An Iowa mother said this week that the Des Moines school board may have gone easy on a white teacher who told her black son to call him “master.”

Roosevelt High School student Jabre White, 17, recalled to The Des Moines Register the way his teacher, Shawn McCurtain, had told the class to head downstairs for a final exam in economics in mid-May.

“Yes, sir,” Jabre White remembered telling the teacher.

“You meant to say, ‘Yes, sir, master,’” McCurtain allegedly replied.

Mother Nicholle White admitted to the paper that her son did not have the perfect response.

“Who the f*ck are you talking to?” Jabre White reportedly told McCurtain. “You’re nobody’s master, and this is not the slave days.”

Nicholle White said that she contacted school officials after finding out about the incident, but they never would tell her what disciplinary action was taken. So, the mother took her story to the Register‘s “Reader’s Watchdog” column.