The New York Post reports:

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza’s crusade against “toxic” whiteness at the city Department of Education created an “Us vs. Them’’ culture that saw three longtime officials demoted in favor of less-qualified persons of color, a blockbuster $90 million lawsuit claims.

“If you draw a paycheck from DOE … get on board with my equity platform or leave,” Carranza thundered to employees assembled in the rotunda of the agency’s Lower Manhattan headquarters last June, according to the suit, filed [May 28] in state supreme court.

That “totalitarian threat” was just the most direct example of Carranza’s push to overhaul the leadership at the top and attitude throughout the DOE since he took the helm last year, claims the suit, levied against the department and Carranza by the trio of demoted white female executives.

“Under Carranza’s leadership, DOE has swiftly and irrevocably silenced, sidelined and punished plaintiffs and other Caucasian female DOE employees on the basis of their race, gender and unwillingness to accept their other colleagues’ hateful stereotypes about them,” wrote the group’s lawyer, Davida S. Perry, in the filing.

Plaintiff Lois Herrera, who started at the DOE in 1986 as a guidance counselor and worked her way up to lead its Office of Safety and Youth Development, claims in the suit that she saw a sea change almost immediately after Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed Carranza in April 2018.

A month later, LaShawn Robinson, then the executive director of the DOE’s Office of Equity and Access, purportedly told white attendees of a training seminar that they “had to take a step back and yield to colleagues of color” and “recognize that values of white culture are supremacist,” Herrera heard from a fellow administrator, according to the suit.

And that June, Carranza delivered his stay-or-go edict to address a flurry of recent staffing changes among department brass — including Robinson’s promotion to deputy chancellor of School Climate and Wellness.

At another scheduled event, in August, Herrera saw Robinson’s alleged attitude for herself.

“If you’ve been with the DOE for more than 20 years, you are responsible for the problem,” Robinson, who is black, allegedly said.

Robinson is not named as a defendant in the suit.

Despite being Harvard-educated and having been recognized as recently as 2017 for contributing to the “safest year on record” in city schools, Herrera was abruptly stripped of her title and demoted three levels “to essentially the bottom of the … group she formerly led,” the suit says.

Without so much as a formal search or interview process, Herrera was replaced by an African American man, Mark Rampersant, despite him being “demonstrably less qualified,” the suit claims. . . .

Two other plaintiffs in the lawsuit — Jaye Murray and Laura Feijoo — say they were similarly demoted in favor of black employees. Gosh, it’s almost as if “diversity” is code for Hating Whitey, or something.

(Hat-tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)







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