During the first week of October, Brooklyn Edwards was in the school gymnasium during her lunch period when she said a classmate took a piece of cotton out of his pocket, tossed it on the ground, and told her to pick it.
Brooklyn, 15, described the incident a month later at the Johnston County, North Carolina, school board meeting. She said she’d dealt with racist bullying frequently as a Black student at Princeton Middle/High School, in a majority-white small town southeast of Raleigh. Classmates called her racial slurs, she said, including in front of teachers who failed to react. One classmate suggested she kill herself, so she might be reborn as a white girl, Brooklyn said.
“It’s bad enough we have to deal with racism in the real world. We shouldn’t have to deal with it in school,” she told the school board, pleading with them to investigate racial harassment in the district. “I’m speaking up for the ones that are too scared to speak up for themselves.”
After sharing her experiences at the board meeting, “I felt relieved and glad they finally knew what was going on,” Brooklyn said in a recent interview, “but I had a lot of doubt they were going to do anything.”
Kaiulani Moses, Brooklyn’s mother, said it was disheartening to see the Johnston County school board focused on a different issue this fall: ensuring that critical race theory, an academic concept that examines how racism is perpetuated through policies and institutions, is not taught in schools. She believes that sent the wrong message to students who bullied their classmates and the teachers and administrators tasked with ensuring safety.
“It has made these children and some personnel and administrators at this school feel protected,” Moses said. The district is one of hundreds nationwide where some parents and conservative activists demanded that schools block classroom discussions of “white privilege,” cut back on equity training for teachers and stop hiring diversity consultants. The Johnston County Board of Commissioners promised in June to release $7.9 million in school funding if the district banned critical race theory, which administrators said schools did not teach.
Source: NBC News
Also Read: ‘Racism, Violence Won’t be Tolerated’: US School Backs Teacher Targeted by Abusive Student
A central Minnesota school district is doing some soul-searching this spring after reports that students of color have been targets of racist bullying.
A parent who says her child was subjected to hateful social media messages aired her frustration in a video that’s been viewed thousands of times on social media. It’s led to calls for a change of culture in the district — and in the wider community.
Andrea Robinson said she’s grown accustomed to dealing with biased and even outright racist behavior toward her Black children in the Rocori public schools.
Robinson said they’ve been called a racial epithet by other students, and have been singled out unfairly for discipline when they lashed out in response.
Then last fall, Robinson learned that her 15-year-old daughter was the subject of bullying on social media. The disturbing messages in a Snapchat group that she said was created about her daughter mention getting ropes and hanging Black men from trees.
Even worse, she said, is that one of the teens who posted the racist messages was later chosen to receive a Rocori Proud award, which recognizes students whose actions reflect the district’s values.
Robinson recorded an emotional video voicing her frustrations and posted it to Facebook.
“I’ve always told my kids to take the high road,” she said in the video. “Kids, I’m sorry. Essentially what I’ve done is silenced you. So today, I’m stepping out against this. I’m not going to be silenced.”
Robinson’s video revived a heated and sometimes painful conversation about race in this rural district of roughly 2,000 students, who come from the Stearns County towns of Rockville, Cold Spring and Richmond. It has raised questions about the role schools should play in providing a safe and welcoming atmosphere for all students, in school and online.
Read the complete article at: MPR News
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school district
A New York middle school principal has been demoted after being accused of racist behavior
A New York middle school principal has been demoted after being accused of racist behavior
A white New York middle school principal who was accused of racist conduct after allegedly barring lessons on black history will continue to work in the school district despite an ongoing New York City Department of Education investigation.
Patricia Catania, who has worked for the city’s school system for more than 25 years, will be starting a new position in the fall as assistant principal at a nearby high school, Department of Education spokesperson Danielle Filson first told the New York Daily News. She confirmed the news with INSIDER.
Catania garnered controversy in February 2018 for allegedly telling an English teacher at Intermediate School 224 in the Bronx that she couldn’t teach black history lessons, confiscating a student-made poster of the African American entertainer Lena Horne, and targeting black students and teachers for abuse, according to the Daily News. They reported that both students and teachers at Catania’s school believed she had created a hostile environment for black students and teachers since starting the job in December 2016.
Does Trump speech bring out anti-Semites and racists?
