Racism Allegations Against Principal Ben Chavis

Check out the allegations made against a notorious charter school principal in the letters cited in this East Bay Express article: Racism Allegations Against Principal Ben Chavis. The article links to a set of letters(PDF) written by a group of Mills College students and educators who visited the school, including this snippet from the group's professor:

The visit began as scheduled at 9:30 am. At 9:45, one of my students, an African American male named Unity Lewis, arrived late. Dr. Chavis immediately began shouting at him that he needed to leave, and that he was an embarrassment to his race. When Unity objected and assumed that Ben was not serious, Ben grew more and more agitated. Ben then jumped out of his chair and "chased" Unity out of the building, shouting racial epithets at him and making threats such as "I'll be happy to fight you. Let's take it outside!" Ben continue to threaten Unity in a very aggressive manner, pushing him out the door and threatening him with physical harm. I followed them outside and when Ben saw me he stopped making threats to Unity and instead stormed back inside.

[...]After sitting down again, Ben remained quite agitated, and repeated several times thatif any of the white students had been late he would not have said a thing, but that as an African American student, Unity needed to be "taught a lesson". He then continued that the women in the class would want to "mother" him and that the problem with African American males were that their mothers were always trying to protect them. This portion of the visit continued with his ongoing rantings about the problems with "darkies" and the kinds of things that "darkies" do.

Wow. That's just one version of the events and not the most outrageous version. Check them all out.

No wonder this guy doesn't care about, or discourages, parent involvement in his school—he'd probably end up screaming insults at them. And this guy and his school are held up as a model of success? Sounds like a target for a lawsuit.