Christoper Moreno Westlakes teacher cartoon compares cops to KKK & slave owners in 5 panel images, causing parents, educators & police disconcert, calling out one sided portrayal.
Did one teacher go too far? A Westchester County high-school teacher has been condemned after handing out an image to students on the Black Lives Matter movement — comparing modern-day cops to slave owners and the Ku Klux Klan.
Westlake HS educator Christoper Moreno gave his 11th-graders a handout Sept. 8 on the first day of class. The image came as part of a five-frame cartoon panel, showing in each panel a white man kneeling on the neck of a black man from different historical periods.
In the first frame, a pirate is shown kneeling on a black man in chains having been captured, with a ship floating in the background. The second shows a slave owner with a whip. The third is of a member of the KKK, who has a noose around the black man’s neck.
The fourth frame shows a police officer during the segregation era, with the words ‘White Only’ written on the wall over the officer’s shoulder.
In the fifth frame, a modern-day police officer is kneeling on the neck of the black man, depicting the death of George Floyd which sparked the ongoing BLM protests across the country.
Bad Education? Westchester County high-school educator, Christoper Moreno, gave his 11th-graders a handout Sept. 8 with an image on the BLM movement — comparing modern-day cops to slave owners and the KKKK https://t.co/RUIBqgY8Hq pic.twitter.com/ONWGp1wMS0
— Adam Milstein (@AdamMilstein) September 13, 2020
An attack on police or just showing awkward reality?
In each frame, the black man is struggling to say ‘I can’t breathe’, the words gasped by George Floyd before his death on May 25 in Minneapolis.
The images didn’t go down too well with student parents the nypost reports.
‘My daughter showed me the paper. I said, ‘What is this?! You’ve got to be kidding me!’’ Westlake parent Ania Paternostro told the post. ‘This cartoon compares the police to the KKK. It’s an attack on the police.’
The mother said she protested to Mount Pleasant School District Superintendent Kurt Kotes and Westlake Principal Keith Schenker, whose school is in the district.
‘Enough is enough,’ Paternostro said in letters she sent off to school officials.
‘This cartoon is disturbing. We have to respect the men in blue who protect us,’ added the mom of two.
‘We don’t need a teacher brainwashing my kids. I’ll teach my kids about what’s right and what’s wrong.’
Westlake HS educator Christoper Moreno gave his 11th-graders a handout
to his students to teach them how policing came from Slave Patrols.He’s right. Only one parent made a stink. Ania Paternostro is just another KAREN. #acab #Police #PoliceBrutality pic.twitter.com/BCefjuuYTS
— 🦅Robin Sage🇺🇸 (@FileUnderFikSHn) September 14, 2020
Not fair?
Her daughter Nicole said she was troubled by Moreno’s lesson plan because she considered it one-sided and anti-police.
‘The cartoon was disgusting,’ the teen told the post. ‘It compared the police with all the terrible people in history. It was not fair. It wasn’t right.’
Nicole said she has been bullied on social media over the past few days and called a racist for bringing attention to Moreno’s controversial lesson plan.
Kotes and Schenker declined comment — although the superintendent sent a letter to Paternostro and the parents of other kids in the class promising an ‘investigation’ into the lesson plan.
‘I want to address an issue that I have recently been advised is of deep concern to many members of our community,’ Kotes wrote in his letter according to the post.
‘Specifically, I have been advised that one of our High School teachers may have recently conducted a lesson that many have deemed to be highly controversial in the current climate.
‘I want to assure the community that the District will be conducting a thorough investigation to determine what exactly occurred in this particular classroom and what, if any, action is to be taken under the circumstances to appropriately address the matter,’ he said.
‘Once the investigation has been completed we will follow up with the community to the extent necessary and legally appropriate.’
Either way, the lesson did not sit well with members of Westlake’s law-enforcement community.
‘It’s a smack in the face to law enforcement, it’s an absolutely a smear of the police,’ Steve Kardian, a retired Mt. Pleasant police officer and former New York city Department of Investigations prober, to the post of the cartoon.
Former Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, a Republican running for state senate in the district, added, ‘Parents don’t send their children to school to learn to hate America and our police.’
Adding, ‘Our schools should be a place for the open exchange of ideas, not political indoctrination. The false narratives and brainwashing has to stop.’
