Long Island teacher's 'Monkey do' image of black students triggers possible $12 million lawsuit

Long Island students accuse their teacher of using a racist “Monkey do” image of them during a slideshow.

A New York school district is facing a $12 million discrimination lawsuit after a Long Island science teacher allegedly presented a slide of black students with the title “Monkey Do” next to a photo of a monkey, according to ABC News. The families of Longwood High School students Khevin Beaubrun, Desmond Dent Jr., Gykye Murray, and Jahkeem Moye notified the Longwood Central School District of their intent to sue through a notice of claim Wednesday, the news station reported.

“I didn’t know that they were going to put [the photo] in that perspective and show us, compare us to monkeys,” Murray told reporters at a press conference Wednesday. Beaubrun said when he posted a video on Snapchat showing the slideshow, school administrators threatened to suspend him if he didn’t take it down. “I said they had used us like slaves,” the student told ABC News.

The students’ attorney  John Ray told reporters teachers “deliberately persuaded, tricked and cajoled” students into posing together on a November class trip at the Bronx Zoo. The image shows Beaubrun, Dent, Murray, and Moye in a line with the same arm extended and touching the head of the student in front of them. The photo was positioned between an image of monkeys with the caption ”Monkey See” and an image of a gorilla, Ray said in the notice of claim ABC News obtained.

To make matters worse, the slideshow was shown in multiple classrooms, and as a response to the presentation, the honor students depicted were told to skip the class in question, parents told PIX 11. “Why should they get an incomplete for something the teacher did?” one parent asked, according to the news station.

District Superintendent Michael Lonergan called the photo “culturally insensitive” in a statement he released on the school website Wednesday. “The photo was an unfortunate lapse of judgment,” Lonergan said in the statement. “Without the intent of doing so, the photo was taken without fully understanding the sensitivity or the hurt it may have caused and reminds us that we must be more aware of the feelings of our multi-cultural population.” 

In what has become a seemingly obligatory knee-jerk reaction to these kinds of situations, the superintendent followed with a meeting between the accused teacher, community members, and families. “We are proud of the diversity at Longwood Schools, and we will continue to provide sensitivity training to our students and staff to raise awareness of our cultural differences,” Lonergan said. “Longwood is committed to providing an educational environment that is nurturing, supportive, safe, and conducive to learning. “Due to pending litigation, Longwood Central School District has no further comment.”

I got two things from the superintendent’s statement: He is in damage-control mode, and he is almost as painfully unaware as the accused teacher, who ABC News identified as Mr. Heinrichs. When an educator depicts a person of color as a monkey, it is not about the “sensitivity” or hurt feelings of the victims. It is not about a “lapse of judgment” or the “feelings” of a “multi-cultural population.” When a trained professional tasked with educating youth uses a centuries-old racist depiction of black people to communicate a point, it is about racism.  

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It’s the same kind of racism at play when a middle school Long Island teacher asked students to “write something funny” describing photos of slavery at John W. Dodd Middle School in Freeport, New York, a situation NBC News covered last September. It is 2020. Stop giving people the out of ignorance regarding blatantly racist behaviors. If you are so unaware that you don’t see anything wrong with asking children to make light of slavery or depicting black teens as monkeys, then you are a racist. You may not be dressed in KKK garb or lynching black people, but make no mistake, you are a racist.