Dedham High School Offers Wednesday Workshop For Kids Taught By Race Baiting Weston Teacher Poet Who Says He “Doesn’t Give A Damn” About Dead White Girls
This is Weston High School English teach Dr. Matthew Henry.
In addition to being a teacher he also makes money as a poet who has published several books of poetry, including a 2020 masterpiece called Teaching While Black.
Notice the cover appears to give the illusion that he grew up in poverty. In reality Dr. Henry attended the Wellesley Public Schools as part of the METCO program before going on to obtain degrees from several expensive private colleges.
In an interview about the book he admitted that he lectures his white students that they are the 1%, and will be overthrown.
You guys realize you’re the ones being overthrown,” he told the class of primarily white, upper- class students. “You are the one percent.”
As the only Black man with a PhD at Weston High School in Weston, Massachusetts, Henry is both a tired and tireless voice to educate his students on racism, to bring attention to their own biases and to encourage them to become anti-racist.
Henry has a captive audience of children who do not have the ability to question or argue with him. They have no choice but to take what he teaches as fact, since there is an obvious power dynamic involved here. The role he basically plays is that he as a black man from Boston knows everything about racism, and that his students must listen and learn from him when he teaches them about made up concepts like white privilege.
One of the poems in the book openly vilifies the school resource officer, who unlike Henry can’t monetize racism and didn’t obtain his PhD:
Often, Henry finds that white students are oblivious to the racism their Black and Brown peers experience daily. In “An Open Letter to the School Resource Officer Who Almost Shot Me in My Class,” Henry imagines being assaulted by one of the police officers who populate his school. The poem was inspired by a classroom conversation in which a Black student recounted how a school resource officer followed him through the hall and into the bathroom, then spoke to him while he stood at the urinal.
Here’s the actual poem, “an open letter to those wondering why I’ve called this the most racist place I’ve ever worked.”
because you’re offended by the title, by the gut-punch
of Black words on a page you wish were blank,
by the accusation you feel personally implied,
as if suddenly blamed for slavery, the King assassination,
and the Clinton Crime Bill (even though your name
was never mentioned in those first 17 words).
because you’re stockpiling an arsenal of responses
in a self-righteous fallout-shelter, a haven of white fragility.
because your emotional antibodies rise to fight
the wrong sickness— lymphocytes filled with “it wasn’t me!”
and “how is that my fault?,” ignoring the cancer
exploding our community’s cells. because you sent letters
of concern when a teacher called racist actions “racist.”
because a committee was convened to combat the scourge
of limited student parking— disenfranchising sophomores
with new BMWs—while “nigger” remained scrawled
across art projects, campaign posters, and Snapchat.
because you minnesota-nicely told people to leave
when they complained. because your misplaced outrage
zigzags like our students of color seeing officer johnson
following them—
through the hallway,
through the cafeteria,
to their classes,
to their bus stop,
to a urinal for a chat—
hand on his holster. because you’re making a list of every time you’ve allowed “one of them” into your car, into your home. because your problem with Black History Month misses the point. because you’ll inaccurately attribute that tension in your jaw, that burn between your shoulder blades, that breath you didn’t know you were holding.
Vilifying police as blood thirsty racist killers is a common theme in his “poetry.”
On his Twitter account he openly brags about how he has turned his classroom into an open grieving session that is obsessed with race and racism.
He says he wants to expose his white students “white fragility” by exposing them to “discourse” that will make them feel uncomfortable for being born white.
He brags that his students read Ibram Kendi and Robin DiAngelo for literature in his class, that they have conversations about “anti-racism,” and told other teachers who choose not to turn their classrooms into racial hatred training centers, to drink bleach.
He also was really upset that he had to go to work in the fall of 2020, because it’s white privilege for rich towns like Weston to open their schools, and that teachers were going to die if they did.
Because not only is he a race baiting charlatan, he’s also a shameless anti-science liar.
Any school that was committed to anti-racism would keep a racist like this far away from children. So naturally Dedham High School decided to invite him to give a presentation there about racism in October. It was cancelled when parents read this poetry and saw how divisive it was, but Principal Jim Forrest and acting Superintendent Ian Kelly sent out an email last week announcing that Dr. Henry would be speaking at DHS this Wednesday from 11-2, and that students could sign up to join his workshop/discussion.
You may remember Jim Forrest from the blog two years ago about Coach Flynn, who was relieved of his duties by the Principal and former Superintendent for questioning why his daughter was being taught critical race theory in middle school.
But Dr. Henry’s poetry goes beyond the CRT that Coach Flynn objected to. Here’s one poem entitled “Solidarity,” about how he “can’t be bothered to give a damn” about a missing white girl. He actually seems to have disdain for her because her dead body will “gentrify” the obituaries.
another white girl has gone missing
and I can’t bring myself to give a damn
knowing her blackened corpse
will gentrify the obituaries
same as her blue, now glassy eyes
co-opted 24 news cycles.
knowing her bones share soil,
will be found mere yards from
the 29 trans women slaughtered,
the 51 Black girls gone missing,
the 107 Latinx and Native daughters
lost beneath the same moon.
knowing when the dirt is sifted,
her head will fall, nodding.
knowing she’ll lay in repose,
a skeletal finger raised to further
thinning lips—her final shushing,
once again, silencing their screams.
Translation – dead white girls get too much coverage, and we basically ignore when Latinx men in drag die.
