Reverends Irene Monroe and Emmett G. Price III spoke with Boston Public Radio on Monday about middle school Milton teacher, Zakia Jarrett who was briefly placed on leave for a lesson she taught on racism.
Jarrett, an English teacher, prepared a videotaped lesson discussing the poems of Langston Hughes and Nikki Giovanni, as a way to speak about Black victims of racism and violence.
Price described how somebody took a snippet from her lesson and distrubted it to many people.
"They sent it around not only to the district but to police officers, forcing her to feel like her life was threatened," he said. "I think she should receive the teacher of the year award for how to age-appropriately bring up this challenging notion of racial violence and police brutality."
The decision to place Jarrett on leave was reversed on the same day, Monroe added, but that this action was a kind of liberal racism.
"It's exhausting because in many ways when you're teaching the children you also have to teach the parents," she said. "White liberals think that they're progressives when it comes to talking about race but in essence they are the hindrance."
Monroe is a syndicated religion columnist and the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail and a visiting researcher in the Religion and Conflict Transformation Program at Boston University School of Theology. Price is professor of worship, church & culture and founding executive director of the Institute for the Study of the Black Christian Experience at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
Together they host the
All Rev’d Up podcast, produced by WGBH.
