White Social Studies Teacher Fired For Teaching a Racist Slavery Lesson Wants to Sue for Reverse Racism

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October 4, 2018

By Monique Judge, The Root.com

Patricia Cummings
Screenshot: CBS Local New York

Once upon a time, a white lady social studies teacher decided she wanted to teach her students a lesson on how it felt to be slaves. To illustrate her lesson on the Middle Passage to her Bronx middle school students, she selected some black students, had them come to the front of the classroom and lie down on the floor in front of their classmates.

She asked the students “You see how it was to be a slave?”

When one of the students joked and said she felt fine, Patricia Cummings stepped on her back and asked “How does it feel? See how it feels to be a slave?”

Cummings taught the lesson multiple times at Middle School 118—a Bronx school with a student body that is 81 percent black and Latinx and just 3 percent white. She was subsequently removed from her classroom teaching duties and sent to the New York Department of Education’s infamous “rubber room” and is currently facing termination.

In response to that, Cummings claims she is the victim of reverse racism and has filed a lawsuit. In her Notice of Claim, Cummings says she is owed $120 million in damages and claims her lawsuit could become a class action reverse racism lawsuit worth $1 billion.

The New York Daily News reports that Cummings’ attorney has even said that white teachers who work in the Bronx deserve combat pay, describing it as a “war zone…”

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