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NY NAACP Head Calls Charter School Parent A Tool Of "Slave Masters"

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Hazel Dukes
The head of the New York chapter of the NAACP has made headlines for bluntly excoriating the concerned parent of a charter school student. The background: The NAACP is part of the teachers' union lawsuit against the Department of Education, which wants to close 22 failing schools and open charter schools in their place. One concerned Bronx mom, Janette Ramos, recently emailed NAACP head Hazel Dukes to urge the NAACP to drop the lawsuit. "If you and the NAACP continue on this horrible lawsuit against my daughter's school and the fellow 18 charter schools, it will not be the best legacy to leave behind," Ramos wrote. The Post reports that Dukes's reply was swift and, well, to the point.

"You are not a member of the NAACP and don't understand that you are doing the business of slave masters," Dukes explained to Ramos in an email sent June 1st. Ramos, whose daughter attends the Bronx Success Academy charter school, is now demanding Dukes's resignation. We called Dukes at her office to seek comment, and her assistant told us that she is out of the office today, adding, "There's an article every day about something or other, and she's not going to comment on every one of them." But this article, with its loaded rhetoric, is special! Given Dukes's prominent position in the organization, you'd think she'd at least tone it down a notch—"slave master" is not the preferred nomenclature; "Unpaid Labor Supervisor," please.

At a rally defending the lawsuit last week, the NAACP and supporters made the point that many charter schools share space in public schools that are struggling. State Bill Senator Bill Perkins told City Room, "Co-location is a form of segregation. The fact is, when you put a wall between one kid and another kid, that’s second-class treatment."

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Comments [rss]

  • S.D.

    It's Hazel Dukes. Of course she said that...

  • Mr Mel

    Here's a link to the NY Times story about her conviction for theft. She probably ran the only OTB in the country that lost money. She's a common thief and a racist in her own right.
    http://www.nytimes.com/1997/10...

  • GrahamCracked

    Give this idiot some pity.  In her mind she is a slave... You see, if racism doesn't exist then Hazel and her race-baiting ilk suddenly become pretty damn irrelevant - and thus, make a LOT less money. 
    Of course she is gonna resort to slave-era rhetoric, she has slave mentality, it is her bread and butter.  She wakes up every day a slave - a slave of ignorance and victimhood.

  • LICnative

    Old Hazel has been riding the racist gravy train for a good long while. It's a cottage industry to find "racism" where none exists. She ran OTB into the ground, why not the NAACP?

    Many of the public schools don't work, regardless of how many countless billions you put into it. You can keep on trying the same mistakes or create a new paradigm. Unfortunately, Hazel don't get paid that way.

    Keep on keeping it real Hazel. The 21 st century is rolling right on by 'ya. Keep pretending you can't get a front seat on the bus or are denied service at the Woolworth lunch counter. Those were your salad days, right?

  • Peanut_Butter

    I got a 2-word response for you: Hazel Dukes.

  • RabbiLaFunque

    Dukes is absolutely right. The charter school movement is part of a trend (closer to a conspiracy) to both destroy the 20th century legacy of free, public access to education, destroy teacher's unions, privatize the educational system for the profit of large corporations (a la prisons and the military, eg "contractors") and to ultimately resegregate society via a new model which weeds out undesirables (the poor) and funnels them to prison, low wage labor, etc.

    Or did you believe the bullshit that we live in a "post racial society"?

  • AGWAGW

    Many public school systems are broken. If teachers' unions block innovation (merit pay, results-based evaluations) needed to fix them, how else can innovation occur, except by opting out of the public school system? And resegregation already took place. It didn't wait for the charter schools to come around.

  • taracorinne

    agreed.... look at any AP class room and then the regulars class and the segregation is blatantly obvious.

  • ohmygodshutup

    aaaaaaaaaaaahahaha. you must be fun at dinner parties.

  • RabbiLaFunque

    I only attend bar mitzvahs

  • someotherdude2011

    How many 13 year olds do you know? Chat room much?

  • Guest

    your 1st para is nearly dead on. but remember "poor" has no race.

  • Politburo

    Meaningless without the full text of both emails.

  • Trustafarian

    this is a lot more disturbing than some dick shots

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