Join the GOOGLE +Rubber Room Community

Sunday, May 24, 2020

NYC Chancellor Richard Carranza Gets a New Title From Irate Asian Americans: “Race-Trafficker-in-Chief’’


NYC Schools' Chancellor Richard Carranza
Oh boy, here we go again. Carranza and his assistants are so obviously in power without a clue as to what to do, it's embarrassing. It seems that they jump the minute they are told to do something, and they pick whatever is on the closest shelf.
Now he is starting bias training to fight bigotry targeting Asians. When Carranza arrived here from out West, he picked on the "toxic white" people in the NYC Department of Education administration, showing his implicit bias against Caucasians. He threw out several high-level white Superintendents and replaced them with minority individuals, which started the "toxic white" lawsuits against him.
Then he found discrimination against black and Latino kids, who were supposedly barred from the toxic white-dominated Specialized High Schools and other Gifted and Talented programs. So, he set up anti-bias training to stop this bias. 
Now Chancellor Carranza is seeing - or being told to see - bias against Asians, and has started  a training program to stop this.
Those 'toxic white people' just are biased against everyone, right? Oh, wait. Are blacks and Hispanics also getting the anti-Asian bigotry training, or are they only victimized by toxic white people? I'm actually getting confused. Who is biased against whom?
Maybe Carranza's new title, "“race-trafficker-in-chief’, is appropriate after all, and I can leave this quandary for another time.
The latest news did allow me to recall one of my favorite books, Alice in Wonderland, and the delightful nursery rhyme about Tweedledum and Tweedledee:
Tweedledum and Tweedledee
    Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
    Had spoiled his nice new rattle.
Just then flew down a monstrous crow,
    As black as a tar-barrel;
Which frightened both the heroes so,
    They quite forgot their quarrel.[1]

Susan Edelman and Kate Sheehy, NY POST, May 24, 2020

A Chinese-American advocacy group says that having city schools Chancellor Richard Carranza oversee instruction to fight Asian bias “is like having the KKK run training on anti-Black bigotry.”
The group, the Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater New York, issued a statement ripping the “race-trafficker-in-chief’’ after the Department of Education told The Post on Saturday that Carranza now wants his controversial anti-black- and anti-Latino-bias training to also fight bigotry targeting Asians.
“Unbelievably, the man who commits explicit anti-Asian bigotry just added anti-Asian bigotry to his implicit-bias training for Department of Education staff,” the group said.
“This is, after all, the man who smears Asians that they think they ‘own’ admissions to Specialized High Schools, while he pursues policies that seek to exclude large swathes of Asians from these schools,” according to the statement.

A rep from the DOE called the remarks “toxic rhetoric” that just creates division.

“We’re going to continue implicit bias training because it is not about any one race or ethnicity — it is about giving people the tools to prevent and confront bigotry, and as a city, it’s something we need now,” the rep, Nathaniel Styer, said.

“This is a distraction rooted in baseless attacks while the chancellor is working around the clock to keep students and staff safe and engaged in learning during this crisis. We invite everyone to join us.”
The group was referring to Carranza’s push to eliminate entrance exams involving the city’s elite high schools, tests that many Asian-American students have traditionally done well on.
“This is, after all, the man whose DOE uses code phrases such as ‘schools that don’t look like the city’ to disparage Asians for not having the right look,” the group said.
“This is, after all, the man whose DOE sponsored the Center for Racial Justice in Education that declared that Asian Americans ‘benefit from White Supremacy’ by ‘proximity to White privilege.’

The Center for Racial Justice has been paid about $400,000 by the DOE to helm workshops, including in communities, as part of Carranza’s anti-bias initiative. The claims that “white supremacy’’ and “white privilege’’ have aided Asian-American students were made by CRJ presenters at a gathering with Manhattan parents in 2019.
“To have Carranza run training on anti-Asian bigotry is like having the KKK run training on anti-Black bigotry,” the CACAGNY said.
“Anti-Asian bigotry is a serious problem for Asian Americans, not to be used for such exploitation.
The first step for the DOE to address anti-Asian bigotry in NYC is to get Carranza out of NYC.”
The scathing release came the day after The Post reported that Carranza was starting up his “implicit-bias” training again — this time remotely because of the coronavirus pandemic — and that it was so sorely needed because of bias against Asian-Americans. The global contagion is believed to have started in China.
“This workshop is necessary now more than ever,” DOE spokesman Nathaniel Styer told The Post on Saturday.
“The city has seen an increase in bias and bigotry directed at Asian and Asian-American New Yorkers. These trainings prepare our staff to be a part of the fight against this bigotry.”
DOE rep Nathaniel Styer responded in a statement, “There is no time for this kind of division and toxic rhetoric, and we’re going to continue implicit bias training because it is not about any one race or ethnicity – it is about giving people the tools to prevent and confront bigotry, and as a city, it’s something we need now.
“This is a distraction rooted in baseless attacks while the Chancellor is working around the clock to keep students and staff safe and engaged in learning during this crisis. We invite everyone to join us.”
See also: