KING: America’s schools must have zero tolerance for racist teachers and board members
It makes me genuinely sad to say what I’m about to say. As a nation, we should’ve evolved far past this a long time ago. School boards across the country, be they on a state or local level, must enact zero-tolerance policies for racist teachers, administrators, and school board members.
Let me be abundantly clear — if you are in a position of authority over children, if you are making decisions about the future of their education, and it is determined that you are a racist, or have committed a racist act, your employment should be immediately terminated.
School boards and governing bodies must have full, swift, unrestricted access to to terminate the employment of bigots. They do not belong in a school system. Bigotry is fundamentally dangerous.
A racist, bigoted person cannot be trusted with the safety, well-being or educational future of a single student.
At its core, racism and bigotry are the beliefs that certain groups of people are inferior to others. This line of thinking simply cannot exist, in any shape, form, or fashion in our school system. Period. Too much of what happens in school systems is simply too subjective to allow even a hint of racism to exist within.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what we are seeing on school boards and in school systems across the country.
On Thursday evening in Buffalo, N.Y., the local school board voted 6-2 to boot Carl Paladino from their board unless he resigns. That two people still supported him, despite his outrageous bigotry, is a painful sign of our times. Paladino, who was also co-chair of Donald Trump’s New York campaign for President, recently compared First Lady Michelle Obama to a gorilla and stated that he hoped she would be “let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe” to join other gorillas in caves in 2017.