In a modern-day George Wallace moment, an Atlanta public school principal is standing in the schoolhouse door plotting segregation of students.
The twist: She’s Black.
According to the website Black Enterprise, an Atlanta parent, Kila Posey, has filed a federal civil rights complaint about Principal Sharyn Briscoe’s plan to segregate classrooms at Mary Lin Elementary School by race.
Posey is also Black.
Posey discovered the plan last year when she requested a new class and a specific teacher for her daughter. Briscoe denied the request, saying that class was “not one of the Black classes.”
The principal reportedly told the mother that her child would be isolated if they were put in a White class.
“I explained to her she shouldn’t be isolated or punished because I’m unwilling to go along with your illegal and unethical practice,” Posey said.
A stunned Posey subsequently filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, which is still investigating, according to media reports.
“First, it was just disbelief that I was having this conversation in 2020 with a person that looks just like me — a Black woman. It’s segregating classrooms. You cannot segregate classrooms. You can’t do it,” Posey, who serves as vice president for the parent teacher association, told local media in Atlanta.
Briscoe reportedly claimed she thought the segregation plan was best for the students. Accordingly, all Black students went into two classes, while all the while kids were spread across six of them.
In a statement, the Atlanta school district denounced Briscoe’s idea.
The school system “does not condone the assigning of students to classrooms based on race. The district conducted a review of the allegations. Appropriate actions were taken to address the issue and the matter was closed.”
How it was resolved was not disclosed.
Posey remains flabbergasted by the incident.
“My community, had they known about this, would probably be extremely upset. Not just the black parents but also White parents,” she told local media.
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So if I send my kid to that school and I put m&ms in his lunch box, well the principal make him separate his m&ms by color?