Haitians protest racist abuse of school children
By
G. Dunkel
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.
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