A Spanish teacher has filed a lawsuit against a school after being fired for using the word "negro" to describe the color black in Spanish.

Petrona Smith, 65, was fired from Bronx school PS 211 in March last year after a seventh-grade student reported her use of the word "negro," reports the New York Post.

Smith, who is black and a native of the West Indies, said the use of the word was purely educational and was using it for the color black while she was teaching the class about colors, and not in a racial context.

"Negro" is the word for "black" in Spanish.

However, one of the students in her class reported her to school authorities, saying that she used a racial slur during class.

"They haven't even accounted for how absurd it is for someone who's black to be using a racial slur to a student. Talk about context! There's a lot of things wrong here," said Smith's attorney Shaun Reid.

Some reports also stated that Smith is being accused of calling some of her students "failures". However, Smith claims that it had been taken out of context and that she did not call them "failures" but told students who failed their exams to go to the back of the class.