Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
A white principal allegedly banned black history classes. She says minority teachers waged a 'racist
Source: Washington Post
A white principal allegedly banned black history classes. She says minority teachers waged a ‘racist campaign’ against her.
By Teo Armus
12/16/2019, 6:42:50 a.m.
February meant it was Black History Month, so Mercedes Liriano taught her sixth-grade language arts classes about the Harlem Renaissance. As she had done every year, the veteran Bronx teacher instructed her middle-school students — most of whom are black, like her — to research and present on famous artists and writers from that period.
But then, she received an abrupt order from the school’s principal, Patricia Catania. The black history lessons had to stop, Liriano says she was told, in an exchange that sent shock waves around the community in 2018. As students organized protests, some faculty accused Catania, who is white, of racial discrimination.
Yet, Catania insists that it’s those teachers — not her — who were motivated by racism. In a lawsuit filed this summer against Liriano, two other teachers and their union, the administrator charged that she was the target of a “maligning, malevolent, and racist campaign” to replace her with a black principal at Bronx Intermediate School 224.
“Calling me a racist is not unlike calling Mahatma Gandhi a violent man — there are just no facts to support the charge,” Catania said in a sworn declaration filed alongside the suit. “However, none of this mattered to my cancellers. They decided I had to go, and that was that.”
Now, Liriano and other teachers have sued Catania, charging earlier this month that the principal — who has since been demoted — racially discriminated against faculty of color at the school in the Bronx’s Mott Haven neighborhood.
-snip-
By Teo Armus
12/16/2019, 6:42:50 a.m.
February meant it was Black History Month, so Mercedes Liriano taught her sixth-grade language arts classes about the Harlem Renaissance. As she had done every year, the veteran Bronx teacher instructed her middle-school students — most of whom are black, like her — to research and present on famous artists and writers from that period.
But then, she received an abrupt order from the school’s principal, Patricia Catania. The black history lessons had to stop, Liriano says she was told, in an exchange that sent shock waves around the community in 2018. As students organized protests, some faculty accused Catania, who is white, of racial discrimination.
Yet, Catania insists that it’s those teachers — not her — who were motivated by racism. In a lawsuit filed this summer against Liriano, two other teachers and their union, the administrator charged that she was the target of a “maligning, malevolent, and racist campaign” to replace her with a black principal at Bronx Intermediate School 224.
“Calling me a racist is not unlike calling Mahatma Gandhi a violent man — there are just no facts to support the charge,” Catania said in a sworn declaration filed alongside the suit. “However, none of this mattered to my cancellers. They decided I had to go, and that was that.”
Now, Liriano and other teachers have sued Catania, charging earlier this month that the principal — who has since been demoted — racially discriminated against faculty of color at the school in the Bronx’s Mott Haven neighborhood.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/12/16/patricia-catania-bronx-middle-school-racism-lawsuits/
4 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
