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Haitians protest racist abuse of school children

Published Apr 20, 2005 4:15 PM

For a month the New York Board of Education has been “investigating the incident.” And while it is “under investigation,” school officials won’t comment.

According to parents and children involved, on March 16, two fourth-grade Haitian students got into a scuffle at PS 34 in Queens Village. Assistant Principal Nancy Miller screamed at them in front of all the other students in the lunchroom: “In Haiti they treat you like animals and I will treat you the same way here.”

She forced all 13 Haitian students in the school’s only bilingual class to sit on the floor and eat their rice and beans with their hands.

Some of the children were sobbing and couldn’t eat, but Miller didn’t relent. She wouldn’t even let them share a plastic spoon.

The principal of the school, Pauline Shakespeare, backed up her assistant. She called the bilingual students out of their classes, tried to convince them it never happened, and offered some of them ice cream if they changed their stories.

According to one Haitian parent who spoke to Marguerite Laurent of the Haitian Lawyers’ Leadership Network, the principal described her child’s behavior as “animalism.”

The ad-hoc Committee for Justice for the 13 Haitian Children at PS 34 held a picket line in front of the school on April 12 to express the burning indignation in the Haitian community and to demand that Miller and Shakespeare be fired.

“The community is definitely outraged about this,” said Dahoud Andre, host of the radio program “Lakou Nouyòk.”

The outrage and burning indignation drew some political support from city politicians, who held a press conference at City Hall demanding that Mayor Bloom berg, who now controls the city schools, go to PS 34 and apologize to the students and their parents.

The Department of Education announ ced April 15 that Miller had requested a transfer to the district office because she was concerned for her personal safety. Elsie Saint-Louis Accilien of Haitian Americans United for Progress responded, “Nobody threatened that woman’s life.”

The Department of Education has also said it is treating this incident seriously, but after a month, it still has not concluded its investigation—the classic sign of a cover-up.

The Committee for Justice is therefore calling on all progressives to contact Regional Superintendent Judith Chin at (718) 281-7528, e-mail JChin@nycboe .net, or Jennifer Graham, head of the Response Team for Chancellor Joel Klein on this PS 34 matter, at (212) 374-5156.

The ruling class of the United States has spent 200 years actively denying the hum an ity and heroic accomplishments of the Haitian people, whose ancestors rose up and militarily destroyed the class that was trying to keep them in slavery. The two coups against President Jean-Bert rand Aristide, which were financed, organized and controlled by the United States, are another expression of this lengthy campaign.

Miller’s racist and anti-Haitian comments, as well as the cover-up by the Department of Education, also have to be seen in this context.