“only born to clean floors.”

[deep]

Teacher Accused Of Making Slur Against Mexicans


Kristyn Hartman
Reporting

(CBS) CHICAGO Angry parents want a teacher at a Latino charter school in the Albany Park neighborhood fired after she made derogatory comments against people from Mexico.

As CBS 2’s Kristyn Hartman reports, the incident began when a seventh-grade art teacher at Aspira Haugen Charter Middle School, at 3729 W. Leland Ave., thought students had gotten paint on her jacket. That is when the teacher allegedly said “all Mexicans are criminals” and that they were “only born to clean floors.”

Some pupils at the school became extremely upset.

“It surprised me because I’ve never seen a teacher talk to us Mexicans that way,” said student Orimar Ramirez. “She said we were trash and all we were good for is to clean up floors.”

Orimar says the remarks caused him and others to cry.

“I was offended,” he said.

Ramirez and his friends were not the only ones who took offense. School principal Jose Velazquez said about two dozen parents complained when they heard the alleged remarks.

“It’s disturbing even if there’s suspicion of it happening,” Velazquez said. “It’s totally unpleasant, but sometimes we have to deal with it, sometimes there’s misunderstanding; we’re just going to have to find out what it was that happened.”

Velazquez says the school asked for two days to respond to the matter and should know more about how they plan on handling it by Wednesday.

“We have not decided what to do with the teacher until we finish getting everybody's information, and then we can make a sound decision as to what will take place,” he said.

Maria Rodriguez, who has a niece at the school, says termination of the teacher would be a sound decision.

“I think probably she has an anger problem or something,” Rodriguez said.

But another parent says she is reserving judgment.

“A lot of kids are out of control in this school,” Linda Moran said. “It doesn't mean you have to target race; I don't condone doing that. But I'd like to hear the whole story.”

I hope this is not the correct story.

 

[BVS]

Wow

 

[nbcrusader]

Well, you have the Mayor of Los Angeles proclaiming "we clean your toilets".

I hope this is not true.

I wonder if students can now get teacher's fired with claims of racial comments.

 

[Muggsy]

 

[melon]

Reminds me of my French teacher in HS. Funny enough, she was an immigrant herself.

But I'm sure if these kinds of remarks were levelled against homosexuals in a classroom, groups would be cheering it as "freedom of speech."

Anyway, if this is true, I hope an example is set out of this teacher.

Melon

 

[anitram]

There was a case of a teacher in Windsor, Ontario who got his license revoked last year after he continually made remarks about Chinese students eventually running laundromats, how Italians are just going to end up on construction so they don't need to study too much and after he had a parent-teacher conference with the mother of twin boys and he opened it up with "Would you like me to start with dumb or dumber?"

So if these allegations are true, I don't see this woman lasting long in the school.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

I think any teacher who makes racist, homophobic, religious slurs, sexist comments, etc in the classroom should be fired. My feeling is that the sexist comments would be considered the most acceptable, I had a few teachers who did and one who made me uncomfortable. I never complained about it and I really wish that I had. I knew that his behavior and comments would be seen as a "joke" and considered acceptable. This was in junior high, when I was more naive and afraid.

 

[nbcrusader]

So if these allegations are true, I don't see this woman lasting long in the school.

What happens in the gap between a claim of offensive comment and the conclusions of any investigatory body?

Do you pull the teacher from the class based on the allegation of a student?

 

[BVS]

On the news last night they announced she was fired. Apparently no one was surprised she made these comments...

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

What if they express those views on the internet and in other places outside the classroom?

http://www.wltx.com/news/news19.aspx?storyid=37795

"(Cayce) - Inside the walls of Brookland-Cayce High School, you expect students to be treated equally. But a viewer tip led News19 online where a teacher's comments left us asking questions.

"These sorts of things are going to upset people, but the truth can be very upsetting," said Brookland-Cayce High School teacher Winston McCuen.

That truth, at least according to McCuen, is that black people are inferior to whites.

"Intellectually, yes they are," said McCuen. "This has been confirmed over and over, and this is a generalization. Again, there are some blacks who are more intelligent than individual whites. But as a rule, that is true. I-Q tests prove it over, and over and over."

News19's J.R. Berry asked McCuen, "Do you think slavery in America was a good thing? "Yes," said McCuen. "In America there was a rational assessment saying listen, if we give these people freedom right as they are and you have to go back to see how they were, you can't assume they were like us.

This isn't the first time Winston McCuen has been in the news. In 1999, he was a history teacher at St. Joseph's, a private high school in Greenville. McCuen hung a Confederate flag in his classroom. When parents complained, he was told by school officials to take it down. He didn't, and he was fired."