Does Trump speech bring out anti-Semites and racists?
Sadly, this is only the most recent example of the kinds of intolerable acts that have been committed over and over the past few years by those full of hate and bigotry. Why do they keep happening? It is imperative that we keep asking: Is President Donald Trump at least partially accountable for this anti-Semitic and racist behavior?
It’s a question I asked as recently as August in an op-ed that went viral when it was shared by Dan Rather, a journalist known well to Texans and readers of this page. Some claim that Trump’s racist discourse and constant appeals to fear and division are unrelated to the behavior we saw in Fall River. Or the behavior we saw in Christchurch, New Zealand. Or Charlottesville, Va. Or even in Houston, when vandals scrawled swastikas and Trump’s name on a statue and a section of the Berlin Wall at Rice University.
But this position — that Trump isn’t at least partially accountable — fails to be aware of the capacity of rhetoric to empower and embolden despicable people to come out of the shadows, to make it safe for them to act on their prejudice and anger.
Tesla Is a ‘Hotbed for Racist Behavior,’ Worker Claims in Suit
Tesla Inc.’s production floor is a “hotbed for racist behavior,” an African-American employee claimed in a lawsuit in which he alleged black workers at the electric carmaker suffer severe and pervasive harassment.
The employee says he’s one of more than 100 African-American Tesla workers affected and is seeking permission from a judge to sue on behalf of the group. He’s seeking unspecified general and punitive monetary damages as well as an order for Tesla to implement policies to prevent and correct harassment.
“Although Tesla stands out as a groundbreaking company at the forefront of the electric car revolution, its standard operating procedure at the Tesla factory is pre-Civil Rights era race discrimination,” the employee said in the complaint, filed Monday in California’s Alameda County Superior Court.
Tesla Inc.’s production floor is a “hotbed for racist behavior,” an African-American employee claimed in a lawsuit in which he alleged black workers at the electric carmaker suffer severe and pervasive harassment. The employee says he’s one of more than 100 African-American Tesla workers affected and is seeking permission from a judge to sue on behalf of the group. He’s seeking unspecified general and punitive monetary damages as well as an order for Tesla to implement policies to prevent and correct harassment. “Although Tesla stands out as a groundbreaking company at the forefront of the electric car revolution, its standard operating procedure at the Tesla factory is pre-Civil Rights era race discrimination,” the employee said in the complaint, filed Monday in California’s Alameda County Superior Court. “Although Tesla stands out as a groundbreaking company at the forefront of the electric car revolution, its standard operating procedure at the Tesla factory is pre-Civil Rights era race discrimination,” the employee said in the complaint, filed Monday in California’s Alameda County Superior Court.
Another Fox News Employee Fired For Racist Behavior
Bob Beckel, who is co-host of “The Five,” has been fired from Fox News after making an offensive remark to a Black worker, reports The Huffington Post.
A black IT worker who came to work on Beckel’s computer reported the comment on Tuesday, according to attorneys Douglas H. Wigdor and Jeanne Christensen, who are currently representing the IT employee and other current and former staff ― including anchorman Kelly Wright ― in a class action suit alleging rampant racial discrimination at Fox News.
Beckel allegedly told the employee he was leaving the office [and refusing his services] because the man was black, Wigdor and Christensen stated.
Wigdor — who represents 11 Fox News employees in the racial discrimination lawsuit against the beleaguered network which also axed Bill O’Reilly — also said that Beckel tried to convince the African-American worker to withdraw his complaint, reports The New York Times.
Bob Beckel, who is co-host of “The Five,” has been fired from Fox News after making an offensive remark to a Black worker, reports The Huffington Post. A black IT worker who came to work on Beckel’s computer reported the comment on Tuesday, according to attorneys Douglas H. Wigdor and Jeanne Christensen, who are currently representing the IT employee and other current and former staff ― including anchorman Kelly Wright ― in a class action suit alleging rampant racial discrimination at Fox News.
Beckel allegedly told the employee he was leaving the office [and refusing his services] because the man was black, Wigdor and Christensen stated. Wigdor — who represents 11 Fox News employees in the racial discrimination lawsuit against the beleaguered network which also axed Bill O’Reilly — also said that Beckel tried to convince the African-American worker to withdraw his complaint, reports The New York Times. reports The New York Times.