Posted on 10/12/2005 6:47:22 PM PDT by Gator61
City education officials are investigating the claims of a pair of boys from Oklahoma who moved to Brooklyn to experience diversity, and instead say they got schooled in racism and violence. Mom Lisa Brown, 33, told the Daily News she relocated her family from their small Oklahoma town so her husband, a Brooklyn native and social worker, could more easily find work and her sons could experience different people and ways of life.
Brown enrolled her sons, Sloan, 12, and J.T., 13, at Ebbets Field Middle School in Crown Heights. But when the boys, who are white, showed up, their mom said, they got a chilling indication of what was to come.
"Oh my gosh, we are going to have fun this year," a security guard muttered, according to Brown.
Things quickly got worse.
Sloan was beaten mercilessly, called "cracker" and "white boy," and chased into traffic by his new classmates, his family said.
The abuse got so bad that Sloan routinely bolted out of the building to find his brother and run to a nearby subway, dodging verbal and physical attacks, he said.
"It almost makes me cry," Sloan said. "I'm scared to go back."
The brothers skipped school all last week while their parents tried to sort out the mess.
"Do I have to send the National Guard in to get my children an education?" asked the distraught mom.
When Brown tried to alert Principal Marge Baker to the abuse, "the principal refused to take the calls," she charged.
Brown filed several police reports at the 71st Precinct stationhouse about the alleged abuse, but said she was ignored.
Police sources said precinct cops did take the incident seriously but believe school staff are in a better position to deal with what appeared to be a series of schoolyard fights and bullying.
The boys' stepfather, Ken Brown, requested a transfer for the boys on Sept. 28, but Education Department officials noted he can't seek the change because he is not a custodial parent.
Eventually, the fedup mom went to nearby Elijah Stroud Middle School to transfer her sons there, but said the principal told her: "They'll have the same problem here."
Education officials promised to help the Browns - after being contacted by The News.
"The principal was not sufficiently attentive to this situation," the Education Department said in a statement. "Upon learning of the situation, the region is taking immediate action to arrange a transfer for these children.
"We will fully investigate what happened, including whether racist statements, which are not tolerated, were made and take appropriate action."
Brown said the Education Department called her several times over the weekend, after The News made queries, pledging to get the kids into Elijah Stroud and chastising her for calling in the press.
Despite the principal's warning, Lisa agreed to send her boys to Elijah Stroud tomorrow.
"I'll make sure my kids are safe because it is the school system's job to make sure they are," she said.
For Sloan and J.T., escaping Ebbets Field Middle School will be a relief. The school opened in September as one of the city's many new small schools, with plans to "become the crown jewel" of Crown Heights, according to the Education Department Web site.
The Browns said their ethnically and racially diverse neighbors in Prospect Heights have embraced them, and they thought New York was "the greatest place on Earth" - until they started battling the school system.
"I was excited to expose my children to a complete variety of people," Lisa Brown said. "I thought it would be an advantage. I always told my children that children could be cruel - but not to this extent."
Reality does not have a racist face.
I think what people are attacking is these people using their kids for their own validation and social experimentation.
As an adult, if you want to be brave, stupid or ignorant and walk into the lion's den, then you are an adult and can make that choice.
If you make the kids walk into that den, while you get to go work at your stupid social workers office downtown where you get to co-mingle with a "wonderfully diverse" crowd and talk about how terrible prejudice and bigotry is to all the rainbow colored heads that nod approvingly, then you have done your children a harmful disservice.
You as the adult don't have to worrry about getting whacked on the back of the head by a broomstick. You don't have to worry about getting jumped by six angry kids who don't like you because you look different. You don't have to worry about having your lunch tray knocked out of your hands every single day. You don't have to have angry kids confronting you, calling you out and humiliating you if you are lucky, and beating the tar out of you if you aren't.
Did you read the article and see the pictures of her oldest kid? Does HE look like a kid equipped to fight the good fight? I doubt it...his liberal parents did not prepare him for that. They are a peace at all costs family.
