B R O O K L Y N,  :N.Y.,  Dec. 4— Last September, an elementary school teacher in Brooklyn read an award-winning children's book called Nappy Hair to her third-grade class. The teacher is white. Her students are largely black and Hispanic. And the exercise was intended to help the class celebrate their differences.

     “Nappy Hair was a tool I used on teaching self-esteem and pride,” said Ruth Sherman, the 27-year-old teacher.
     But several black parents were outraged, accusing Sherman of being racially insensitive. They launched a protest at the school. The term “nappy,” they said, is a word coined by white people centuries ago to describe hair that was unlike their own.
“‘Nappy’ is a word that has and always will have negative connotations because of its origins,” said the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, national administrator for the House of the Lord Pentecostal Churches.
     Daughtry, who was called in to help mediate, said parents “felt that children were being taught to hate themselves,” and that “it stirred up the whole feeling of self hate, self rejection.”

Learning to Love Her Hair
The irony is that the book was designed to combat those very feelings. Nappy Hair tells the story of a little girl named Brenda with “the kinkiest, the nappiest, the fuzziest, the most screwed up, squeezed up… knotted up, tangled up,… hair you’ve ever seen in your life.”Using colorful pictures and cheery prose, the book explains how Brenda’s beloved Uncle tells the little girl to take pride in her big hair because it is a gift from God and represents the strength and resilience of her people.
     “Adult black women are saying to little black girls, comb your nappy hair, get those naps off your head, that sort of thing, and we're passing on this sense that somehow to have nappy hair and be female is a problem,” said Carolivia Herron, the book’s author. “I’m trying to tell children how delightful nappy hair is. It was a book of delight and celebration and praise for the nappy-headed child.”
     Despite it’s positive message, the book struck a raw nerve among some parents who say their children grow up in a society where they are inundated with images of beautiful women sporting long, straight and flowing hair.
     Those images are not limited to white women. Black Americans spend $410 million a year to alter the texture of their hair, according to industry figures. Black magazines like Ebony, Essence and Jet are chock full of ads for relaxers, texturizers and straighteners that feature dark-skinned women with shiny, long locks.

The Race Factor
But for some parents, one issue was the book’s language. The story is relayed in a black-Caribbean-patois dialect using the kind of call and response, sing-song dialogue that was once common among Southern field hands and can still be heard in black churches today.
     “Parents were uncomfortable with a white teacher using so-called Ebonics in the classroom, words like ‘chile’ instead of ‘child’ and double negatives like ‘ain’t got.’ That just didn’t make sense to some people,” Daughtry said.
     To some parents, it wasn’t just what was being taught, but who was teaching it. “It had to be because she’s white, if she were a black teacher teaching that book, it wouldn’t have been no problem,” said one parent who has a child in the class.
     “I think she stumbled onto some kind of race secret, something that black people talk about and use as a epithet — nappy hair,” said Jill Nelson, a New York-based writer whose books include Volunteer Slavery and Straight No Chaser. . “I think nappy is an eptihet that we’re allowed to use to our daughters to our sisters to our girlfriends, but we’re not allowed to call another person’s hair nappy.”
     “I think this is a case where there was some misunderstanding on both sides,” Sherman said. “I think it had to do with just being uninformed.”
     Or perhaps, not fully informed. The parent who initiated the protest became angry after seeing a few photocopied pages of the book in her child's folder. Outraged, she made copies and distributed them throughout the neighborhood. The next week parents descended on the school, many so angry that they hurled insults and threats at Sherman. Administrators placed Sherman on a temporary leave, saying it was for her safety.
     “Everything I’m trying to teach my kids about getting along and conflict resolution and take a deep breath and then hear each other out … was just thrown out of the window that day,” said Sherman.
     Only a small number of the protesters, as little as one or two, actually had children in class, school officials said. The majority of parents have expressed their support, and along with students, staff and New York Superintendent Rudy Crew, they have asked Sherman to return to her classroom.
     But Sherman says she still fears for her safety and has decided to transfer to another school.
     “At first I wanted to get back to the kids when this happened,” she said. “But when I woke up to go to the district office, I froze. I couldn’t even think of driving there by myself. I didn’t even want to drive there. I just wanted to crawl into a hole because I was afraid.”
     “I can’t live like this, day by day, I can’t have people at my door or people escorting me from my car to the school because that just totally depreciates the whole idea I was trying to teach my kids about getting along and loving one another.”

The Wrong Lesson?
Some say Sherman is overreacting to the threats.
     “I think everyone knows that no one is actually going to hurt that teacher. We have a chance to teach children a lesson that people can disagree without being disagreeable and I am afraid that we are losing that opportunity,” said Daughtry.
     “The unfortunate part about it is that we lost a very good teacher. Teachers that we are trying to cultivate and bring into the community and make sure that we can provide the best education for our youngsters,” said Deputy Superintendent Robert Brasco.
     And what about the children? What lesson did they learn?
     “I think that the uproar and the backlash sends a really twisted message to children,” said Nelson.
     “What's disturbing about this whole controversy is, Why aren’t the parents freaking out about what's inside the head? What’s under the hair? Hair, schmair. What’s going on in terms of educating these kids?”
     At P.S. 75, only one percent of the students read at grade level.