White Professor Claims Racist Remarks Taken Out Of Context
White NYC Professor Claims Racist Remarks Caught On Hot Mic Were Taken Out Of Context
A white professor of a public college in New York City was caught on a hot mic making racist comments during a Feb. 10 Community Education Council meeting about a proposal by Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration to close or relocate a number of public schools. The educator, who attended the meeting virtually, is now claiming her remarks were taken out of context and that the mic she didn’t realize was on only captured the parts of her remarks that sounded explicitly anti-Black — and, well—nah, ain’t nobody buying that old excuse.
From the New York Times:
As one student, who attendees said was Black, spoke out to praise her teachers and lament the potential shutting of her school, another attendee — identified as Allyson Friedman, an associate professor at Hunter College who was attending as a public school parent — cut in.
“They’re too dumb to know they’re in a bad school,” Ms. Friedman said, according to a recording of the meeting.
She was attending virtually and was unaware that her microphone was turned on. “If you train a Black person well enough, they’ll know to use the back,” Ms. Friedman continued. “You don’t have to tell them anymore.”
She appeared to be referencing a comment made earlier in the meeting by the local school district’s interim acting superintendent, Reginald Higgins. He had mentioned Carter G. Woodson, the scholar known as the father of Black history, who said, “If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told.”
Shock, confusion and outrage swept across the faces of parents attending the meeting. Then one interjected, using the professor’s name: “What you’re saying is absolutely hearable here. You’ve got to stop.”
Now, what Friedman, a tenured associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, claimed in an emailed statement is that she had been “trying to explain the concept of systemic racism” to her child, who was in the room with her, “by referencing an example of an obviously racist trope,” and that the only part of the conversation that was audible was what was caught on the mic.
“My complete comments make clear these abhorrent views are not my own, nor were they directed at any student or group,” she said. “I fully support these courageous students in their efforts to stop school closures.”
So, a white professor was trying to give her presumably white child an impromptu critical race theory lesson, when the microphone she didn’t realize was on caught the parts where she appeared to be calling Black people “stupid” and explaining how easy it is to train Black people into being subservient, and only those parts were audible, not the rest of the conversation, which would have magically put the parts that were heard in their proper context. And we’re supposed to believe that explanation, even though it sounds like the standard excuse given by virtually every public servant who has ever been caught saying something racist that they didn’t expect anyone else to hear besides the person they were saying it to.
Look, I’m not saying that Friedman is definitely lying to cover up the racism she didn’t expect outsiders to hear; I’m just saying there are probably exposed participants in racist Republican group chats who are listening to her excuse and thinking, “Pffft—amateur. “
And, of course, the fine folks on the platform previously known as Black Twitter are not buying it and are still calling for Friedman to catch a pink slip to go along with her racist slip of the tongue.
Look, at some point, white people are going to have to understand that their accidental racism narratives just aren’t going to hold up like they hope they will. Black people have simply been observing anti-Blackness and white supremacy for far too long.
And if they can’t adjust their attitudes toward us, at least they should learn to adjust their microphone settings correctly.
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