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Thread 5458

Thread ID: 5458 | Posts: 11 | Started: 2003-03-10

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Texas Dissident [OP]

2003-03-10 17:58 | User Profile

[url=http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2003/03/08/ke030803s377614.htm]Teacher fired for racial remarks-Eastern Kentucky man sent e-mail to school staff [/url]

By Alan Maimon amaimon@courier-journal.com The Courier-Journal

A Harlan County high school teacher who had been suspended after he sent an e-mail saying in part that African Americans are responsible for “about 90%” of violent crimes and the main achievement of Martin Luther King Jr. was the “introduction and promotion of communism” has been fired.

Ralph Crow, 48, a Spanish teacher at Evarts High School, received a dismissal letter yesterday from school district Superintendent Timothy Saylor, who held that Crow’s e-mail was insensitive and demonstrated conduct of an “immoral character.” Crow sent the e-mail Feb. 21 to about 40 staff members at Evarts High. It said that the achievements of whites are ignored so “non-achieving minorities can have the spotlight.” Crow said yesterday his e-mail was meant as sarcasm and that he is a victim of political correctness and an overzealous superintendent.

“He’s using his personal political views to silence me,” Crow said of Saylor yesterday. “He’s basically set out to destroy my teaching career.” Crow said that his right to free speech was violated and that he plans to appeal his firing. He said he hasn’t yet hired an attorney.

Saylor, in a letter to Crow, told the teacher that he had violated state board of education and county school district policies with his use of the school district’s e-mail system. Crow also violated county school regulations on harassment and discrimination, Saylor wrote.

Saylor declined to discuss Crow’s dismissal yesterday. “I can’t really discuss it except to say it’s been taken care of,” he said.

Jeff Vessels, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, said the e-mail raises interesting free-speech questions. It has to be determined, Vessels said, whether Crow committed a violation by using school resources to convey his message and whether his opinions create a bias against any students.

Crow has 10 days to inform Saylor and the Kentucky Department of Education of his intent to challenge his dismissal, said Lisa Gross, a spokeswoman for the department. A three-member tribunal from outside Harlan County would then conduct a hearing on the matter.

As grounds for the dismissal, Saylor wrote in the letter that Crow’s conduct could cause “great disruption” to the school system. Erma Murphy, 71, an African American whose grandson was in Crow’s Spanish class several years ago, said she was surprised the teacher was being accused of racism.

“He and I have conversations on the phone until 12 o’clock at night,” Murphy said. “We talk about cooking and all sorts of things. If he’s a racist, that’s news to me.” Murphy said she is certain her grandson would have told her if Crow had said anything racist in class. Not everyone is jumping to Crow’s defense. Raoul Cunningham, former director of the NAACP voter-empowerment program and a member of the association’s Louisville chapter, said he was disgusted by the e-mail.

“There is no question that it’s racist,” Cunningham said. “It’s just so unfortunate that he chose the profession of teaching.” Crow said the e-mail was prompted by the school district’s distribution last month of an article from The Courier-Journal about a national study concluding among other things that Kentucky schools suspend a disproportionately high number of African-American students.

He said the authors of the study seemed to be saying that blacks are incapable of rising to the same standards as whites.

Chris Gray, an African-American construction worker from Harlan, said he was angered when his mother, a secretary at the high school, showed him the e-mail. “It wasn’t right for him to say things like that,” Gray said. “It’s a blow against African Americans.” Wallace Napier, principal of Evarts High School, where less than 5 percent of the 425 students are black, said Crow was a good teacher who was eager to return to the school after being laid off a few years ago during staff cutbacks.

“There’ll probably be a lot of talk about this,” Napier said.

Aimmie Wynn, a junior, said the email had generated buzz among students. “It’s causing some controversy,” said Wynn, who is white and does not have Crow for any classes. Crow, who has also taught in Arizona, Texas and Virginia, said he has no reason to be sorry for his actions.

He said he lamented the fact that students were being taught about black civil rights leaders including King and Rosa Parks at the expense of learning about the Founding Fathers.

“The truth isn’t necessarily kind,” Crow said. “If Martin Luther King Jr. were white, would there be a holiday for him?”

