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Veteran Bronx Educator Claims She Was Fired After Refusing ‘Black Panther' Salute [NY Post]
[NYPost] Pledge your allegiance to “Wakanda Forever” — or else.A veteran Bronx educator claims she was fired in part because she refused to mimic a salute to Black power from the 2018 comic-book movie “Black Panther” during superintendent meetings. At official gatherings of high-level Department of Education bosses, then-Bronx superintendent Meisha Ross Porter often asked the group to do the arms-across-the-chest gesture of solidarity from the mythical African nation of Wakanda. The salute is considered a symbol of empowerment. When Rafaela Espinal — a Dominican-American who describes herself as Afro-Latina — declined to join in, she “was admonished and told that it was inappropriate for her not to participate,” according to a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit filed Feb. 3 against the city DOE, Chancellor Richard Carranza and some of his top-ranking lieutenants. Espinal was one year shy of earning a lifetime DOE pension when she was abruptly fired from her role as head of Community School District 12 in Bronx without explanation, after repeatedly refusing to do the “Wakanda Forever” salute, according to the lawsuit. Desperate to keep her retirement benefits and health insurance, the single mom — who recently earned a doctorate — eventually accepted a humiliating demotion to school investigator, a role which requires only a high school diploma and which left her with no permanent desk or phone. Porter, who was later elevated by Carranza to the post of “executive superintendent,” a promotion she celebrated with a lavish gala, has a Twitter timeline packed with group shots of DOE staff doing the “Wakanda Forever” salute. One shot features Carranza — who couldn’t manage to perform the gesture correctly in the pose — and Espinal. The image showed Carranza, Porter, Espinal and others during the chancellor’s tour of the five boroughs, according to a source. But when repeatedly asked to salute “Wakanda” at other professional meetings, Espinal felt the gesture “introduced a racial divide where there should be none,” said her lawyers, Israel Goldberg, Helen Setton and Domenic Recchia. Porter would often talk about the militant civil rights group the Black Panthers when asking superintendents to do the “Wakanda” salute, noting her father was a member, the attorneys said. Fellow DOE administrators also allegedly told Espinal she wasn’t “Black enough” and she should “just learn to be quiet and look pretty,” she claims in the $40 million suit. She was forced to clean out her office on a Sunday and district staffers were forbidden to communicate with her, Espinal charges in court papers. Porter and Watson-Harris declined to comment. Posted by: Move Bolted923 2021-02-21 |
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