Then there was this poem, entitled, “How to avoid being seen as a racist.” I expected it to be a lecture about how white people should be denouncing their white privilege and begging to be good “allies.” But as it turns out it’s a poem about kids getting drunk and f***ing goats.
well, it’s like the old joke about “Fergus
the goat-fucker.” that’s the punchline. he fucked
a wee goat, but laments the moniker’s
accuracy more than his enjoyment
of drunken kid sodomy. I assume
it was only the one time, but something
engorged him—something a stiff pint of Guinness
roused from flaccid slumber, but didn’t conceive.
even the Bible at Fergus’ bedside says
the mouth speaks the heart, though I assume other
appendages follow suit. to answer
your question, those with a legitimate
worry should avoid petting zoos and farms,
or at least keep their zippers closed until
they’ve addressed the wooly desire within.
Poetry is the fakest art of all the arts. There is nothing creative or talented about it. It’s just a way for untalented people like Matthew Henry to try to sound enlightened by speaking in the meter of their choice.
He also accuses his colleagues at Weston High School of being racist in this poem, entitled “an open letter to the white teacher who threw a Black boy out of her class for wearing too much lotion.”
his skin was ashy. perhaps that’s a concept
you’re unfamiliar with—like seasoned chicken
and leaving vegetables out of Jell-O molds—
but we whose flesh knows what it’s like
to hunger and thirst, will not be so whitened.
you call his basic Black hygiene insubordination,
his social survival disrespect, because you have allergies
and say one whiff of him might make you sneeze?
given the lifetime of nose-holding he’ll have to endure,
can’t you do the same for 64 mins? and if your curriculum
is so unimportant sitting his moist elbows in the hallway
doesn’t impact his grade, the next round of budget cuts
are yours to shoulder. and while I have your attention:
stop touching, smelling, touching, back-hand complimenting,
touching Black girl hair—your brown-rooted blonde,
drowned-poodle locks are no reasons to assault
the magic of their coco-buttered curls. and another thing
Obviously this is a shot at one of his colleagues, who he is accusing of being a racist while being racist himself. The “white people are unfamiliar with seasoning, or any food that isn’t a plain cheese sandwich” trope, has somehow become a permissible form of anti-white racism. Of course he’d never get in trouble at work for it, because the last thing anyone wants to be accused of in Weston is “attacking” a race baiting “doctor” at one of the wealthiest, whitest, and liberal communities in Massachusetts.
During the height of the BLM riots he also wrote a poem called, “an open letter to our white friends and supposed allies,” in which he suggests that white people should burn cop cars and throw Molotov cocktails to show their support for black people.
and so we all hope we will rate a riot.
we count the tweets and t-shirts, the virility
of our # memorials. the number of racist statues
and statutes with nooses around their stone necks.
the number of buildings and cop cars burned
in our name. in all of our names. and knowing
They will attempt to defame the days before our death—
investigate how white our skeletons—
the more competitive among us go the extra mile
to replace your cardboard with Molotov cocktails.
The mere fact that someone so privileged, and so devoid of actual skills, can make a living in this country selling his own narcissism and forcing his racist ideology on children who aren’t allowed to object, basically refutes everything his entire narrative that America is a racist country where oppressed black men like him can’t catch a break. It’s actually quite the opposite. If he were white and were saying things like he’s currently saying about race, then he’d be deplatformed, destitute, and unemployable.
I do have 2 questions though:
- Why is Weston High School allowing him to leave school in the middle of a school day to do a workshop at another high school? Will he be docked a day’s pay for missing work? Can other teachers miss a day of school to book themselves as speakers at other schools?
- Is he getting paid to do this workshop, or does he work for free? If he’s getting paid by both the Dedham and Weston Public Schools at the same time, that would be double dipping. The racism-industrial complex pays!
Acting Superintendent Ian Kelly is in a relationship with Middle School Principal Karen Hillman.
This is an obvious conflict of interest, and in a normal school district the parents wouldn’t stand for it. You are not allowed to date your subordinates. Period.
You may recall that Karen Hillman was the Principal at Coach Flynn’s daughter’s school, who told Mr. Flynn that 7th graders would be taught to “understand their identities,” as white people. When asked about the curriculum Ms. Hillman told him that “our curriculum standards and local curriculum adjust to reflect the current context of the world,” in order to justify what is clearly political brainwashing of children.
Ian Kelly seems to have the same approach as Superintendent. After receiving backlash to Henry’s impending visit this week he sent out the following email to parents:
A small portion of his work is controversial? Everything this guy writes about involves lies and Russian misinformation about racism, except for the occasional poem about goat fucking. Critical race theory, which is what Henry is peddling, IS CONTROVERSIAL IN AND OF ITSELF! You’re from Dedham. Your town was the center of one of the biggest stories involving this matter two years ago.
Ian Kelly is basically saying in that response that parental concerns don’t matter because Matthew Henry is black, and therefore students must listen to him as he brainwashes them with propaganda. But if diversity is so great then why doesn’t Kelly choose to live or work in a more diverse community? If diversity is so great then why is racial diversity the only diversity that seems to be valued? Chris Herren’s story about drug addiction is a thousand times more interesting than anything this privileged Wellesley graduate could have to say.
Keep in mind that just a few months ago the former Superintendent was forced to apologize to Coach Flynn in a settlement agreement, in which he said that teachers would no longer be allowed to push BLM ideology on students.
So if teachers at Dedham aren’t allowed to push BLM, then why are they bringing teachers in from other school districts to do the same? Feel free to ask Ian Kelly directly by emailing him at [email protected].
