A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
It’s been a good year for classical Christian education. New school starts are up threefold, a book on classical education became No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list, and on Jan. 26, Fox Nation will release season two of a popular series on classical Christian education, “The Miseducation of America.” Of course, with growth comes attention. What is unusual this time is that someone with ties to our movement — one of our own — draws focus to a growing divide.
On Jan. 12, in the online journal Current, Jessica Hooten Wilson asked, “Is White Supremacy a Bug or a Feature of Classical Christian Education?” It should come as no surprise that, within her mainstream academic ecosphere as a scholar at Pepperdine University, she gets pressure. “I experience regular pushback from those who perceive [classical Christian education] as white, Western-only, and male-dominated.” She proceeds to cast aspersions on a few people and organizations — including, indirectly, mine. Her accusations become a pretext for her thesis: “If the classical Christian school movement is to survive — let alone flourish — we must oppose all forms of racism and misogyny and stand with the beauty, goodness, and truth that we hold up for our students.” I’ll take her up on that charge.
Hooten Wilson is a staccato note at the end of a new tune within our circles. Her article praises those groups she believes are taking the right steps. So far, I’ve heard no one publicly state the thesis so clearly as she does: “We should peruse the authors of the works and, if applicable, the editors or introductory writers to ensure an assortment of voices … as well as an equality of both sexes. If we look at the table of contents of a textbook or a reading list for a semester and find not a single woman or person of color in that list, then that curriculum is misrepresenting the classical Christian tradition.”
Choosing the Classical Canon
For the better part of three millennia, philosophical, theological, and literary authors labored to create the classical canon, representing countless cultural influences. Over much of this same time period, learned scholars have made lists of those that deserve “canon” status. It is unclear if there are minorities or women in Cassiodorus’ list of authors (400 A.D.), or Leonardo Bruni or Battista Guarino’s lists (humanists from the 1400s) — they don’t use those categories. Mortimer Adler and his team of about 40 renowned scholars chose the most widely recognized list of books in our time based upon their contribution to “the great conversation.” Adler’s merit-based criteria required a work to have changed the course of history and to have developed the collective Western mind. What Adler’s team did not do is look to race or sex as criteria.
The Western classical tradition has long included people of every race and sex in a particular way: The tradition deals with a body of texts that address the universal truths about the human condition, rising above our culture’s current quest to silo everyone into an intersection of identity.
Whatever your identity may be, the long journey toward Aeneus’ destiny amplifies the tension between duty and desire. The hilarity of twins unknown to each other, living in the same city, begets “A Comedy of Errors,” no matter your race or sex. Would Hooten Wilson tell the young women and minorities in our schools that they cannot fully converse with these texts because their voices are not represented in them? Shall our schools sacrifice universal human dignity on the altar of token inclusion? Hooten Wilson limits her criteria to women and minorities. Some, like Kimberle Crenshaw, will not be satisfied with this attempt to diversify our reading lists — there will always be one more disaffected group.
Duped into Old-Fashioned Racism and Sexism
By Hooten Wilson’s standard, we must scrape and scrape until we find a “fair” representation of “diverse” contributors. “I am especially excited about the number of women that we added to the Middle Ages list. … Classical schools should look through their reading lists to make sure women and persons of color are not excluded from their curriculum.” Classical Christian education should not be duped by the spirit of our age into old-fashioned racism or sexism. This spirit was cultivated not by our tradition, as Hooten Wilson claims, but rather by the Frankfurt School.
During the 1930s, a group of cultural Marxist scholars set up shop at Columbia University. The Frankfurt School set out on a mission to end the influence of Christianity in our culture. Their thickly veiled product called critical theory deliberately divides us by whispering one small lie, presented in two axioms: For a person to relate to anything, or gain from anything — in this case an intellectual tradition — it must have elements that “look like them” and match their “identity.” And, a second axiom follows: Thus, if something does not contain “diverse and inclusive” elements, it is racist or misogynist. These fruits of critical theory travel down a circuitous path from the Frankfurt School, to Hooten Wilson’s proposal, to a few classical educators who take incremental steps toward critical theory — all of this under the trendy label of “inclusiveness.”
True Liberation Through Classical Christian Education
Classical education was created to, and has, liberated the minds of countless people groups in history, and it is capable of doing the same in America today — and beyond. It has been at the forefront of the march for freedom and education; for individual rights apart from race or class or sex. If we let the very toxin that infects progressive education get into our classrooms, we’re doomed. This toxin was created and propagated by those who hate our tradition. Should we voluntarily drink it?
My daughter recently graduated from New Saint Andrews College. This is one of the institutions that those in Hooten Wilson’s camp label “misogynist.” The college seeks to uphold and respect traditional Christian femininity, which displeases feminists who seem to hate femininity. Misogyny? When my daughter brought her friends to our home over Thanksgiving, I remember listening to the conversation and thinking, “Where do these women come from? They’re strong, bright, extremely well-read, fluent in ancient languages, and honoring of Christian truth — including their God-given womanhood.” None were weak women. All seemed faithful, happy, and confident. I don’t think any of them would want Hooten Wilson’s prescription for their reading list.
Is Racism a Bug or a Feature in Classical Christian Education?
The Frankfurt School’s purpose was to deconstruct. To do so, they inserted a “bug” in our educational system: critical theory, and all of its descendent forms. Some in our movement now offer a batch of code that has this bug embedded deeply within it — in the form of reading lists. By Hooten Wilson’s reckoning, these groups are heading in the right direction. The rest of us are not. Will our institutions continue to follow her lead by adopting coded terms like “Kingdom Diversity”? Or will we recognize the code as a virus and say, “No thank you. The classical Christian tradition is above all that nonsense — and the nonsense of white nationalists, by the way. May a plague be on all your racist houses.”
If classical Christian education is to survive, it has to reject the foolishness of our age and embrace Christ’s way alone. Christ’s church favors neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free.
The humanities are great because they unite. They are universal. Women and non-Europeans are now, in our present time, contributing to classical Christian education in spades. I work so that all children can rise up and join the great conversation without barriers.
“Identity,” however, won’t fit here. Check it at the door. We are Christ’s. We are classical. Those who want to be loved by the spirit of our age will become intoxicated by it, and slowly die of its poison.
David Goodwin is the editor of The Classical Difference magazine, the president of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, and the co-author of The New York Times no. 1 best seller “Battle for the American Mind.” You can find him at Substack.
Minnesota’s teaching licensure board will soon require all teachers to be card-carrying Marxists. The card will literally say “licensed teacher,” but recently approved revisions redefine state licensure in expressly Marxist terms: Academic knowledge is out, and power struggle among the classes is in. To be licensed in Minnesota starting in 2025, every teacher must not merely teach about, but personally advocate, the core tenets of critical race theory and transgender ideology.
