Hundreds of angry parents have dialed in to a Zoom meeting to slam the Vice President of San Francisco’s school board after the unearthing of anti-Asian tweets she penned in 2016.
In a school board meeting conducted over Zoom Tuesday night, VP Alison Collins refused to rescind her position and instead offered up a vague apology for her racist messages.
Collins – who identifies as black – stated: ‘I’d like to reemphasize my sincere and heartfelt apologies and I’m currently engaging with my colleagues and working with the community for the good of all children in our district, especially black children who are often left behind’.
She made no specific mention of Asian-American students and parents she had offended with a series of tweets posted on December 4, 2016.
In the thread, Collins referred to Asian Americans as ‘house n***ers’ and said they used ‘white supremacist thinking’ to get ahead.
‘Where are the vocal Asians speaking up against Trump?’ Collins asked in the Twitter thread.
‘Don’t Asian Americans know they are on his list as well? Do they think they won’t be deported? profiled? beaten? Being a house n****r is still being a n****r. You’re still considered ‘the help”.
However, parents and students were largely left unsatisfied.
Alison Collins, the Vice President of San Francisco’s school board is again resisting calls to resign after the unearthing of anti-Asian tweets she penned in 2016. Collins is pictured middle row far right during a school board Zoom call on Tuesday night
During the meeting, Collins refused to rescind her position and instead offered up a vague apology for her racist messages
More than 1,000 school students and parents dialed in to the meeting to share their thoughts on Collins’ tweets.
Some were left outraged when the board’s president, Gabriela Lopez, limited public comment to 20 minutes for those who ‘opposed’ Collins.
More than 35 percent of students in San Francisco public schools are Asian.
‘I was disgusted and pained at your rhetoric,’ one Asian student told Collins on the call.
Another San Francisco resident stated: ‘Regardless of whether you choose to do the right thing and resign or not, you will pay the ultimate price and that’s the loss of your dignity and your reputation. For the rest of your life you will be haunted by your actions, wherever you go people will see you for what you really are – a racist’.
School board commissioners Faauuga Moliga and Jenny Lam both called for Collins to resign on the call.
‘I am not alone when I say I do not have confidence in Collins’ ability to fairly govern a school district that is almost half AAPI with no bias,’ Lam stated.
If Collins does not tend her resignation, Lam stated that she and Moliga would introduce measures at the next board meeting to strip Collins of her Vice President position.
Several of the controversial tweets penned by Collins in December 2016 are pictured
Collins is pictured in her official San Francisco School Board head shot
However, several parents on the Zoom call offered their support to Collins.
She also has the backing of President Lopez and fellow commissioner, Mark Sanchez.
‘No one on this board I believe is a racist, and I don’t believe that commissioner Collins is a racist,’ Sanchez stated.
Meanwhile, Collins penned a post on Medium over the weekend, claiming that her 2016 tweets had been taken out of context.
Shortly before she penned the tweets, Collins claimed her daughter had witnessed Asian American students at her middle school bullying a Latino student.
It was a time of processing, of fear among many communities with the unknown of how the next four years would unfold,’ Collins wrote.
The unearthing of her tweets comes amid an uptick in hate crimes against Asian Americans across the country.
The tweets were thrust into the spotlight just days after eight people, including six Asian women, were shot dead in Atlanta, Georgia.
School board commissioners Faauuga Moliga and Jenny Lam both called for Collins to resign on the call
In the Medium piece, Collins wrote: ‘As a Black woman, a mother, an educator and a fierce advocate of equity in our schools I utilize my social media platforms to speak out on race and racism. Even when these conversations are difficult in our very divided society’
Meanwhile, San Francisco’s school board has been slammed recently for voting to rename 44 of the city’s schools that were alleged to have insensitive names.
The person in charge of the renaming effort admitted he researched the topic on Wikipedia and didn’t consult historians.
In January, the board voted 6-1 to strip the schools of their current monikers because they honor ‘racist’ figures from American history. Schools named after politicians including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln are now set to be rebranded in the coming months.
Meanwhile, a gay white father of a bi-racial child was denied a spot on the San Francisco Board of Education’s volunteer parent committee in February because his race doesn’t bring enough diversity to the group.
And the district of 52,000 students has been in a bitter dispute with unions over re-opening of the schools, which have been closed since the height of the coronavirus. Some schools will open April 12, but it’s not clear how many.
The unearthing of her tweets comes amid an uptick in hate crimes against Asian Americans across the country
