Zoom and other online video conferencing applications are exposing the underlying racism that infects American society, including in its schools. A Jersey City high school science teacher was recently suspended after students videoed racist rants where he insulted African American students in his class who defended the Black Lives Matter movement.
A Palmdale, California teacher got into trouble when she thought a Zoom meeting with a parent was over and she launched into a racist rant accusing Black people of always lying. She was suspended and then resigned. A Georgetown University professor resigned and another was fired after they were caught on a video disparaging Black students. The entire Board of Education of the Oakley, California school district resigned after a board meeting where they used curses to describe parents. Two-thirds of the children in this district are Latino.
A white Albany, New York police officer either forgot to turn off his body camera or accidentally activated it before launching into an anti-Black racist rant. He was suspended without pay and his department has started procedure to terminate him. The Albany police department is also being accused of systematic racism. Between July 9, 2019 and July 9, 2020, 97% of the people ticketed or arrested in their jurisdiction for marijuana-related offenses were Black. The police chief and a patrolman in Hamilton, Georgia were removed after body camera footage showed them making racist comments about slavery and the Mayor of Atlanta, who is a Black woman. They made the comments just before going on patrol at a Black Lives matter rally. An assistant to the local mayor commented, “I’m not sure if he was stupid enough — obviously he was stupid enough — not to know it was still working and that he still had it on. The words just rolled out of their mouths. There was no hesitation.”
Neither racism nor tech trouble are new during the pandemic, as with police misbehavior, educator misbehavior is just becoming easier to expose. In 2018, a Florida teacher was videoed telling a student from Haiti that she was from a “third world, island country where they don’t have doors." In 2019, a photograph of four teachers and an elementary school principal from Palmdale, California was posted on social media showing them laughing while holding up a noose.
Teachers and police officers are entitled to due process, but on-the-job racist rants must be grounds for immediate dismissal with no second chances. This is not a freedom of speech issue, but an issue of disqualifying behavior. Racists can’t be cops or teachers.
There are over 3.5 million K-12 teachers and 800,000 police officers in the United States. These videoed incidents represent a minuscule number of teachers and police officers. The greater problems are school boards and state legislatures that want to whitewash American history by removing or minimizing the role racism in the past and present shapes this country and police departments that target African Americans. Right-wingers disparage “cancel culture,” but they are the ones that want to ban teaching the underside of American history and protect misbehaving police officers.
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