Members of the Legislative Black Caucus are rallying to the defense of Andrea Kane, the Queen Anne’s County school superintendent who is under fire in the Eastern Shore community.
Kane’s call for a discussion on race through public education and her public support for the Black Lives Matter movement has been met with fierce resistance.
Parents from the mostly white and conservative Eastern Shore formed a Facebook group of more than 2,000 members and began a petition, asserting that Kane “has attempted to radicalize our middle and high school children” and “promote radical division and agenda under the guise of ‘education.’”
Those who signed the petition wrote that they were against Kane’s “radicalization” and “racial segregation of our children,” and one expressed the opinion that Black Lives Matter is “hateful and divides.”
But Black lawmakers discounted those sentiments Tuesday.
“I am saddened to see the backlash Dr. Kane has faced for her statements. She was unequivocal not only in her support for the Black Lives Matter Movement, but in her insistence that acknowledging anti-Black racism in our country does not require the disparagement of any other race,” Del. Sheree Sample-Hughes (D-Middle Shore), the only Black representative from the Eastern Shore, said in a statement.
“Dr. Kane’s message was one of peace and acceptance, and she should be applauded for it, not condemned,” she said.
“The killings of Anton Black on the Eastern Shore, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, [Rayshard] Brooks, are not mutually exclusive incidents,” the Black Caucus wrote in a statement Tuesday. Instead, these deaths represent the long history of systemic racism that Black people have had to navigate for years, including in the education system, the caucus wrote.
“Dr. Kane should be supported and applauded, not disparaged for calling for greater dialogue.”
Elizabeth Shwe
Reporter
Elizabeth Shwe was a Report for America corps member at Maryland Matters through May 2022. She previously covered California state politics during an internship at The Sacramento Bee. She is a 2020 graduate of Princeton University with a degree in political science. At Princeton she was a producer for WPRB 103.3 FM News & Culture section, the station’s only long form podcast-type program. Shwe also wrote for The Daily Princetonian, and tutored with the Petey Greene Program, which offers free tutoring to incarcerated people.
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