A Las Vegas substitute teacher was fired after she was filmed using the n-word in class while asking why white people aren’t allowed to say it.

The white substitute teacher, who has not been publicly identified, was speaking with students in front of a classroom at Centennial High School last week when she left them agape with the racist question.

“I want to know. I want to know why, when black people are amongst each other, they call each other n—a,” the teacher asks in the clip, which went viral on TikTok.

Students, many of whom were black, reacted in shock and horror, with some throwing their hands in the air and others gasping and laughing nervously.

“Exactly,” the teacher says. “And when a white person says it, it’s like ‘Oh my God.’ It’s like an act of something, what is that?” she continued. 

The school’s principal, Keith Wipperman, said in an email to families that the sub “engaged in a conversation with racial implications that was not conducive to the classroom environment.”

“The substitute is no longer an employee of the Clark County School District,” he confirmed in the email, obtained by KLAS.

He added that the high school’s “number one priority is providing a safe, learning environment for kids.”

Centennial High School is a large, diverse school with some 3,000 students.

More than a third identify as Hispanic, 31 percent white, and 19 percent black, statistics show.

Last school year, there were 17 racially motivated incidents at Centennial, up from eight the previous year, according to data reviewed by KLAS.

There have been four so far as of Dec. 1, 2025.