When Fish Starts Rotting, It Is Always From The Head
In January 1999, I was ordered to submit to their madness: psychiatric evaluation. (I will post them as soon as I found the misplaced supporting documents. )
The pretext ? I claimed that, they wrote, I was discriminated against because of my "Haitian descent"! The principal, Maxwell Malamed of Wingate HS where I was temporarily reassigned, concocted this pathetic story, with probably his superiors' input. Evidently, without checking, they thought I was Haitian. (Maxwell Melamed is not exactly what you would call "a Haitian lover".) I would be proud to be from HAITI, the MOTHER OF ALL REVOLUTIONS,
la terre des hommes où le premier devient le dernier, le dernier le premier; l'esclave le maître, le maître l'esclave; noir blanc, blanc noir; le diable l'ange, l'ange le diable. HAITI, the land of epic heroes, whose battle cry is resonating in Claude Mac Kay's poem, who made Napoleon's powerful army bite the dust, and sent a cosmic message reverbarating throughout the world of oppression, making
slave owner Thomas Jefferson and the like sit up and take notice, inspiring twenty century's freedom fighters, the ANC not the least. Clear message : Mess with my freedom, I will mess you up.
Alas, I am not Haitian ! You see, my tormentors function within the painful limited horizons of their poor general culture : a black person speaking French can only be a Haitian.
Une machination nauséeuse de plus, sans imagination, finit par un fiasco. L 'idiot du village aurait pu être d'une plus grande créativité, s'il était vicieux comme eux, bien entendu ! Quand un poisson commence à pourrir , c'est toujours par la tête.
Puzzled, the psychiatrist , who seemed to have her moral compass and her professional integrity intact, checked the "fit to work" box of the form provided within 15 minutes of interview. I wish Ann Garner and Audrey Jacobson emulated her, and stopped being mercenaries for the DOE.
A light moment after this ignoble episod : in November 2000, I went to Brooklyn HS Superintendent's Office to finalize my request for sabbatical leave, and ran into Maxwell Malamed : he was removed from his position as his misdeeds were piling up, and temporarily reassigned to ... a high-fashioned rubber room : a small office with a desk and a window (something denied to TRTs in Brooklyn). Unfortunately, the largest window in the world cannot help evacuate the unethical miasma that engulfs him and most of the DOE's educrats.
Post Scriptum
- Maxwell Malamed ended up securing the Personnel Director's position at the Superintendent's Office, thanks to the latter's "benevolence", at the expense of a young ...Haitian lady who served under Charles Major, the previous superintendent.
- To avoid his buddy Joel Shapiro's embarassment by sending Fofana back to Canarsie HS --allegations of corporal punishment made against the teacher proved bogus and were dropped, as staff and PTA demanded the removal of the principal himself -- , Malamed transferred him to Medgar Evers Middle College HS in his new capacity. Small world, indeed.
Boubakar Fofana
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