in soot, the remark is hypocritical.

The first known use of the phrase is attributed to Thomas Shelton’s 1620 English translation of the Spanish novel Don Quixote. The saying is outdated, but it isn’t known to have racist origins.