Lawsuit Alleges Nice California Teacher Taught Students About Racism, By Being Racist
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Lawsuit Alleges Nice California Teacher Taught Students About Racism, By Being Racist
Racial transcendence is alive and well in Brentwood, California, if the allegations in a new lawsuit are true. The case states that Steven Carnine, an 8th grade history teacher at Paul Revere Charter Middle School and Magnet Center, figured that the best way to teach his kids, several of whom are Not White, about racism, would be just to lob a bunch of racial stereotypes at them :
The parent accused the teacher of using the N-word, said “black people were not smart,” as well as suggesting teen Michael Brown, shot to death by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., “got what he deserved.”
[...]
During a follow-up discussion, Carnine brought up the shooting of Brown by former officer Darren Wilson.
“In discussing the incident, Carnine said that the guy was a thug and he got what he deserved,” according to the suit, which alleges that the teacher also said: “Black people are judged for not being smart because they are not smart. A lot of them are just athletes.”
He seems friendly. According to CBS Los Angeles, the teacher also said that if there were The Blacks walking behind him at night, he would be very scared.
The student whose parents filed the lawsuit is of mixed race, and claims that when he said the ugly, racist things about black people, he looked directly at her, which is probably not what you are supposed to do if you are just trying to give examples of racist remarks, rather than actually being racist. But maybe he's just the show-and-tell sort and he's trying to make sure the visual learners don't get left behind!
Is it possible that he was just method-acting (this is Brentwood after all) and everybody is overreacting?
However, that same day, Carnine, during a lecture on the Civil War, stated that “people didn’t like Lincoln because he was a (N-word) lover,” the complaint alleges. Carnine was “staring and smirking” at the plaintiff when he made the remark, according to the suit.
Hard to tell! Somebody should tell Mr. Carnine how to issue a Trigger Warning, for the fact that he is about to say horribly racist things about black people.
However, it was not just confined to blacks, oh no, racists never just hate one thing. We do not know if he also stared directly at the Jewish kids in the class when he (allegedly!) also said that "we all know Jews like to hoard their money," but we guess probably, that must be his "teaching style." It's quite something that this is happening in Brentwood, though. Maybe somebody should check his MySpace friends to see if Mel Gibson is in his Top Eight.
According to the principal, Carnine is "old-school," which could mean that he doesn't use email very good and gives all the kids a Werther's for participating in class, or maybe he means that he simmers with a seething contempt for the blacks and the Jews, like Old School people do sometimes.
Stay tuned for next week's unit, Fags, Bitches and Messicans: Who's Ruining America The Worstest?
[ CBS Los Angeles via Raw Story ]
Lawsuit Alleges Nice California Teacher Taught Students About Racism, By Being Racist
I'm afraid that you're not as well informed about the facts in this case as others are, Celeste. You're not at fault for that, of course; all you have as a source is a news report about a lawsuit; others like myself have direct experience with the school, its personnel and its students as a basis for making judgments about this case.
First, on what basis are you claiming that the rally was predominantly composed of "white 'parents' and past students?" Have a careful look at the pictures below, which were taken at the rally by the news media. You'll see people of every color there. And the kids? They're all carrying backpacks because they're not past students, they're current students, mostly from the immediate area arriving early to participate because the rally had to be held early. Why? Because the front of the school faces a very narrow two lane residential street, and within minutes of the rally's end it will be jammed with arriving cars, school and municipal buses bringing 2,000+ of their classmates to the campus from all over the city.
Second, and far more importantly, these people weren't there because they didn't have a racist experience; they were there because no racist statements were ever made in that classroom while Carnine has been teaching there. The students and their parents know that because they know Carnine, and the content he teaches, as do I. For example:
The context in which Carnine used the objectionable phrase "n****r lover" was his traditional lesson, taught for many years to thousands of children who have attended his history classes at Revere, with the full awareness of their own parents as well as the administrators and other teachers at Revere, about the Civil War and the events leading up to it, specifically the Lincoln Douglas debates of 1858, during which Senator Stephen Douglas famously and repeatedly attacked Lincoln as a "n****r lover."
In the highly-gifted version of the 6th grade history class he taught at Revere in the past, Carnine always showed his students a copy of the front page of an 1858 newspaper, which included a report about the debates in which Douglas was quoted without editing. I know this because our kids were in that class, 11 and 7 years ago respectively, had that lesson, and they were barely able to contain themselves when they got home after it had been taught, not only because of its controversial content, but because it was their first look at a "primary source text."
The historical significance of Douglas' attacks, which were thought objectionable even in those days and were commonly altered out of respect for public decorum by newspaper editors to "Negro lover" or some similar euphemism considered less offensive at the time, is that they precipitated the following response by the man who was destined to become our 16th president:
"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone."
The historical significance of Lincoln's reply is enormous, and for our boys it was eye-opening, but I see no merit in reviewing that issue here. What is worth imparting to you, in my view, is how that lesson impacted our boys over the long term and likely many other students of Carnine's over the past 20+ years he's been teaching at Revere. He is routinely referred to by his students as one of the best, and often the best, teacher they've ever had, which is exactly how my boys recall him.
In our case, it resulted in far more than a single evening of enthusiastic story-telling or an occasional fond memory; it became one of countless small steps that helped our boys to develop a love affair with history that continues to this day.
Our oldest graduated from UCLA last year with two bachelors degrees earned simultaneously, winning the History Department's highest honors and a special award for his honors thesis on the U.S. economy of the 19th and early 20th century, as well as the Mathematics Department's high honors. He begins work on his PhD in Math at USC in the fall, and once he has reached that goal it's his intent to pursue a doctorate in history back at UCLA.
Meanwhile, our youngest is deeply involved in his freshman year at Cal, where he's currently taking a graduate-level class studying the history of public transportation in California, an upper division course about the architectural history of the University of California, a lower division intro to the history of Roman civilization, and a refresher course in Italian, in which he attained fluency during high school as a direct result of the influence in middle school of Carnine, who is a lover of all things Italian and lived there for some time, as I recall.
Context matters. Sometimes it's all we have to distinguish between a truth and a falsehood.
One other thing: we're progressive Democrats and Jewish, we do not tolerate any form of prejudice, and we'd never have sent the boys to Revere, or kept them there for all three years of middle school, if there were anything the least bit questionable about the school, its personnel or students, who reflect every economic, political, racial, religious and social background residing in the over 100 zip codes from which the student body is drawn.
My regards to you. Try to keep an open mind about this until all of the facts are in. There were 36 other students of various ethnicities who witnessed the events in Carnine's classroom last January, and exactly none of them have corroborated the allegations made in the lawsuit, according to my best understanding at the present time.
Lizard Nation?...