Once upon a time, a white lady social studies teacher decided she wanted to teach her students a lesson on how it felt to be slaves. To illustrate her lesson on the Middle Passage to her Bronx middle school students, she selected some black students, had them come to the front of the classroom and lie down on the floor in front of their classmates.
She asked the students “You see how it was to be a slave?”
When one of the students joked and said she felt fine, Patricia Cummings stepped on her back and asked “How does it feel? See how it feels to be a slave?”
Cummings taught the lesson multiple times at Middle School 118—a Bronx school with a student body that is 81 percent black and Latinx and just 3 percent white. She was subsequently removed from her classroom teaching duties and sent to the New York Department of Education’s infamous “rubber room” and is currently facing termination.
In response to that, Cummings claims she is the victim of reverse racism and has filed a lawsuit. In her Notice of Claim, Cummings says she is owed $120 million in damages and claims her lawsuit could become a class action reverse racism lawsuit worth $1 billion.
The New York Daily News reports that Cummings’ attorney has even said that white teachers who work in the Bronx deserve combat pay, describing it as a “war zone.”
Woooooo, chile. The racism jumped out.
Tom Liotti, the attorney representing Cummings, told the Daily News “It’s a scandal. There is blatant racism and reverse discrimination in the public schools of New York City. This is why white parents do not want to send their children there.”
“It’s no longer the blacks and minorities who are being discriminated against,” Liotti said. “It is discrimination against white teachers who are making great sacrifices to be there.”
Cummings claims that her Jan. 9 lesson was a “teachable moment” she took advantage of after showing her students a five-minute clip from the movie Freedom. She said the four black students were volunteers that she asked to sit close together to illustrate the “cramped conditions” aboard a slave ship crossing the Middle Passage. She denies that any of the students were lying and floor and also denies making physical contact with any of them.
Cummings also accused the DOE investigators of ignoring evidence and a witness that backed up her story. The DOE said an investigation into her actions determined she used poor judgment.
“We’ve begun the process of firing Ms. Cummings based on an investigation of this unacceptable behavior and her performance as an educator,” DOE spokesman Doug Cohen said. “We’ll review this baseless lawsuit.”
In her claim, Cummings says that New York City Mayor de Blasio, Councilman Jumaane Williams, other politicians and even Power 105 radio host Charlamagne Tha God all wrongly humiliated her and labeled her a racist.
“This is a case of blatant, reverse discrimination and we are going to teach the City and those responsible a lesson. This goes for Mayor de Blasio who will have to learn that his constituents are multi-ethnic, racial and religious. They include white people and dedicated teachers,” he added.
Cummings received a discontinuance notice from the DOE on Sept. 17 which notified her that she will be fired in 30 days.
But of course the white person who committed the racist offense is once again the victim in the situation—and not the people she committed the racist act against.
Y’all know how this goes.
Second verse, same as the first.