The state’s insistence that every teacher positively affirm homosexual behaviors and transgendered identities understandably aggravates consciences among moral traditionalists, but the issues run deeper than the “culture war.” What is at stake is the nature of knowledge, the future of liberty, and the prospects for a sustainable social order. In a word: civilization.
A perfunctory hearing on Aug. 24, 2022, and the resulting order for implementation with slight revisions by a solitary administrative judge in December cemented the new regime. The revised Standards of Effective Practice require radical changes to teachers’ curriculum selection, classroom management style, and self-understanding of the teaching vocation. The education departments at colleges and universities also must document their fulfillment of the new standards or else have their program certifications rescinded by Minnesota’s Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB).
The new requirements require teachers to positively affirm extremist leftist positions about human nature and sexual practices in order to be allowed to teach in government schools.
Teachers will be required to choose “anti-racist” — i.e. critical race theory — instructional strategies for students. An administrative judge told the state to amend No. 4 here requiring teachers to expose children to sexual identities. It will likely still go into effect, with slightly different language.The new license requires teachers to affirm transgenderism.
The revisions represent only the latest attack against American heritage in Minnesota’s public schools. In 2013, the state education department successfully removed the four presidents featured on Mount Rushmore from social studies standards.
Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan also got the ax that year, as did the Magna Carta. References to the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution were relativized, as students were to be instructed that those documents do not contain universal principles of ordered liberty, but merely the opinion of one powerful group of 18th-century men.
A decade later, the vanguard has advanced again. The revised teacher licensing rules strike the following from the mathematics standards: “addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, whole numbers, fractions, decimals, and percentages.” They insert this for teachers of all subjects: “The teacher fosters an environment that ensures student identities such as race/ethnicity, national origin, language, sex and gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, physical/developmental/emotional ability, socioeconomic class, and religious beliefs are historically and socially contextualized, affirmed, and incorporated into a learning environment where students are empowered to learn and contribute as their whole selves.”
It no longer suffices simply to discuss the controversies of radical reform; teachers and students must also become advocates for change: “The teacher creates opportunities for students to learn about power, privilege, intersectionality, and systemic oppression in the context of various communities and empowers learners to be agents of social change to promote equity.” Minnesota’s Scandinavian ancestors must be turning over in their graves at this new smorgasbord of Marxist truffles.
The PELSB’s “Statement of Necessity and Reasonableness” for the licensure changes draws support from two states just as blue as Minnesota. From New York, PELSB gleans: “Inclusive curriculum and assessment … works toward dismantling systems of biases and inequities, and decentering dominant ideologies in education.” In Illinois, each teacher must internalize a Marxist mentalité: “The culturally responsive teacher and leader will explore their own intersecting identities, how they were developed, and how they impact daily experience of the world.”
Illinois has expressly abandoned what Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, called “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” In place of objective truth, “what is seen as ‘correct’ is most often based on our lived experiences.” As in New York, so also in Illinois — and soon in Minnesota — all teachers must practice what cultural Marxists preach: “Assess how their biases and perceptions affect their teaching practice and how they access tools to mitigate their own behavior (racism, sexism, homophobia, unearned privilege, Eurocentrism, etc.).”
But to whom? Neither the people nor their elected officials decided the matter. A solitary administrative judge, appointed by the governor, ordered the implementation of the radical licensure changes after merely recommending a few tweaks.
The labyrinth of administrative procedure affords limited opportunity for appeal, but one can hope that a teacher, a parent, or a teacher-preparation college will petition for declaratory relief. If nothing else, PELSB’s radical rewriting of human nature smacks of a state-imposed religion, in violation of the First Amendment’s no establishment clause, not to mention the dereliction of duty when schools jettison mainstream academic content in favor of extremist ideology.
If recourse to the courts should fail, another remedy remains, modeled for the free world in Norway in 1942. When the National Socialists ordered parents to enroll their children in indoctrination camps with just three weeks’ notice and required all school teachers to implement a Nazi curriculum, the people simply would not have it. Five out of every six teachers resigned.
A similar proportion of parents flooded the Norwegian education bureau with letters — literally, laundry baskets full of letters — registering their protests. Adolf Hitler’s henchmen were grossly outnumbered, and the Nazis’ outward control of state agencies never penetrated to the hearts and minds of the people. The fusion of Viking blood with Lutheran “here I stand” courage made otherwise docile Norwegians invincible. Whether the Minnesotans can muster similar resolve soon will become evident to all.
A Loudoun County father, whose arrest at a June 2021 school board meeting was used by the Biden administration to justify a politicized attack on concerned parents, was found not guilty of trespassing on Wednesday.
Law enforcement arrested Jon Tigges at a Loudoun school board meeting on June 22, 2021, after he tried expressing concerns about the school district’s “moral decay.” A Virginia district judge found Tigges guilty in October of 2021. Loudoun Circuit Judge Douglas Fleming Jr., however, cleared Tigges of any wrongdoing. Fleming determined that Tigges not only had a First Amendment right to attend the heated meeting but also that the superintendent who shut down the official gathering last summer had no right to declare it an “unlawful assembly.”
“My thanks to God for justice,” Tigges wrote on Twitter on Wednesday afternoon.
Tigges was one of the more than 250 people who had signed up to speak during the public comment section of the Loudoun County School Board meeting that summer night. He intended to voice opposition to the board’s new transgender policy proposal, which mandated that employees use students’ so-called “preferred pronouns” and preferred restrooms regardless of their sex. Before Tigges could speak, School Board Chairwoman Brenda Sheridan called off the meeting, and the now-recently fired Superintendent Scott Ziegler declared the gathering an “unlawful assembly.” Ziegler ordered the hundreds of people waiting to express their outrage at the government school district to vacate the premises or risk arrest.
Tigges refused to leave.
“I just felt led to realize that we could still speak,” Tigges told The Federalist last year. “It’s a public forum, a public room. It had been scheduled until seven o’clock for people to speak. I stood up to encourage folks to stay and if they had something to say whether they were on the left or the right, didn’t matter. They’d be heard and we’d respect one another and do so and so people started doing that without any amplification at all and you could hear them fine because it was a peaceful assembly.”
Despite Tigges’ claim on the First Amendment, police officers handcuffed, arrested, and charged him with trespassing.
