A school teacher in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania has been placed on administrative leave without pay. The announcement, according to NBC Philadelphia, comes after the educator went on a racist tirade in the school’s parking lot last Thursday.
The interaction between the female faculty member and a Black male parent was caught on video and then posted to the parent’s Facebook. The video has since gone viral, receiving more than 250K views since Thursday. Many of the nearly 1.5K reactions include anger and shock.
In the roughly minute and a half clip, you can hear the teacher saying, “You’re probably on welfare, too” to the parent. The man quips back that he has a six-figure salary, and verbally concludes that the woman only said that because he is Black. “That’s right, because you’re Black,” the teacher responds.
She also alleges that the parent is on section and 8 and staged the fender-bender because he saw that she was a white woman and assumed she had money. “Always looking to milk the system,” the teacher claims. The two go back and forth for a while and towards the end of the video the teacher can be heard calling the parent the N-word.
In the caption accompanying the Facebook post, Rasheed Noel says, “I commend the Upper Darby school district for taking quick action on this teacher at Drexel Hill Middle School. They are doing everything in their power to make sure people like this teacher become non existent in any school.”
He goes on to point out where during the exchange the woman calls him the N-word and hits his car in front of students and staff. “After meeting with the superintendent of Upper Darby school district and his staff, I’m hear to say they absolutely care about their community. #ZeroTolerance,” the parent concludes.
In an interview with CNN, Upper Darby School District Superintendent Daniel McGarry called the incident “deeply, deeply troubling” and confirmed that the schoolteacher is on administrative leave without pay. “We’re going to pursue it [seemingly, termination] vigorously,” McGarry said.