The story has garnered much attention, but I was there.
On February 4, 2026, I logged into a Community Education Council District 3 Zoom meeting as a parent advocate for the Community Action School (CAS) on the Upper West Side. I had been invited to speak about my son, who once needed speech services and flourished in the smaller learning environment, and is now an honors math major at a premier HBCU. I came ready to testify to what happens when schools see our children, believe in our children, and expect them to soar.
As I waited for my turn, a CAS student began to speak with a mixture of courage and vulnerability that I recognize in my own college classroom. The kind of voice that tells the truth even when the room is not ready to hear it.
And then it happened.
The interruption was not just confusion — it was an act of racism from a parent, and it was flagrant, visible, and unapologetic: “They’re just too dumb to know they’re in a bad school,” the voice said. “F…, if you train a Black person well enough, they’ll know to use the back door, you don’t have to tell them anymore.”
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This parent, referring to “those” students not being able to learn the right way and suggesting they would probably “end up cleaning anyway,” also referred to the students as “these Black kids.”
Time stopped in that moment. A lecture I shared with my City College students hours earlier, Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal,” and institutionalized racism became real to me. Institutionalized racism had moved from a theoretical concept in a course syllabus to a voice in a meeting about our students’ future. The thing that was equally upsetting to the words being spoken was the silence that filled the room afterwards.
A room filled with professional people, people with titles, people with degrees, people who have equity written into their mission statements, all silent. Perhaps they were silent because they were in utter shock, like I was, but the silence lingers too long.
I felt something rise in me — scholar, mother, pastor, and the strength of those who came before me — all at the same time. I knew that if I allowed that moment to pass, I would be participating in the very system I teach my students to critique.
So I named it — racism.
I wrote in the chat to the person who made the remark, Allyson Friedman, Professor at Hunter College, what others did not — that her comments were disgusting, that they were harmful, that that language had no place in a space that claims to serve children. Then I heard, “Mute.” I exclaimed, “It’s too late to mute — tell us how you really feel.”
My hands were shaking. My heart was racing. When the meeting moved forward, I had to step away and scream — not because I was weak, but because I am tired of watching our children be strong in spaces that are still not safe for them — tired of watching adults choose comfort over courage.
In my classroom, I teach that racism is embedded in systems. That night, I was reminded that systems are made of people, and people make choices. Allyson Friedman, a professor from Hunter College, chose to speak words that dehumanized Black children.
And I chose to interrupt, because our children must be protected in real time — not in a report, not in a statement, not after a committee meets. Let me say plainly what this moment requires.
A person who publicly declares that Black children are incapable of learning is not fit to prepare future teachers. Allyson Friedman must be removed from the academic classroom.
Not retrained. Not reassigned. Removed. And if Hunter College does not remove Friedman, students should protest — not out of disruption, but out of a deep commitment to protecting the dignity, safety, and humanity of their learning environment. This is not about punishment; this is about providing protection. Protection for Black children to see their own brilliance when they arrive at school. Protection for future teachers who have never been allowed to have their ideologies supported because of ideological shifts, and to protect the integrity of the institution that claims its value is equity.
We need real-time protocols when racism enters public educational spaces. We need clear and public consequences for those who engage in it. We need protection for the parents, students, and educators who speak up in the moment. We need institutions that move with urgency when our children are harmed.
Because neutrality in the face of racism is not neutrality. It is an agreement.
Dr. Michele Sweeting-DeCaro is an adjunct professor at CUNY’s City College Center for Worker Education and John Jay College, Director of the CWE Writing Center, an author, pastor, and president of the CWE Alumni Association.