Two arrests made at the Loudoun County, Virginia school board meeting after it was declared an unlawful assembly and some parents here to protest against critical race theory and a transgender policy refused to leave right away #CriticalRaceTheorypic.twitter.com/dsZDrqJ0Gp
Tigges’ arrest in June of 2021 was used by the National School Boards Association (NSBA), in collusion with the Biden White House, to justify the smearing of concerned parents as “domestic terrorists” who required punishment from federal law enforcement. In September of 2021, the NSBA sent its infamous complaint letter, secretly solicited by Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, to the Department of Justice, which sparked a politicized attack on parents who wanted to speak out against corrupt school boards.
“Despite this victory, I have serious concerns about where we are as a country. We’ve been subverted by a darkness that is spilling out in rot at all levels and in both political parties,” Tigges tweeted after the decision. “Nothing will change until We the People value conviction over comfort.”
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Monday morning, I swept through the marbled halls of the Supreme Court of the United States, off First Street NE here in the nation’s capital, to enter the highest room of jurisprudence in the land. The sound of my footsteps muffled atop thick carpeting, the blinds on the massive windows mostly drawn and the room packed with rows upon rows of chairs, slowly filling.
A daughter of India who grew up in Morgantown, West Virginia, little could I know that over the next four-and-a-half-hours I would ride an emotional rollercoaster as three so-called “liberal” justices and four attorneys overlooked, erased, and tried to gaslight the truth of Asian Americans who face discrimination — or as the ideologues call it, “systemic racism” — in admissions to Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
If not for fierce questioning from the court’s six conservative justices and the arguments of two attorneys for the plaintiffs, Students for Fair Admissions, Asian Americans would have been erased in the courtroom that day — much as they have been nationwide by “equity warriors” for whom we are an inconvenient minority. Instead, this is my prediction for the rulings, expected next year: a 6-2 victory by Asian American families and students over Harvard and a 6-3 win over the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Born in India, I was on an emotional roller coaster today in the Supreme Court, listening to 3 justices + 4 lawyers try to gaslight America on the reality of anti-Asian racism. Fortunately, 4 justices argued fiercely. My bet: 6-2, Harvard loses. 6-3 UNC loses. America wins 💯 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/IsQ1yK8Ny1
In 332 pages of court transcripts, “diversity” was referenced 202 times, most of the time by the universities’ lawyers and the three justices that supported them, with “Asian” mentioned only 81 times. The universities’ lawyers, the sympathetic U.S. solicitor general, and the three like-minded justices spoke many times about supporting “students of color,” “minorities” and “diversity” but most often excluded Asian Americans. Ironically, the three liberal justices waxed eloquently about “diversity” without once noting the obvious: There wasn’t an Asian American justice beside them.
In the most defining moment of the day, Harvard’s attorney, Seth Waxman, tried to downplay “race” as a “determinative factor” in admissions to Harvard, noting that it was just like, “you know,” being “an oboe player in a year in which the Harvard-Ratcliffe orchestra needs an oboe player will be the tip.”
Chief Justice John Roberts shot that comparison down immediately.
“Yeah. We did not fight a civil war about oboe players,” he said firmly.
“I—,” Waxman tried to interrupt.
Roberts continued, undeterred. “We did fight a Civil War to eliminate racial discrimination, and that’s why it’s a matter of — of considerable concern.”
Across the country, parents listening to the proceedings laughed and cheered. The day before, many of those parents, with names like Jack Ouyang, Wai Wah Chin, Eva Guo, Suparna Dutta, Yuyan Zhou, and Harry Jackson, stood on the steps of the Supreme Court at an “Equal Education Rights for All” rally with signs promoting simple ideas. “Stop Anti-Asian Discrimination.” “Diversity ≠ Skin Color.” Together, over the past years, we had become accidental activists in the war on merit and Asian American students.
Since late August, parents had been meeting at 9 p.m. on Thursday nights over Zoom to ready for the rally, trading messages through the week on WeChat, Telegram, and Signal. CNN and Fox News featured their voices in their coverage of the case. Chinese-language newspapers put news of the rally on their front pages. But inside the Supreme Court, to the lawyers for the universities and the three justices who supported them, it felt as if we were invisible.
‘Gas lighters’
I’d first visited the nation’s capital decades ago as an 18-year-old intern in the summer of 1983, but this was my first time in the Supreme Court hearing room. It is about the size of a soccer field. At 57, I had to be a witness for the approximately 22 million Asian Americans living in the United States, about one of every 15 people, most hailing from 19 countries and the fastest-growing racial group in the U.S., according to Pew Research Center.
In response to a K-12 education system that has largely failed black and Hispanic students, officials at Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill have allegedly rigged their admissions processes with “race-conscious” standards that discriminate against Asian American students to boost the number of black, Hispanic, and other “underrepresented minorities,” known today as “URMs.”
I brought two books into the Supreme Court with me: the big red book, “Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement,” and the yearbook for the class of 2021 from my son’s alma mater, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, in Alexandria, Virginia, a magnet school known as “TJ,” where about 70 percent of the students are Asian American.
The yearbook theme was simple, “We know exactly how you feel.” Unfortunately, activists for the tenets of critical race theory don’t even pretend to want to know how we feel, and I witnessed this tone-deaf callousness from the three activist justices: Associate Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor. In my notebook, I penned their three names under “Gas Lighters.”
These three justices infused their questions, comments, and analysis with the politics and worldview of critical race theory, the ideology that teaches that society’s injustices must be corrected through the lens of race. Kagan wondered whether “people who have been kicked in the teeth by our society for centuries” can get a “thumb on the scale” instead of “white men.” She spoke about “our color blindness, whatever that means, because our society is not color blind in its effects.” Sotomayor punctuated many a question with “correct?” For example, she said schools are working to examine the “whole” student as “equals” — “correct?”
Quickly, Kagan found a kindred spirit in the country’s solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar, who spoke so sing-song it took a careful ear to recognize the disturbing worldview of critical race theory in her words. To the plaintiff’s argument on the “color-blind interpretation of the Constitution,” she said, “There’s nothing in history to support that.”
Under “Fierce Against Racism,” I wrote four names: Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh. Under “Sympathetic” to the plaintiffs, I penned two names: Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.
Photo/Asra Nomani
Prophets of critical race theory, such as author Ibram X. Kendi, have spread a toxic, unbelievable, and illiberal idea: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.” Asian American students have been their sacrificial lambs in their racial experiment, with K-12 schools like TJ in the crosshairs of their war on merit.
In December 2020, after the killing of George Floyd turned educrats into activists, the 12-0 Democratic school board in Fairfax County, Virginia, eliminated the merit-based admissions tests to the school and replaced them with a “holistic” process that would increase the number of black, Hispanic, and other “URM” students, assigning “bonus points” to racially engineer the student body. A group we started, Coalition for TJ, filed a lawsuit with attorneys from a public-interest nonprofit, Pacific Legal Foundation.
