Separation of church and state is one of the basic tenets of American freedom. It is also a recipe for controversy in modern America — even in Pine Bluff.
Recently, a Watson Chapel School District employee filed suit in federal court alleging that he was discriminated against and subjected to a hostile working environment after he was sent home on Sept. 10, 2010, for wearing Muslim attire to school.
Mark Leon Essex Smith, who had been an algebra teacher and now is a lab manager for the school district, filed a grievance against junior high school principal Henry Webb and also filed a discrimination charge with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The grievance was dismissed by Superintendent Danny Hazelwood, but later upheld on appeal by the Watson Chapel school board.
At some point, Smith was removed as an algebra teacher and reassigned as a lab manager — he says, in retaliation for the grievance and EEOC complaint.
It’s likely that Smith’s lawsuit won’t be resolved anytime soon, but the story has prompted a lot of reaction locally.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Some support Smith’s right to wear the Muslim attire, while others have been critical.
The most ignorant comment of all, on a Facebook page devoted to Pine Bluff discussion, was this: “This was more than a case of someone wearing a religious symbol, it was someone intentionally flaunting attire that he had to know would be offensive to others. There are standards of dress for both teachers and students and the last time I checked ‘Muslim attire’ was not the socially accepted business attire norm for school teachers IN PINE BLUFF ARKANSAS. To break out in full Muslim attire the day before 9/11 was asking for trouble.”
My immediate reaction was: Rosa Parks was asking for trouble when she refused to move to the back of the bus; Martin Luther King Jr. was asking for trouble when he marched through Alabama; the Freedom Riders were asking for trouble when they tried to help black citizens register to vote in Mississippi. Looking further back in history, the American colonists were looking for trouble when they dumped all that tea in Boston Harbor. For a Biblical perspective, Daniel was asking for trouble when he defied Nebuchadnezzar. Surely, Jesus was asking for trouble when he continued his ministry in defiance of the Romans.
My point is not to hold Smith up as a pariah or compare him to Jesus. It’s simply to say that refusing to bend to other people’s ignorance can quite often be a worthy endeavor.
To me, the Smith case hinges on his behavior the day he was sent home. If he was flaunting his religion or using his Muslim attire in some overt attempt to influence students, then he was wrong. But if he was wearing that attire simply as a personal observance, then in my opinion he was within his rights as a citizen of the United States.
Our country was founded on the principles of freedom, especially religious freedom. Sometimes, it seems we have forgotten that. Sometimes it seems as if we are tolerant of others’ beliefs only if they conform to our own.
Public schools should not be a place to promote our religious beliefs — be they Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or anything else. But neither should they be a place to suppress them.
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Scott Loftis is managing editor of The Commercial.