Roy Batty

2003-03-10 19:18 | User Profile

For some reason, this makes me think of something I saw on TV Saturday evening. My wife likes to watch "Wheel Of Fortune" (yes, I can hear the catcalls already ...) so, I'm sitting there reading, half paying attention. Apparently, the shows for the weekend were taped in Chicago, which is where the host Pat Sajak grew up. Sajak decided to visit the elementary school and High school he had attended. This caught my attention, as in my trips to Detroit (I lived in Detroit until I was 8) show my old neighborhood to look worse than Dresden after the bombing. Well, Sajak's HS was still there, but out front was a gigantic, poorly painted mural, that highlighted "MALCOLM AND ZAPATA", and there are the pictures of both mud troublemakers, replete with armed banditos and gun toting FOI morons. On the side of a HS. Just as silly and stupid as anything seen here in LA. But in Chicago? This much influence by filthy, lowbrow Mexicans? There will be a second civil war. No doubt at all.

Yep, a big mural, a "spotlight", for low achieving minorities. The murals are everywhere, in the figurative sense. As is the spotlight.

mwdallas

2003-03-10 19:51 | User Profile

This is a clear case of religious discrimination -- the man was fired for not accepting the tenets of the religion known as political correctness.

seq

2003-03-10 20:18 | User Profile

Roy Batty:

**This much influence by filthy, lowbrow Mexicans? There will be a second civil war. No doubt at all. **

Chicago, Chicago that minority town.

[img]http://www.ci.chi.il.us/SpecialEvents/html/tonyblair1.jpg[/img]

Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago with Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Pictured (left to right) are Mayor Daley, Prime Minister Blair, Gery Chico, President of the Chicago Public Schools, Cozette Buckley, Chief Education Officer of the Chicago Public Schools, Paul Vallas, CEO of the Chicago Public Schools at Von Stuben High School (April 1999).

Franco

2003-03-10 20:34 | User Profile

Well, I for one am SHOCKED! A teacher suggestin' that Black peepo ain't about peace, tranquility, harmony, singing, dancing and lotsa rainbows and sunshine.

The nerve of that man!

jeffersonian

2003-03-10 21:06 | User Profile

A Harlan County high school teacher who had been suspended after he sent an e-mail saying in part that African Americans are responsible for “about 90%” of violent crimes and the main achievement of Martin Luther King Jr. was the “introduction and promotion of communism” has been fired.

Let's see; The first part of his comment is a statistical fact or it is not, easy enough to check out. The second is a historical fact, one which prompted the FBI, at the time, to have an extensive file on and investigation of Dr. King.

So where is the problem? It is now illegal or offensive to tell the truth? I guess just not towing the politically correct party line is enough to overcome even tenure, the sacred cow of the intellectual elite.

MadScienceType

2003-03-11 16:31 | User Profile

"Wheel Of Fortune" (yes, I can hear the catcalls already ...)

No catcalls here. WOF's educational TV compared to the episode of "Joe Millionaire" I had to sit through. I did see a guy try to but the "vowel" Y once, though.

It is now illegal or offensive to tell the truth?

Well, DUH... Where have you been the past forty years?

Happy Hacker

2003-03-11 18:40 | User Profile

I don't know if the story correctly reports what the teacher said. Blacks do not commit 90% of all crimes, but 90% of all interracial crimes are commited by the 13% of the population that is black. Either way, it's absurd for him being fired for trying to educate his students on facts (even if he may have slightly errored on one statistic). He wouldn't have been fired if he were passing off the value judgment that sodomizing other men is a wonderful thing. We would have had legions of leftists defending his Free Speech right to indoctrinate in the classroom.

jeffersonian

2003-03-11 23:32 | User Profile

**Well, DUH... Where have you been the past forty years? **

Sorry! Stupid of me.

(actually that was a rhetorical question)

N.B. Forrest

2003-03-12 02:29 | User Profile

Blacks do not commit 90% of all crimes, but 90% of all interracial crimes are commited by the 13% of the population that is black.

Actually, the figures are even more astonishing than that: about 7% of those nigras are (comparatively) non-violent hoochie mamas.

It's them bucks we gots to worry about.

MadScienceType

2003-03-12 17:37 | User Profile

Just kidding on my part jeffersonian. I knew what you were doing, but I forget sometimes sarcasm doesn't always translate well in the web's ether.