In early 2022, a federal judge ruled that the new admissions process is “blatantly unconstitutional,” but the “UnFairfax” school board, as we like to call it, is appealing the case, and it will likely end up in the U.S. Supreme Court as early as fall 2023.
‘Asian’ Does Not Appear
On Monday, to hear the three “Gas Lighters” and the university’s lawyers, you wouldn’t have even known they were weighing the effect of systemic racism against Asian Americans. In fact, at one point, Alito turned to David Hinojosa, an attorney representing current and former students at UNC-Chapel Hill supporting race in admissions and said: “I was struck by the fact that the word ‘Asian’ does not appear one time in your brief. Yet Asians have been subject to de jure segregation. They have been subjected to many forms of mistreatment and discrimination, including internment.”
Like a magician, Hinojosa said there was no mention of “Asian” in his brief because, voila, a “record” of discrimination against Asian Americans “actually doesn’t exist.” He instructed the court to take it up with Harvard.
When Alito pressed the Harvard attorney, Waxman, on why Asian American students received a lower “personal score” than other students on character traits, including “integrity, courage, kindness, and empathy,” the Harvard lawyer did a tap-dance, saying the “syllogism” of the question was “wrong,” then asserted that the personal score difference is a “slight numerical disparity” that doesn’t reveal any “evidence of discrimination in admissions outcomes against Asian Americans,” because it’s “simply a number” that “fades into the background.”
Simply a number.
“They think we’re that stupid.”
Alito pounced with the obvious question: “If it doesn’t matter, why do you do it?” Waxman dismissed the “personal score” as a “matter of triage” for overwhelmed admissions officers.
What about “affinity groups,” the controversial new tool for separating and segregating students in housing, discussion groups, and elsewhere in schools by race and other identity markers, asked Justice Amy Coney Barrett? Oh, they have “incredible benefits,” gushed Hinojosa.
Photo/Asra Nomani
In the 1920s, Harvard President Lawrence Lowell discriminated in admissions against another group: Jewish students, because he believed there was a “Jew problem” with the overrepresentation of Jewish students at the school. In gaslighting back then, Harvard officials said they weren’t discriminating against Jewish students but just putting in place a “holistic” admissions process.
Now, in his closing remarks, Cameron Norris, an attorney for Students for Fair Admissions, said, “Harvard thankfully does say it is ashamed of its history of Jewish discrimination. I hope someday it says the same about how it’s treating Asians.”
Asra Nomani is a senior contributor at The Federalist. A former Wall Street Journal reporter, Nomani writes a regular newsletter, Asra InvestigatesAsra Investigates, with breaking news and analysis on the frontlines of culture and politics. She is a senior fellow in the practice of journalism at the Independent Women’s Network and a cofounder of the Coalition for TJ, a grassroots parent group, and of the Pearl Project, an investigative reporting initiative. She can be reached at asra@asranomani.com and @AsraNomani.
The Pentagon’s investigation into the U.S. military in 2021 found about 100 individuals engaged in extremist activities out of a force of 2 million. It appears investigators were looking in the wrong place. The search for extremists might have yielded better results had they examined the Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA), the government agency that administers K-12 education to the children of military personnel.
The Claremont Institute’s recently released report“Grooming Future Revolutionaries” describes shocking indoctrination taking place at overseas schools. It is a must-read, especially for military parents of the nearly 70,000 children in these schools.
I am a military spouse and the mother of a former DODEA student. The particular teacher training that was the focus of Claremont’s report is the reason, in part, why I lost all trust in the system.
In May 2021, I saw that DODEA would be holding an “Equity and Access Summit” for teachers and administrators. Knowing that “equity” means different things to different people, I wanted to get a sense of what it meant at DODEA. When I managed to gain access to the recordings, I was absolutely floored by what I saw and heard.
As the Claremont report shows, the summit featured hours of teacher training steeped in critical race and gender identity theories.
Claremont released a video of summit clips in which a principal talks about a student who felt like he’d done something wrong because he’s a “young, white male.” The teacher said she didn’t know what to tell him — but she seemed pleased with the breakthrough. Perhaps she was just following the lead of DODEA’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) chief Kelisa Wing, who is currently under investigation by DOD for a history of disparaging comments toward white people.
Video Evidence of Teachers Pushing CRT
The report also highlights literature teacher Gregory DeJardin’s presentation called “Combating 1- Sided Narratives (Decolonize the Curriculum).” DeJardin insists teachers become social activists and interviewed several students in his class at Vicenza High School in Italy about their difficulties with “majority culture.” It was painfully apparent in their answers that they were parroting his dogma, as one student said: “[School] is getting better about being more diverse and not taking a very normative perspective but there are definitely issues and I feel like it is still incredibly skewed to the white, male, heterosexual and Protestant gaze.”
Betty Roberts, an educator at Robinson Barracks Elementary School in Germany, talked about critical literacy. She wants her students to look deeply into textbook versions of events to find hidden biases. She asks her students questions like: “Is the American Revolution still being fought today?” She presses further and asks if the American Revolution was just a “transition from one group of rich white men to another group of rich white men.” Roberts goes on to express her gratefulness to the teachers’ union for its training on white fragility because she recognized her need for cultural humility.
Normalizing Transgenderism
Aside from the relentless instruction on anti-racism and white privilege, a clear effort was underway to normalize transgender identities and the notion of a gender spectrum. Genevieve Chavez and Lindsey Bagnaschi, presenters of “Ally 101 — Creating an Inclusive Classroom for LGBTQ+ Students,” talked about gender transitions they have facilitated for students at their schools in Spain and Germany, respectively — sometimes without parental knowledge or consent.
And many LGBT educators apparently belong to a system-wide resource-sharing group on Schoology curated by a DODEA educator. Chavez recommends resources from the group such as “Teaching with Mx. T” and “Teaching Outside the Binary.” But there is another similar group that’s passcode protected — and it’s for students. Teachers can add students to their own LGBT chat rooms in Schoology, and parents are not invited.
If teachers run out of content from people like “Mx. T,” they can use Discovery Education, which many recommended during the summit. One of the programs is “Speak Truth to Power.” This program offers lesson plans that are “flexible, standards-aligned digital resources, designed to educate, engage and inspire the next generation of human rights defenders.” Sounds good, doesn’t it — until you see that transgender activist Jazz Jennings is one of those human rights defenders. But Discovery Education is password-protected, with one portal for students and another for teachers, so we really have no idea what’s being promoted to our children via third-party content creators who can update information in real-time.
