{"id":144406,"date":"2026-02-25T01:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T01:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/144406\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T01:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T01:32:08","slug":"racist-comment-at-nyc-parent-meeting-ignites-fury-as-black-leaders-call-for-accountability-chalkbeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/144406\/","title":{"rendered":"Racist comment at NYC parent meeting ignites fury as Black leaders call for accountability \u2013 Chalkbeat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York\u2019s free daily newsletter<\/a> to get essential news about NYC\u2019s public schools delivered to your inbox.<\/p>\n

After an Upper West Side parent\u2019s racist comments were caught on a hot mic at a public meeting, Black parent leaders and elected officials say they want to see both accountability for her actions and a broader reckoning from the nation\u2019s largest school system.<\/p>\n

A student from the Community Action School was testifying in person against a plan to close the middle school<\/a> at a Feb. 10 local education council meeting when Allyson Friedman, a parent at another local public school, began speaking on Zoom. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re too dumb to know they\u2019re in a bad school,\u201d said Friedman, who is a professor at Hunter College.<\/p>\n

She then appeared to misattribute and misquote Black historian<\/a> Carter G. Woodson. \u201cApparently Martin Luther King said it: If you train a Black person well enough, they\u2019ll know to use the back. You don\u2019t have to tell them anymore,\u201d Friedman said.<\/p>\n

District 3 Interim Acting Superintendent Reginald Higgins cited Woodson earlier in the meeting as part of his reflections on Black History Month. In the 1933 book, \u201cThe Mis-Education of the Negro,\u201d Woodson described how racism in schools can perpetuate inequities. \u201cIf you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door,\u201d Woodson wrote.<\/p>\n

Friedman\u2019s comments exploded into public view after a recording was posted online<\/a> and drew rebukes from an array of elected officials and parent leaders. Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday called the remarks \u201creprehensible\u201d and \u201cindicative of the exact kind of language that makes students feel as if they don\u2019t belong in our public school system.\u201d A City Hall spokesperson said officials are discussing the incident with CUNY, which oversees Hunter College.<\/p>\n

Several Black parent leaders held a press conference Tuesday to condemn Friedman and call on education officials to take action to address inequities in the system. They urged the city\u2019s Education Department to better promote its Black Studies curriculum<\/a>, deploy the materials more widely, and offer more support for parent leaders grappling with anti-Black racism.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are still fighting to be seen as human,\u201d said Tanesha Grant, the executive director of Parents Supporting Parents NY, which organized the press conference. \u201cOur children are still fighting to be seen as human and we will not allow or tolerate anti-Blackness in our school communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several parents and elected officials said Friedman, a professor in the biological sciences department at Hunter College, should be fired. A Hunter spokesperson said the school is reviewing whether Friedman\u2019s comments violate their policies.<\/p>\n

Friedman said in an email that she inadvertently unmuted herself on Zoom and did not intend to share her comments publicly. \u201cAs a parent, I was trying to explain the concept of systemic racism by referencing a historical example,\u201d she wrote. \u201cMy remarks were not directed at the student speaker, and they do not reflect my beliefs or values. Regardless of context, my words were wrong and caused real harm.\u201d <\/p>\n

Comments come at a tricky time for new chancellor<\/p>\n

The episode comes at a delicate moment for schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels, who was most recently superintendent of District 3. He built a reputation for listening to parent feedback <\/a>and for his focus on integrating schools in one of the nation\u2019s most segregated systems.<\/p>\n

Samuels helped launch the process of closing three middle school programs in the district<\/a>, including Community Action School, partly due to anemic enrollment. District officials are considering moving The Center School, where Friedman is a parent, to a new building more than a mile away. <\/p>\n

The Center School, which is majority white, would share a building with P.S. 191, which is largely Black and Latino and would lose its middle school grades. Separately, the Community Action School, which predominantly enrolls students of color from low-income families, would be closed entirely.<\/p>\n

Those proposals have all generated considerable pushback, and Friedman\u2019s comments reopened longstanding questions about equity and access in a stratified school district.<\/p>\n

Parent leaders at the Center School distanced themselves from the incident. \u201cWe want to be absolutely clear: this parent\u2019s statement does not represent the values of the Center School community,\u201d the school\u2019s PTA wrote in a statement posted to its website. \u201cYet their words remind us that racism is not distant \u2013 it exists in our broader community, and it is our collective responsibility to confront it.\u201d<\/p>\n

For his part, Samuels vowed to support students who were affected. \u201cI know that district quite intimately, and we will be really leaning in and working with the school communities to make sure that we repair any harm that was done to our students,\u201d Samuels told reporters Tuesday. <\/p>\n

Education Department spokesperson Dominique Ellison did not elaborate on what actions the city plans to take but noted that Friedman is not a department employee or parent council member.<\/p>\n

Community Action School parent Nicki Holtzman said the school has done an \u201cincredible job\u201d responding to the incident. \u201cTo my understanding, the kids were not told, and they\u2019ve been protected,\u201d she said. (The student who Friedman interrupted may not have heard the comment because they were testifying in person and Friedman was on Zoom.) Still, Holtzman worries the episode will distract from the school community\u2019s push to keep its doors open.<\/p>\n

Several parent leaders indicated Tuesday that their frustration is much broader than Friedman\u2019s comments. They pointed to repeated instances of systemic racism and anti-Black attitudes, including from other parent leaders.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve watched people employ every archaic, toxic, stereotypical red herring they can to try to slow us down and to try to justify why it is okay to underserve a Black child,\u201d said Erika Kendall, the Community Education Council president in Brooklyn\u2019s District 17. \u201cBut also why it is okay to ignore and dismiss the concerns of a Black parent.\u201d<\/p>\n

NeQuan McLean, the president of the Community Education Council in Bedford-Stuyvesant, proposed one idea for giving parent leaders considerably more power. He said local councils should have the power to sign off on mergers and closures<\/a>, which usually affect schools that are struggling with enrollment and tend to have a higher proportion of Black and Latino children. <\/p>\n

On the campaign trail, Mamdani vowed to end mayoral control of schools \u2014 which gives City Hall much of the power over those decisions \u2014 but later backtracked<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The councils \u201care community school boards that have been stripped of their power, and we need that power back,\u201d McLean said.<\/p>\n

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for Chalkbeat New York\u2019s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC\u2019s public schools delivered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8703,45319,60588,35603,22552,60590,67,11874,881,60589,22555,60591,9730,9,11,10,10780,2585],"class_list":{"0":"post-144406","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-ap","9":"tag-african-american","10":"tag-ap-classes","11":"tag-black-history","12":"tag-class","13":"tag-east-kentwood-high-school","14":"tag-education","15":"tag-high-school","16":"tag-history","17":"tag-history-teacher","18":"tag-learning","19":"tag-matthew-vriesman","20":"tag-michigan","21":"tag-new-york","22":"tag-new-york-headlines","23":"tag-new-york-news","24":"tag-school","25":"tag-students"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}