It’s bad enough that educational evaluation tests, like the SATs, have included race into their scoring decisions for students. But when administrators begin to judge others based on their “toxic” whiteness, it might be time to question the actual educational value of the public school system.
New York City Department of Education’s (DOE) Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza allegedly issued a “totalitarian threat” to DOE employees that they either need to “get on board with my equity platform or leave,” according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday in state supreme court.
According to the New York Post:
That “totalitarian threat” was just the most direct example of Carranza’s push to overhaul the leadership at the top and attitude throughout the DOE since he took the helm last year, claims the suit, levied against the department and Carranza by the trio of demoted white female executives[…]
Plaintiff Lois Herrera, who started at the DOE in 1986 as a guidance counselor and worked her way up to lead its Office of Safety and Youth Development, claims in the suit that she saw a sea change almost immediately after Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed Carranza in April 2018.
A month later, LaShawn Robinson, then the executive director of the DOE’s Office of Equity and Access, purportedly told white attendees of a training seminar that they “had to take a step back and yield to colleagues of color” and “recognize that values of white culture are supremacist,” Herrera heard from a fellow administrator, according to the suit.
“…values of white culture are supremacist.”
If that statement was actually said, as the lawsuit alleges, then New York’s DOE has racism problem plaguing their educational system. Take any statement referring to white people and replace it “white” with “black.” If the statement is racist while including “black” in the statement, then it’s racist the other way as well.
Racism doesn’t work one way, not anymore. People of every color shouldn’t allow such prejudice towards any race of people. Obviously, people shouldn’t get up in arms about every racial comment, especially if the comment is truly meant as a joke or as an analysis of society and/or statistics. But, straight racism — which any rational person can determine when they see or hear it — has no place in civilized society, especially an educational system.
The lawsuit also states:
Herrera learned from another senior administrator that Robinson expressed a discriminatory bias against her Caucasian colleagues on a number of occasions leading up to her promotion as Deputy Chancellor, including on or about May 4, 2018, while presenting at the "Border Crossers" training in her former role as Executive Director of the Office of Equity and Access, telling Caucasian colleagues that they "had to take a step back and yield to colleagues of Color" and "recognize that values of White culture are supremacist," as well as saying "We have all taken on Whiteness," while referring to being exposed to a society that has become toxic with Whiteness.
“Under Carranza's leadership, DOE has swiftly and irrevocably silenced, sidelined and punished plaintiffs and other Caucasian female DOE employees on the basis of their race, gender and unwillingness to accept their other colleagues' hateful stereotypes about them,” Davida S. Perry, the group’s lawyer said in the filing.
It looks as if New York’s DOE has a lot of explaining to do, which Carranza did a little of before the lawsuit was filed in an interview with CBS - New York.
“We’re going to be able to show that we hired the best people for the job through a process that was fair to everyone,” Carranza said.
You can watch video on the then-impending lawsuit below: