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Amid uproar over a Manhattan mom’s racist comments during a community meeting, New York City schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels vowed to roll out new parent training and grow the number of schools that use the city’s Black Studies curriculum.
“We need to equip our staff to have courageous conversations focused on shifting attitudes and interrupting prejudice, addressing controversial issues, and coalition-building,” Samuels said during Wednesday night’s Panel for Educational Policy meeting.
He promised to launch training next month to provide “our parents with the tools to combat racism” and said the city’s Black Studies curriculum “should be expanded throughout the city in more districts and schools.”
Samuels also said the Education Department is working on a “broader, system-wide plan because we know that this is not an issue that is localized in District 3,” referring to the commenter’s district, a diverse swath of Manhattan that spans from the Upper West Side to part of Harlem.
Samuels’ comments come in response to a District 3 education council meeting earlier this month. On a hot mic, a mom appeared to insult the intelligence of a Black student who was testifying against a plan to close the child’s school, which mostly serves Black and Latino students, before going on to comment about Black people’s place in society.
The schools chief said the episode “has exposed what many in the Black community believe to be ever-present and simmering anti-Blackness in our city.” Samuels’ promises came one day after Black parent leaders and elected officials urged the city to take more decisive action in response to the incident, which has drawn national and international headlines.
The parent’s offensive remarks came during a Feb. 10 District 3 Community Education Council meeting that included discussion of city proposals to close three of the area’s middle school programs. At the hybrid meeting, with people speaking in person and virtually, a Black student at the Community Action School was testifying in person against the plan to close the school when Allyson Friedman, a parent at another local public school, could be heard on a hot mic on Zoom.
“They’re too dumb to know they’re in a bad school,” said Friedman, a professor at Hunter College.
She then appeared to misattribute and misquote Black historian Carter G. Woodson. “Apparently Martin Luther King said it: If you train a Black person well enough, they’ll know to use the back. You don’t have to tell them anymore,” Friedman said. (The District 3 interim acting superintendent had quoted from Woodson earlier in the meeting in his remarks on Black History Month.)
In the 1933 book, “The Mis-Education of the Negro,” Woodson described how racism in schools can perpetuate inequities. “If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door,” Woodson wrote.
Friedman has since been placed on leave from Hunter College, the Daily News reported.
Friedman previously said in an email that she inadvertently unmuted herself on Zoom and did not intend to share her comments publicly. “As a parent, I was trying to explain the concept of systemic racism by referencing a historical example,” she wrote. “My remarks were not directed at the student speaker, and they do not reflect my beliefs or values. Regardless of context, my words were wrong and caused real harm.”
Parent leaders push for more sweeping changes
Education Department officials did not indicate whether schools would be required to use the Black Studies curriculum, which is currently optional. The federal government has taken a hostile stance toward diversity, equity, and inclusion programming and has investigated some school districts for policies that are specifically geared toward Black students.
Nicole Brownstein, an Education Department spokesperson, said the city does not track how many schools use the Black Studies curriculum, but said it is available to all schools. She said more details about the city’s plans would be released soon.
Multiple parent leaders told Chalkbeat that they were glad that Samuels delivered a more forceful statement on Wednesday that specifically called out anti-Blackness, compared with his initial response on social media days earlier.
“I was very elated with the chancellor’s remark last night,” said NeQuan McLean, the president of the local parent council in Bedford-Stuyvesant. “He understands this work.”
McLean noted that Samuels is Black and worked on integration efforts during his previous roles as superintendent in Brooklyn’s District 13 and Manhattan’s District 3. City officials emphasized that Samuels worked to scale up the Black Studies curriculum in District 3, where it is taught in dozens of classrooms.
But McLean and other parent leaders also want the city to go further to equip schools with resources and give community education councils tools for handling racist comments.
Tanesha Grant, the executive director of Parents Supporting Parents NY, which organized a press conference earlier this week calling for broader changes, said the city should require schools to use the Black Studies curriculum. She said she has raised concerns that the city’s most popular elementary school reading curriculum is not culturally responsive.
“We need something in place that says that it is mandatory for every public school to offer Black Studies,” Grant said.
Grant said it was frustrating that Samuels’ more forceful response came after parents began pressuring the city. (Samuels said he regretted not speaking out sooner.)
“If it hadn’t been for the parents getting together and organizing,” Grant said, “I don’t think his response [on Wednesday evening] would have been like that.”
Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.
