Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza is facing charges for anti-white bias at the NYC Department of Education in a $90 million lawsuit. As reported by the NY Post, Carranza is denying the charges, brought forth by three high-ranking DOE employees, all white women, who claim they were demoted without cause in favor of less-qualified persons of color by him after he was placed in charge of the agency in April 2018. “Under Carranza’s leadership, DOE has swiftly and irrevocably silenced, sidelined and punished plaintiffs and other Caucasian female DOE employees on the basis of their race, gender and unwillingness to accept their other colleagues’ hateful stereotypes about them,” wrote the group’s lawyer, Davida S. Perry, in the filing.
On Wednesday, when the blockbuster suit was first formally announced, Carranza responded saying the charges are “absolutely not true”, although he has yet to directly address the specific allegations brought up against him. “I’m not surprised that he denied it,” said Perry, who is representing former DOE employees Lois Herrera, Jaye Murray and Laura Feijoo. “I’m confident that when this case moves forward, his denials are going to be proven lies.” Perry said the allegations are well-founded and that he believes Carranza’s anti-white rhetoric was more widespread than even the eight-figure lawsuit asserts. “There are going to be many people that are going to come forward and say that he said those things that he’s now denying saying,” said Perry, on Thursday in a press briefing.
As per the legal filing, Carranza who previously served as the superintendent of the Houston Independent School District, had at a lower Manhattan headquarters assembly in June 2018, threatened the DOE employees to either back his changes or find new jobs. “If you draw a paycheck from DOE . . . get on board with my equity platform or leave,” Carranza had said, as alleged in the filing.
Carranza insists that he his only shuffled the upper ranks of DOE in a quest to find the most qualified candidates to benefit the students. “Then those are my clients,” Perry said. “He wants them, he already had them. He’s removed them. So what I say to that is his definition of qualification is proven in race and gender.” “That’s a problem,” continued Perry. “That’s where he’s distorting the human rights law because he’s making decisions based on the color of people’s skin and their gender and that’s illegal.”
“We hire the right people to get the job done for kids and families, and these claims of ‘reverse racism’ have no basis in fact,’ ’’ said the department of Education for the second time, in response to the allegations.