Congress Needs to Do More
Our children deserve to learn in an environment free from divisive ideologies, and thankfully, DODEA’s activism has not gone unnoticed by Congress. Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., wrote a letter to DOD asking why teachers are being trained to secretly “transition” children at overseas schools. After a year, she still had not received an answer. She also introduced H.R. 4764, the No CRT for our Military Kids Act.
In the Senate, Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., offered an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2023 to prevent DODEA schools from hiding important medical information from parents — but it was voted down.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., introduced a Servicemember Parents Bill of Rights amendment to the NDAA to provide for more transparency and accountability in DODEA schools. It was adopted in committee with bipartisan support by a vote of 39-19 and is in the House-passed NDAA.
But Congress needs to do much more to ensure the safety of our military children and also that of any DODEA educator who is being intimidated into conformity. It will likely take years to sort out the mess at DODEA, so in the meantime, Congress could consider extending the military’s Non-DOD Schools Program to all students instead of only to those who are not in close proximity to a DODEA school.
Whatever the case, it looks like an extremist stand down is in order for DODEA, and it just might net more than the .005 percent found among our uniformed force.
Amy Haywood is a former senior legislative assistant for a U.S. House representative and an educator with years of experience working in a research-based program to help third culture kids adjust to life overseas. She holds a master’s degree in national security and strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College.
The 2021-2022 school year is coming to a close. As usual, students, parents, teachers, and administrators are looking over the past year to see what worked, what didn’t, and how to improve.
This year, the educational establishment’s report card is even worse than usual. It has failed to address the learning losses due to unnecessary Covid lockdowns and inspired parental uproar over critical race theory and LGBT advocacy in the classroom. It has suffered a surprising electoral defeat in Virginia and a not-so-surprising legislative setback in Florida, as well as an unprecedented number of school board recall elections. Most damaging of all, close to 2 million students have abandoned government schooling for greener (not to mention safer) pastures.
Faced with such massive public losses, one might think a little self-reflection would be in order. Instead, the educrats, with the help of their friends in the legacy media, have decided to address these serious problems by gaslighting the American public.
Avoiding Accountability at All Costs
The most recent example of this deception comes from the continuing saga of the National School Boards Association’s (NSBA) effort last fall to smear parents who complain at school board meetings as “domestic terrorists.” The now infamous letter and even more infamous Department of Justice memo that followed it represent the depths to which the educational establishment was willing to sink to protect itself from accountability to the families it theoretically serves.
A recently completed independent review exonerated the NSBA’s board from culpability in this fiasco, fixing the blame for “both the ‘origin and substance of the letter’” on former Interim Director and CEO Chip Slaven. The review also found that while unnamed members of the Biden administration “collaborated” with Slaven, it “did not find direct or indirect evidence suggesting the administration requested the letter.”
In an effort to “clear the record,” Slaven recorded an interview last week with Fox News Digital, where he whined about being “betrayed” and “completely backstabbed” by the organization that he led. He also admitted that he disagreed with the NSBA board’s futile efforts to walk back the language of the letter, claiming that “it drenched an already inflamed and out-of-control narrative with another helping of gasoline.”
Neither Slaven nor the NSBA’s announcement bothered to address the elephant in the room: that the
organization sees engaged parents and community members who attend school board meetings as potential threats that need to be watched and possibly prosecuted by federal authorities. When pressed about this during the interview, Slaven lamely defended the substance of the letter he penned by saying, “The word ‘parents’ is not in the letter anywhere,” despite the examples cited in the letter’s footnotes.
The NSBA has offered vague platitudes about “advocat[ing] for local control” and being “committed to parent engagement” as it pursues its “nonpartisan” goals. These attempts to rewrite history come as 25 state school boards have chosen“to withdraw membership, participation, or dues from NSBA.”
Meanwhile, an FBI whistleblower has claimed that “counterterrorism tools” were indeed used against parents in accordance with the DOJ’s memo. It remains unclear whether these efforts continue presently despite the NSBA’s repudiation of the letter and its alleged author.
Legacy Media Provide Covering Fire
Of course, the left-wing corporate media have gone all in to support educrats’ efforts to deceive the public into believing they remain the valiant heroes in this ongoing drama. Lately, they’ve decided to focus their attacks on a favorite target of the left: homeschooling families.
This is hardly surprising, as the number of these families at least doubled during the lockdowns of 2020-2021. What’s more, that number has been largely maintained despite schools re-opening in the fall of 2021.
On Mother’s Day, Keith Olbermann fired an opening salvo in this new campaign against educational choice when he tweeted that a homeschooling mom was “ruin[ing] the lives of five innocent children.” Not to be outdone, MSNBC columnist Anthea Butler initiated a preemptive strike against Kirk Cameron’s upcoming documentary “The Homeschool Awakening” by disingenuously linking homeschooling not just with conservative Christianity, but also with the “segregation academies” of the post-Brown v. Board of Education South.
After grudgingly admitting the recent increase in homeschooling “may [in part] be attributed to Black parents and other diverse groups” who might not otherwise dare to disagree with her leftist party line, Butler ended her hatchet job with a dire warning:
Homeschooling may have greater appeal now because of these debates and the desire for parents to play a big part in their children’s educational life. It may also arise out of pandemic concerns, but parents unfamiliar with the existing networks of homeschooling run the danger of being drawn into Christian conservative networks and theocratic teaching. [Cameron] says that people choosing homeschooling are having an awakening, but the public needs to awaken to the reality that public schools may disappear if people with his extreme beliefs have their way.
The left’s message to parents is loud and clear: Exercise your right to homeschool your kids and you are complicit in the cold-blooded murder of public schooling.
Institutional Suicide
In these efforts, Slaven, Olbermann, Butler, and their comrades studiously deflect from the simple truth: If American government-run schools are dying, it is not a case of murder, but of suicide.
The self-inflicted wounds keep coming despite all the warning signs of the past academic year. Last month, the school district in Kiel, Wis., accused three middle schoolers of sexual harassment for failing to refer to another student by her chosen pronouns. What parent wants to go through that as a consequence of sending his kids to public schools?
Meanwhile, in Virginia, Fairfax County Public Schools is planning to adopt a policy to suspend or even expel students who “maliciously misgender” classmates. The vote, originally scheduled for May 26, has been suspiciously delayed until June 16, perhaps so the happy chaos of the last day of school will allow the board to avoid further public scrutiny and outrage.
As kids across the nation start their summer vacations, the battle for their minds and souls rages on. True to form, the educational establishment fights dirty, using cheap manipulation tactics to distract the public from its pursuit of ideological “business as usual.”
