Bob CollinsThe latest controversy involving a public employee posting on Facebook doesn’t involve any specific racial mentions, but Black Lives Matter wants a Como Park Senior High School teacher fired anyway.
The posts from Theodore Olson have been deleted but BLM kept screenshots of them and say it’s an example of a “white supremacist teacher.”
The posts aren’t that much different from what a lot of teachers have said more privately over the years: kids run amok at high schools.
Como Park’s student body, however, is only about 24 percent white, with a third of the students listed as African American and about an equal number as Asian, according to the school’s website.
Which students was Olson talking about?
Black Lives Matter’s Rashad Turner says on his Facebook page when he tried to confront Olson, he was thrown out of the school.
Another indication that we need more teachers of color and more teachers who care about and will teach all kids. Its teachers like Theodore Olson who bring the reputation of the great teachers in our district down. If the SPFT is protecting bad teachers like this one, who the is protecting our children ???? We have to be the ones to protect our children, they are under attack from the SPFT. This same teacher, feels that the teachers should govern the school.
Clearly Olson is critical of his school’s inability to control some students. But does that qualify as racist speech? Olson’s daughter, Juju, insisted online that the posts weren’t racist, but BLM supporters said the reference to “pipeline-to-prison” is.
“You are trying to get my dad fired,” Juju Olson wrote. “I would get anybody fired if they were racist. My dad isn’t. People commenting on here have no idea what they’re talking about they’re only trying to get him fired. My dad is a supporter of black lives matter. Please explain to me what he has done that is racist. I am asking you to remove this and revoke whatever you have said to anybody in the union my dad doesn’t deserve this. You are wasting your time fighting and trying get the wrong person fired my dad is an anti racist person. You are both on the same side of the battle against racism.”
Turner will meet with St. Paul schools superintendent Valeria Silva over the postings, the Star Tribune reports today.
