Community leaders, elected officials, and education advocates gathered on Tuesday to condemn racist remarks from a Hunter College professor that were made at a district education council meeting in Manhattan.
“We are not debating intent. We are naming impact,” said Parents Supporting Parents NY Executive Director Tanesha Grant, one of the signers of a letter calling for the removal of the professor, identified as Allyson Friedman, from the education space. “If you speak anti-Blackness in a public education space, you are unfit to educate Black children.”
The Community Education Council (CEC) 3 district covers parts of the Upper West Side, Harlem, and Morningside Heights in Manhattan. In a public hearing held on February 10, a group of middle school students from Community Action School (M.S. 258) stayed late to testify in-person against the closure or “phasing out” of their school. Demographically, the school is 29% Black and 65% Latino.
The inciting comment
About an hour into the recorded testimonies, and while a student was speaking, a voice on the Zoom portion of the meeting interrupts the video, unaware that she wasn’t muted.
“They’re too dumb to know they’re in a bad school,” said Allyson Friedman, an associate professor at CUNY’s Hunter College in the biological sciences department. She is not a CEC member, but a parent in the district. “Apparently Martin Luther King said it, like, if you train a Black person well enough, they’ll know to use the back, you don’t have to tell them any more.”
Friedman was immediately told by another attendee that what she said was heard in the Zoom meeting and that she “had to stop.” According to Wendyliz Martinez, who was on the call at the time, there was a reaction in the group chat, but the kids in the meeting didn’t hear anything. Shortly after, Martinez said that Friedman took down her last name and school affiliation.
“This is an example of people that do have these beliefs. The mindset that kids aren’t worthy of being taught,” said Martinez.
Friedman also misattributed the quote to King in this instance. The real quote comes from Carter G. Woodson’s “The Mis-Education of the Negro” published in 1933, explained Dr. Shango A. Blake, who is president of Black Edfluencers-United (BE-U). Woodson wrote about the “back door” in his book, which takes a critical look at structural oppression and how the mindset of inferiority and subjugation taught to Black children and adults in turn creates self-limits on their potential. His work was never a justification for disparaging Black students, though, said Blake.
“Students advocating for their community deserve affirmation and protection, not dehumanization. Critiquing systems is necessary. Calling children dumb is not a critique,” said Blake, “It is harm.”
“Those are her words. She put Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s name on that during Black History Month. And she got it wrong,” said Grant.
Friedman has since offered an apology, saying that she was speaking to her child in her room at home and wasn’t directing her comments at the students.
Calls for removal
“She has to go because if it were one of us, we would have been gone too. Period,” said Councilmember Rita Joseph, the former chair of the council’s education committee.
“It’s racist. It’s anti-Blackness. And not enough people are saying it,” said Assemblymember Chantel Jackson, who is fervently calling for CUNY to fire Friedman and remove her from other education spaces. “They’re not hanging us up and lynching us outside anymore. They’re doing it by coming into our public school system and teaching our kids.”
Additionally, education advocates want Black studies properly implemented throughout the city’s public schools.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said that the anti-Blackness in the comments is inherently a part of the country’s history and education system, as well as other marginalized communities.
“All of the other spaces where there is bias, there is also anti-Blackness,” said Williams in a virtual community meeting on Feb. 24, “Whether it is women, whether it is [the] LGBTQ community, whether it’s our Asian brothers and sisters, or Jewish or Muslim brothers and sisters. But there has to be honesty; there is anti-Blackness in those communities. And that is part of the problem. And that is why people are frustrated when they’re asked to speak out about other biases, which I will continue to do. But then the anti-Blackness is ignored.”
The CEC3 leadership released a statement: “Regardless of intent, these comments were deeply harmful and wholly unacceptable.”
Newly appointed Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels, who was previously the Superintendent of District 3. He has posted in statements online that Friedman’s comments were “reprehensible.” He said he is personally committed to working closely alongside current Superintendent Dr. Reginald Higgins. “Our students and our community deserve better. Even more, our students do not deserve to be spoken to or about in this way,” said Samuels.
Councilmember Eric Dinowitz, who is currently chair of the council’s education committee, also confirmed that Samuels is committed to more support and training for CEC’s. He called for an investigation into Friedman, but not outright banning her from CEC meetings or her being fired from her job.
On this point, Dinowitz and former Councilmember Charles Barron got into a heated exchange during the virtual community meeting on Feb. 24. Barron firmly believed that if the statements had been anti-Semitic in nature, then Friedman would have already been fired from CUNY.
“The bottom line is don’t accept rhetoric from elected officials that’s not gonna really get down with you on these major issues, because if he doesn’t do something this simple, I will guarantee you, when it comes to the real tough issues, he will not be there for you,” said Barron.
As of Feb. 24, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC)/CUNY posted that Friedman is under review. “Racism has no place at CUNY. Her remarks are being reviewed by the Department of Education and CUNY,” said PSC/CUNY.