Robert Busek is a Catholic homeschooling father of six who has taught history and Western Civilization in both traditional and online classrooms for over twenty years. His essays have also been published in The American Conservative and The American Spectator. The views he expresses here are his own.
Emerson College has a tradition of warmly welcoming racially divisive administrators. Only a few months after promoting a professor who said blacks and whites can’t be friends and divorced her husband because of his race, Emerson College has now nominated Shaya Gregory Poku as the school’s new vice president for equity and social justice.
Poku is one of the authors of the manual“9 Tips for Anti-Racist Child Rearing.” In it, she guides parents on how to raise their children within the critical race theory dogma. The manual claims that not judging people by the color of their skin is “absurd.”
Even though Poku received an award named after Martin Luther King, her ideology opposes everything King stood for. Poku’s manual says parents should instruct their children to “acknowledge and celebrate differences in appearance” and to “describe people referring to their racial backgrounds.”
The manual also tells parents they should prevent their kids from “socializing with other children who are being raised to have and perpetuate false and decrepit ideas.” Poku says there should be “educational interventions” against those children.
According to Poku’s manual, race should play a factor not only in the people you surround yourself with, but also in the businesses you support. To escape the “white bubble,” people should “patronize businesses owned by people of color” and buy less at white-owned businesses, the manual says.
In the manual, Poku also claims kids should learn about “racial hierarchy” and instructs parents to tell their children at a very young age that the world is unfair, meritocracy is a myth, and that their efforts might not be rewarded.
Dean Believes Blacks and Whites Can’t Be Friends
Similar to the new vice president for equity and social justice, Emerson President William Gilligan recently nominated racially divisive professor Kim McLarin to be the college’s dean of graduate and professional studies. McLarin, who is known for her racially divisive rhetoric, wrote an article for the Washington Post entitled “Can Black Women and White Women be True Friends?” She claims that black women and white women will never be able to have “true friendships.”
“Generally speaking, it’s not that I dislike white women. Generally speaking, it’s that I do not trust them. Generally speaking, most black women don’t,” wrote McLarin.
In 2006, McLarin divorced her husband, who is white. In a New York Times piece she authored, McLarin admits that her ex-husband’s race played a significant role in her decision to end the relationship.
In a piece published a few weeks before her nomination, McLarin fantasized about massacring crowds of white people:
If a civil war breaks out, I say, if violent white mobs begin roaming the country as they have done in the past, I will not worry about precision shooting. I intend to sit on my porch with my legally acquired handgun and as much ammunition as I have and perhaps a bottle of Scotch and take them as they come.
William Gilligan and Emerson College did not reply to requests for comment.
Sam Neves is a former leftist and a correspondent for Campus Reform. He is a marketing major at Emerson College. After graduation, Sam plans to attend law school and continue his mission to fight for people who do not have a voice.
Merit Academy’s vision: students prepared for success in a free society, promoting civic responsibility, and contributing their talents in a flourishing republic.
It seems a lifetime ago when The Federalist introduced you last fall to Merit Academy in Woodland Park, Colorado. It’s a no-politics public school designed and overseen by local parents, opened in just one year of intense planning and work. These past seven months have seen this public contract school grow and flourish, despite many challenges.
“When you think back to where we were a year ago, it is surreal,” says Gwynne Pekron, Merit’s director of development and chief action officer, beaming. “This was a dream for many, but a vision to us.”
Merit Academy is a classical, Core Knowledge school that opened on August 23, 2021, to 184 full-time students and more than 80 part-time homeschool students. The parents and community members who built Merit sought an education that would challenge children and build lasting friendships, without the controversial politics often found in public schools.
“Merit Academy is a shining example of our virtues of valor, goodness, and perseverance,” reflected local parent Heather Scholz. “It meets the demand of parents who have given up on the direction of modern schools.”
When we last checked in with Merit Academy, they were working hard in the classroom basement of Faith Lutheran Church, which generously opened its doors to Merit when the school’s board struggled to find a space big enough to accommodate parent demand. Where are they now? After calling both Faith Lutheran and Mountain View Methodist churches home, Merit Academy is now in its “start-up Bear Den” at a re-purposed hardware store in a local strip mall. Outside recess space was kindly offered by neighboring Our Lady of the Woods Catholic Church. Classroom walls are portable, lined with sound blankets to alleviate noise. From these walls hang children’s artwork and school projects, ranging from idioms to drawings of George Washington to designs of engineered future cities.
“For the first time, my son doesn’t ask for a ‘sick day,’” says Tarin McNeese, a sixth-grade parent. “This is not to say it’s easy—he works at it—but when challenged, his teachers guide him. I personally appreciate the school’s transparency with what is taught.”
The Merit Bears study science, English, history, reading, mathematics, Latin, language lab, and writing. In the halls, one hears lively songs of the upcoming spring performance, recitations of numbers study, and discussions of what it means to be valorous, one of the five Merit virtues. The classes are driven by Merit’s vision: students prepared for success in a free society, promoting civic responsibility, and contributing their talents in a flourishing republic by pursuing beauty, truth, and good.
The desire for choice is stronger than ever, not only in this beautiful mountain community but across the nation as charter school enrollments climb. In November 2021, this school district had its first contested school board election in more than a decade, and Merit’s existence, school choice, and critical race theory were all on the ballot. All four school-choice candidates swept the election, but their change agenda faces fierce resistance from the defeated minority. The new board majority is addressing the taxpayers’ concerns about district facilities operating at approximately 50 percent capacity. They are committed to stopping the 20-year trend of severely declining enrollment and family exodus.
The local school district was losing families who decided to live elsewhere or place their children in public and private schools outside Teller County, a picturesque rural location encompassing Pike’s Peak and adjacent to Colorado Springs. To bring families back, the new school board members support a parent’s right to know what is being taught. They support Merit Academy and school choice for parents. They plan to increase staff salaries and right a ship that has been listing for 20 years.
While holding her two-year-old, Nicole Waggoner, one of Merit’s founders, said, “Merit adds educational choice many people want. These families appreciate our virtues, our curriculum, and our school, so our enrollment numbers are through the roof. We’re drawing families up the pass [from Colorado Springs], which contributes to a thriving community.”
Image courtesy Merit Academy.
Seeing smiling faces in the “Bear Den,” one may wonder what challenges Merit Academy has overcome. “Starting a school is not easy,” reflected Pekron, “but it is worth it, especially when you hear your kids talking about the War of 1812, how a cat’s eyes adjust at night, or how they acted responsibly that day. It’s worth every breath.”
So, what are the biggest challenges now? Pekron paused, then said: “No matter how deep the vision and how detailed the plan, the biggest challenge is being at the mercy of others.” Glancing out the window, she continued, “As a contract school, grant foundations did not understand we were cut from the same cloth as a charter school, but different. Most said, ‘Come back when you are chartered.’”
