A Norwalk Board of Education member is resigning in response to criticism of a Facebook posting that featured obscenity-laced invective against the Rev. Al Sharpton and insults targeted at President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder.
The Hour reports that Jack Chiaramonte said Tuesday criticism is distracting the board from its work and he has no choice but to resign. He said some language on Facebook was inappropriate, but insisted he never attacked any race or ethnic group.
Chiaramonte posted a video of a black female assaulting a white female, and questioned why Obama, whom he called an idiot, and Attorney General Eric Holder, whom he called a "dimwit," did not comment. (See The Hour's screen shots here.)
The Norwalk Board of Education's civility code includes a pledge to "be a positive role model for public discourse -- practice courtesy, politeness, and consideration."
In an email to The Hour, Chiaramonte wrote, in part:
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said years ago that the country needed “a forthright national conversation between blacks and whites to discuss aspects of race which are ignored because they are uncomfortable.” Holder went on to say that the conversation hasn’t happened because "certain subjects are off limits and that to explore them risks at best embarrassment and at worst the questioning of one's character." I can confirm from my personal experience that Holder was right. A “conversation” that goes only one way, in which bringing up uncomfortable facts leads to “questioning of one’s character”, isn’t a conversation at all. I hope someday we can actually have such a forthright conversation in Norwalk.
Brenda Penn-Williams, first vice president of the Norwalk NAACP, called for Chiaramonte's removal from the Board of Education. From Nancy on Norwalk:
The move at the DTC’s regular monthly meeting was begun by Brenda Penn-Williams, who went on to say that BoE member Shirley Mosby does have evidence to support the complaint she made back in June that there is racial discrimination on the Board.
This report includes information from The Associated Press.
