Patterned Language Reflects Patterned Thought©

In response to Chalkbeat contributor Alex Zimmerman’s article, “Racist comment at NYC parent meeting ignites fury as Black leaders call for accountability” (Zimmerman, 2026), one question immediately surfaces: Why is accountability framed as a Black demand? Why is accountability racialized?

When accountability is framed as something Black leaders are calling for, the implication is subtle but powerful: that racism in public schools is primarily a concern of the Black community. The framing shifts the center of gravity. The system becomes the backdrop. Black response becomes the headline.

That distinction is not semantic. It shapes how responsibility is distributed.

When racism is presented as something that has “ignited fury” among Black leaders, the urgency can feel localized — as though it belongs to a constituency. But racism in public education is not a special-interest issue.

It is a civic issue. It is everyone’s concern.

When you frame accountability as a Black demand rather than a civic obligation, you shift the burden of moral clarity onto the harmed.

At a recent local education council meeting on the Upper West Side, Dr. Allyson Friedman — attending as a parent — was heard saying: “They're just, they're too dumb to know they're in a bad school. Apparently, Martin Luther King said it like, if you train a Black person well enough, they'll know to use the back. You don't have to tell them anymore.” (CBS News, 2026)

Allyson — in what world would Martin Luther King Jr. argue that Black people should be “trained” to accept the back door? That premise contradicts the core of his work. He did not defend the back door. He challenged the structure that built it. The Montgomery Bus Boycott did not last 381 days because King believed in training Black people to accept the back. It lasted because he believed in ending the practice altogether.

In her apology, Allyson later stated, “My complete comments make clear these abhorrent views are not my own, nor were they directed at any student or group” (Union-Bulletin, 2026).

Not directed at any student or group — yet spoken while a Black student was presenting. A student who was proud to represent her school and did not come to experience racialized trauma.

If not your views, Allyson, then whose were they?

Words do not arrive fully formed from nowhere. They are not borrowed from the air. If the views were not yours, it raises a simple question: what belief system were you channeling?

Dr. Allyson Friedman is an associate professor of biological sciences at Hunter College — a neuroscientist trained to understand how cognition is shaped by environment, repetition, and reinforcement. Her discipline makes one thing clear: thoughts do not materialize from nowhere. They are patterned. They are conditioned. They are strengthened through familiarity.

We are not unsophisticated readers of language. To suggest that these remarks were detached from belief asks the public to suspend basic reasoning.

As an NYU-trained applied psychologist, I am trained to listen not only for what is said, but for the belief systems that make certain statements possible. You do not produce language you have never rehearsed internally. Words like these are not technological glitches. They are cognitive leaks.

Before we treat this as an isolated lapse, it is worth remembering that District Three has wrestled with these currents before. The pattern is not incidental; it is recurring.

In 2018, during the Upper West Side’s District 3 middle school integration plan — which proposed reserving 25% of seats for students scoring below grade level on state exams in an effort to reduce segregation — the debate drew significant attention because District 3 was poised to become the first in New York City to adopt a district-wide middle school diversity policy (NYC DOE, 2018). When proposals were introduced to reserve seats for students scoring below grade level, the meeting became contentious. Some parents warned that “high-performing” students would be shut out of “desirable” schools.

The language evolves, but the water remains the same — and what contaminates it eventually surfaces. The interplay between expertise and bias has surfaced before — at much larger scales.

In 2021, the American Psychological Association issued a formal apology acknowledging its role in perpetuating racism within the discipline. The resolution states:

“The American Psychological Association failed in its role leading the discipline of psychology, was complicit in contributing to systemic inequities, and hurt many through racism, racial discrimination, and denigration of people of color, thereby falling short on its mission to benefit society and improve lives” (American Psychological Association [APA], 2021).

The organization admitted that psychological science had, at times, reinforced racial hierarchy rather than challenged it (APA, 2021). That acknowledgment is instructive. It demonstrates that professional training, advanced degrees, and institutional prestige do not automatically prevent bias from shaping research, theory, or language.

If entire disciplines can reckon with how scholarship advanced harm, it is not unreasonable to expect individual scholars to examine how their own words reflect inherited frameworks.

In his poem “How to Explain White Supremacy to a White Supremacist,” Kyle “Guante” Tran Myhre writes: “Remember: white supremacy is not a shark; it is the water.It is how we talk about racism as white hoods and Confederate flags, knowing that you own those things, and we don’t …as if we didn’t own this history too, this system — we tread water” (Tran Myhre, n.d.).

The metaphor is precise. The danger is not always the visible predator. It is the environment that feels normal, breathable, undisturbed. When racism is reduced to caricature — white hoods, slurs, overt hate — it becomes easy to condemn and easier still to distance. But if white supremacy is the water, then distancing from the shark does not change the ecosystem.

The question is not whether one individual will be disavowed.The question is whether the water will be examined.

There is another dynamic that surfaces in moments like this: silence. Not the silence of confusion. Not the silence of processing. A quieter, more observational silence. A voyeurism that watches the harm unfold, studies the reaction, analyzes the outrage — but does not intervene. Silence, in these moments, can become a form of participation — not through speech, but through the decision not to disrupt. When those with proximity to power observe but do not engage, neutrality functions as insulation. Harm is acknowledged quietly, if at all. The response is left to those most affected.

In that vacuum, those harmed become the victims, the explainers, and the educators. They carry the weight of naming the injury, contextualizing the history, and demanding accountability. Meanwhile, those who could redistribute that burden remain spectators.

Silence may feel restrained. It may even feel polite. But restraint, when power is unevenly distributed, is not neutral.

Because the issue is not the shark.It is the water.

Racism is a Black experience, but it has never been a Black problem. Until the Allysons of the world examine the water they are swimming in — the norms, the comfort, the permissions — the mic will keep turning on.

The pH is off.

District Three would benefit from naming what keeps resurfacing. Until it is named, the water will not change. Because what is lacking is cultural competence, self-reflection, and accountability.  Putting on my therapist hat, I am less interested in the slip than in the pattern. I am interested in congruence — the alignment between private belief and public posture.

Those of us forced to swim in these toxic waters can identify the contaminants. Hoods are no longer required. We can spot performative behavior from miles away. As James Baldwin aptly stated, “I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.”

The charge District Three becomes this: do not be performative. Because the work of equity is not performance. It is alignment. The work that goes into repairing these conditions should be just as intentional as it would be if the harm had been directed at those with the most power and protection.