Despite those financial disappointments, the most touching and inspiring funding came from grassroots contributions and encouraging words from supporters all over the country following the September 2021 Federalist article. To you, Merit Academy is deeply grateful.
One of Merit’s house mottos is “Fortune favors the brave.” This spring, Merit Academy has had greater financial support, with grants and donations totaling more than $400,000. Merit board member Mary Sekowski said, “It’s wonderful to receive these blessings of needed financial support that support start-up expenses.”
Seed funding isn’t the only thing start-up schools struggle with. “The facilities piece has been more difficult,” said Waggoner. “There are few available spaces for demanded growth.”
Woodland Park lies west of Colorado Springs at a stunning 8,500 feet elevation. As in most mountain communities, few existing buildings could house a school. Merit’s facility challenges landed it in an old hardware store, one of the only large-enough spaces open.
Pikes Peak as seen from Woodland Park, courtesy of Gwynne Pekron.
While many would view Merit’s experience as a struggle, the newly elected school board recognized a community need to charter Merit and sought a win-win solution for Merit’s space needs. The district’s declining enrollment leaves district taxpayers with a hefty burden to maintain partially empty buildings, costing more than $2.6 million annually.
“The more you spend on buildings, the less you spend on students,” noted Sekowski. “Taxpayers prefer their tax dollars support an increase in staff salary or a boost in student programming rather than pay for half-empty buildings.”
Due to declining enrollment, the district’s building space is at approximately 51 percent of functional capacity, according to a Denver consulting firm the district hired last fall. The capacity is forecasted to decrease to 32 percent at the middle school building and 35 percent at the high school in four years. The taxpayer cost of operation and maintenance for these two buildings alone exceeds $1.5 million per year.
Recognizing Merit’s need for space to grow as a new district charter school, the district explored the possibility of offering Merit space at the half-capacity district middle school, which would decrease district facility expenditures and honor high community support for Merit Academy.
“With Merit paying the building expenses, district funds will be redistributed to students and staff, not spent on underutilized building space,” Waggoner stated. “Besides saving taxpayers money, it honors previous community commitments to learning by using these spaces for their original intent — the education of children. This is especially timely with district consultants discussing school closures.”
This idea generated resistance from a minority in the community that closely resembles nationwide opposition to newly elected conservative school boards. This group has posted vitriol on social media, saying things like “F— Merit” on Facebook, protesting at local school board meetings, yelling at and heckling the newly elected directors, using public comment periods to call directors “racist” and accuse them of trying to establish religion, and identifying with national efforts to stifle charter schools and school choice. One of the new school board directors even had his truck keyed during a board meeting.
Image courtesy Merit Academy.
In March, students celebrated Dr. Seuss, wearing mustaches and reading Dr. Seuss books. As if written for Merit Academy and all parent-initiated schools out there, Dr. Seuss advised, “If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said it would be easy. They just promised it would be worth it.”
Yes, it is worth it. Despite its many challenges, Merit Academy thrives, with steadfast community support. The school opened in fall 2021 with nearly 200 students and a large waitlist. Its 2022-23 enrollment is forecasted to grow to more than 370 full- and part-time students, with additional students on its still-large waitlist.
“We are no longer just a hope or a dream,” Waggoner reflected. “Merit Academy is the school many families have hoped for.”
To learn more about Merit Academy or support it, please visit https://merit.academy.
John Dill is director of the Merit Academy school board and a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
For true believers of critical race theory, America is too steeped in racial oppression to be changed from within. Destruction is the only alternative.
Our nation has been rocked by at least two significant acts of domestic terrorism in a five-month span. Last week, Frank James opened fire in a New York City subway, injuring 23 people. In November, Darrell Brooks drove his SUV through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, killing 6 people and injuring 60 others.
Both perpetrators are black, which is a bit unusual given that mass shootings have historically been perpetrated by white men. More significantly, both Brooks and James had expressed radical views on social media advocating violence towards whites in the lead-up to their attacks, strongly suggesting race relations were a key motive for their acts of violence. (Naturally, the mainstream media has neglected to find out if it was indeed their motivation).
Ditto for Quintez Brown, a Black Lives Matter activist who was charged with the attempted assassination of Louisville mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg in February, and Micah Johnson, who killed five Dallas police officers in 2016. Meanwhile, public perceptions about the state of race relations in the country have plummeted.
These anecdotes, particularly during increasing dissemination of critical race theory (CRT), suggest CRT has been a detriment to racial progress rather than a force for good. The harmful impacts of CRT on race relations are unsurprising when considering several of its basic tenets.
CRT Teaches America Is Racist
The New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project,” the brainchild of Nikole Hannah-Jones, expresses a historical view in which America’s true founding was in 1619, the year African slaves were first brought to the United States. American history is thus viewed and analyzed through a lens of anti-black racism.
For example, Hannah-Jones controversially asserts that the Revolutionary War was primarily fought to preserve slavery, argues that the U.S. Constitution was meticulously crafted to establish a “slavocracy,” and criticizes Abraham Lincoln’s approach to the issue of slavery and race. Similarly, a report last June from our very own National Archives argued that America’s founding documents are steeped in “systemic racism.”
Philadelphia-based attorney and radio host Michael Coard perhaps best sums up the CRT view of American history, as he decried the Fourth of July as “a celebration of kidnapping, transporting/buying/selling human beings, separating families, torture, whippings, rapes, castrations, lynchings and enslavement.” The conclusion, then, is that the history of slavery persists, impacting all aspects of American life to this very day.
CRT Teaches American Government Is Racist
The Constitution remains the law of the land, and if you believe that the Constitution is racist, then it follows that the American system of government, which is based on the Constitution, is also racist. This is a core argument of CRT: American institutions, including the Electoral College, the Senate, and the Second Amendment have all recently been attacked as systemically racist to justify their abolition.
In the words of The Nation’s Elie Mystal,“[t]he Constitution is kind of trash… It was written by slavers and colonists, and white people who were willing to make deals with slavers and colonists. They didn’t ask anybody who looked like me what they thought about the Constitution.”
Allegations of widespread government-sanctioned suppression of minority voters also continue to persist. Therefore, according to CRT, minorities are forced to live in a system designed to oppress them, and the system is too flawed to allow for any reform internally.
CRT: Non-Whites Cannot Succeed Within the System
Perhaps most important to CRT and “wokeness” is the tenet that you cannot truly be successful as a minority in America. This was most clearly illustrated in a July 2020 display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which accredited several objective measures of successful behavior (e.g. hard work, planning for the future, delayed gratification, the scientific method) as part of “White Culture.”