As D'Souza said, racism was considered to be the product of ignorance, which can be overcome. If these boys grow up to dislike blacks, that will be the product of experience, and that will be considerably more difficult to overcome...JFK
Racist card is always played when reality speaks the truth. Only in PC America does racist card trump reality/truth.
May I remind everyone that every single school shooting was white children shooting and killing other white children.
I never understood the intellectual aspect of the diversity fetishists. Gather any number of people together and you will get a diversity of views, backgrounds, opinions, etc.
They seem to use it as a surrogate for 'race,' which is even more problematic. By using race as the guide, that suggests there is somehow a uniquely black, uniquely chinese, uniquely latino point of view.
The trick is in the 'uniquely.' Either it's unique to the race, or comperable insights can be offered by others of other races (that is, it;s not unique). The premise seems to me that there are ways of thinking that largely are impacted by race.
That's pretty bigoted.
I moved out of NYC in 1960 because I refused to send my child to NYC public schools. It had nothing to do with race. The schools were cesspools then and surely are worse now.
Well, they seem to have experienced it. I wonder if she's happy now?
People, including children, will get away with whatever they are allowed to get away with.
Black children are not inherently thugs, nor are white students inherently racist.
You label the parents, the students, and everyone but the people in charge of the school.
Why not think about Mayor Blooming-idiot and his School Chancellor Klein.
And by the way-just so you know...if I sound angry or sarcastic, it is not with you even though I disagree with the sentiment you expressed.
I am angry at these parents. It would be one thing if you had to go somewhere because you had no choice and desperately needed a job to feed, clothe and house your family. I have no issue with that, that is life.
If you are responsible, you might research the school system of the area you are thinking of relocating to.
From reading this article, their decision making process was a mile wide and a nanometer deep, like most liberals.
I don't think its a practice what you preach issue here. And I don't think anybody is happy that the kids were harmed.
The appeal of this story on FR is that someone can be such a fountain of shallow liberal cliches and suffer physical harm as a result of it (which isn't to say 'because of it').
It's a perfectly sane and civil conclusion to find humor in their misadventure.
Leave that cesspool and move back to Oklahoma.
My grandfather moved his family out of NYC around 1930 after having emmigrated there in 1927. It was a cesspool then.
I know that is racist but it is reality. Liberals hate to admit it and play the racist card.
The entire school system in NY is out of control. There are NO good schools there.
They have to go Europe to find people willing to teach in NYC.
Only when you live here do you get to know that it's a cesspool.
I don't blame the parents at all.
They need to get their kids out of there and to safety. NOW. Other than that, I guess they're disillusioned and unwilling to admit they made a misjudgement.
Kind of like all the folks who voted Clinton and won't admit they were wrong.
***she relocated her family from their small Oklahoma town so her husband, a Brooklyn native and social worker, could more easily find work and her sons could experience different people and ways of life. ***
Oklahoma schools! Well, there is the problem. When the rest of the class found out that these Okies could write their own names, they felt so intimidated they had to run them off!
"Oh my gosh, we are going to have fun this year," a security guard muttered, according to Brown.
A classic!
On another note, please ping me if somebody starts a pool for how much longer these two poor brothers with the malicious and abusive parents have to live.
I was a transit there for a few years.
Here's some free advice. If you outsiders are going to send your kids to an urban public school in Crown Heights, Brooklyn of all places, you better also sign them up for fighting training from someone like Chuck Lidell - they'll need it.
Maybe you fools can learn about the real world from your kids who now have a crash course from the school of hard knocks.
No. Black or white kids are not inherently thugs, and I know of what I speak.
But kids are kids, and can be the cruelest creatures on the planet. It is human nature. You can blame the principal and the school system, I will too. But it doesn't change one bit the environment, which cannot be controlled by the school system.
Yes, I label these people, because the label fits. It has been said by David Horowitz (and I paraphrase):
Conservatism takes into account past history, reality, human nature and a sense of what can reasonably be achieved by politics.
Liberals have no past. There is only a utopic future that justifies all means to achieve.
In this case, they had a utopic vision of people of all backgrounds, colors and races living togther in harmony, and threw their poor kids right into it without a thought to reality.
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