McKinney, TX Teacher Advocates Segregation [Update: She's Been Fired]
LatestA fourth-grade teacher at Bennett Elementary School in Frenship ISD, which serves Lubbock, TX, has written, deleted, and faced widespread public shame for a Facebook post in which she details her anger at Eric Casebolt’s resignation and her support for a return to a bygone era in which blacks were formally segregated on one side of the town.
To reiterate, this Texas elementary school teacher saw the video screenshotted in the post she shared—saw a white agent of the state pull his gun on a bunch of teenagers while brutalizing a black girl’s bare body—and wrote:
This makes me ANGRY! This officer should not have had to resign. I’m going to just go ahead and say it… the blacks are the ones causing the problems and this “racial tension.” I guess that’s what happens when you flunk out of school and have no education. I’m sure their parents are just as guilty for not knowing what their kids were doing, or knew it and didn’t care. I’m almost to the point of wanting them all segregated on one side of town so they can hurt each other and leave the innocent people alone. Maybe the 50s and 60s were really on to something. now, let the bashing of my true and honest opinion begin… GO! #imnotracist #imsickofthemcausingtrouble #itwasagatedcommunity
It is essentially safe to say in 2015 that any time you hear someone saying “I’m not racist,” they’re hella racist. It’s the historically cancerous cousin of “I don’t mean to be rude.” It’s also phenomenal that the intellectual escapism around race in America is such that a white woman can see that video, write a post longing for the good old days when blacks didn’t have civil rights, and then honestly think she can claim not to be racist.
Anyway, Karen Fitzgibbons is responsible to her workplace for her public communication: a statement from Frenship ISD reads, “If an employee’s use of electronic media interferes with the employee’s ability to effectively perform his or her job duties, the employee is subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment.” Well, I think overt and unapologetic racism interferes with an elementary school teacher’s abilities to effectively perform her duties as well—but as of Wednesday, Fitzgibbons is still teaching.