Minorities who achieve wealth and/or educational success in the United States are openly attacked as exhibiting “white characteristics” or “acting white.” Successful African-Americans who don’t adhere to every woke political or social stereotype are quickly dismissed as “cornball brothers,” “oreos,” or “Uncle Toms.”
Thus, success for minorities in America is not taken as evidence of racial progress, but as a sign of conformity with “white” values and a betrayal of racial identity.
That Leaves Violence as the Only Option
If you wholeheartedly believe in those three statements, violence inevitably becomes your only option for progress. You live in an oppressive society, with built-in systems of oppression that prevent you from altering that society, and have no way to be successful within the system while staying true to yourself. Your only alternative is to destroy that system.
That is the thought process that Brooks and James expressed. “White people and Black people should not have any contact with each other,” James argued. A June 2020 tweet by Brooks was even more direct: “[W]hen we start bakk knokkin white people TF out ion wanna hear it…the old white ppl 2, KNOKK DEM TF OUT!! PERIOD.”
Of course, the leaders of the CRT movement who craft these beliefs and pass them on to others clearly don’t believe their own teachings. Prominent CRT figures such as Ibram Kendi, Patrisse Cullors, and Robin DiAngelo have achieved tremendous financial and professional success within the very systems they rail against. They are able to live in upscale neighborhoods and run in social circles that are far removed from the violence and poverty that plague many minority neighborhoods.
The corporate, educational, and entertainment institutions that score public relationship points by peddling CRT propaganda are similarly largely insulated from the harm that their teachings cause. Unfortunately for passengers on the New York subway and parade-goers in Waukesha, some people believe in CRT wholeheartedly, and thus embrace violence as the ultimate solution to systemic racism.
J. Allen Cartwright writes about the interplay of politics with cultural and scientific institutions. He can be followed on Parler at @jallencartwright.
A parent can look at the label on a juice box to decide what ingredients to allow into her child’s body. He should also be able to decide what ingredients a teacher puts into his child’s mind, but that isn’t the case in a growing number of public schools.
When Covid-19 brought the classroom into the kitchen, parents’ eyes were opened to some unsettling revelations, including that their children are being indoctrinated into critical race theory, and that some schools are secretly treating girls as boys and vice-versa.
Food labeling helps parents make informed decisions about what their children eat. In the same way, transparency helps parents make informed decisions about what their children learn. Yet some schools are resisting calls for transparency. Corporate media and teachers’ unions have inaccurately disparaged parents, but these critics are wrong. Here are three reasons why.
1. Children belong to their parents, not to the ‘community’ or the state.
Former MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry infamously called on her viewers to “break through our kind of private idea that ‘kids belong to their parents,’. . . and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.” Her pitch was strikingly similar to that of Terry McAuliffe, former Virginia governor and chair of the Democratic National Committee, who said parents shouldn’t be telling schools what to teach.
This view of parental rights is at odds with parents’ fundamental right to direct the education and upbringing of their children. The U.S. Supreme Court recognized this in 1925 in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, stating, “The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
As Professor Melissa Moschella writes, parental rights stem from the uniquely intimate relationship between parents and children. Children belong to their families, which are headed by their parents. Therefore, parents have the most direct obligation and authority to care for children until they are mature enough to direct their own lives. Until then, parents mediate a child’s relationship to the larger political community.
The failure to recognize that the family is distinct and relatively independent from the political community, and that parental rights are pre-political and natural rights, is not just wrong, but dangerous. Moschella notes Hannah Arendt’s observation that eliminating the intermediary structures between the individual and the state — namely the family and the church — is the essence of totalitarianism.
2. More schools are crossing the boundary line between education and indoctrination.
If schools just taught the “three Rs” (reading, writing, and arithmetic), parents would not suspect schools were undermining their values, beliefs, and authority. But, as parents in Albemarle County, Virginia, recently learned, some schools are indoctrinating students with so-called “anti-racism” ideology.
Instead of condemning all racism, “anti-racism” replaces one form of racism with another. Following “anti-racist” logic, Albemarle County schools used race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity to label students as “dominate” or “subordinate.”
Parents from five families of diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds challenged the policy. The school undermined what these parents believe and teach their children — that all people are created equal and should be treated as such. The school even threatened to punish students for not supporting the policy.
Yet, as Judge James C. Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit wrote in Oliver v. Arnold, “Schools should educate—not indoctrinate. Teachers can teach. And teachers can test. But teachers cannot require students to endorse a particular political viewpoint.”
Parental rights don’t end at the schoolhouse gate. Parents must be able to protect their children from policies that place burdens and privileges on them according to their immutable characteristics.
3. Backed by the Biden administration, schools are even engaging in unauthorized treatment of students’ mental health.
The U.S. Department of Education has promoted “gender support plans.” An official fact sheet instructs schools to maintain “confidentiality” for students who identify as transgender at school by not using the student’s birth name or “sex assigned at birth if the student wishes to keep this information private.” But there is no mention of notifying, much less involving, parents in such a consequential decision to adopt a new name and pronouns that correspond to the opposite sex.
The agency tells schools to support a student’s gender transition by using “a checklist of issues to discuss with the student or their family” (emphasis added). Without an explicit requirement that schools inform and obtain parental consent to treat the child as a member of the opposite sex, it is reasonable to assume that notification to parents is optional. The schools may also perceive parental notification as a matter that depends on whether the child views their parents as “affirming” of gender transition.
Schools’ use of “gender support plans,” like those recommended by the Biden administration, have shocked parents around the country. After learning that schools sought to hide their children’s emotional distress from them, they challenged these policies in Wisconsin, Florida, and California courts.
Alliance Defending Freedom recently informed Virginia’s Harrisonburg City School District that its policy of using different names and pronouns amounts to “a psychosocial treatment that will increase the odds of long-term persistence,” according to Dr. Kenneth Zucker, an expert in treating gender dysphoria in children. Up to 90 percent of children with gender dysphoria eventually become comfortable with their bodies if they aren’t encouraged to live as the opposite sex. Schools should not endanger students by hiding information from parents about their mental health or engage in unauthorized treatment of gender dysphoria.
Lockdowns allowed many parents to see the ingredients inside their children’s education. That prompted them to support laws that provide more transparency into curriculum and policies. Parents should be able to decide on the education that best suits their child and their family’s beliefs.
Too many schools are hiding crucial information. They must be held accountable through policies that require transparency, so parents won’t receive more nasty surprises.
Emilie Kao is senior counsel and vice president of advocacy strategy with Alliance Defending Freedom.
Mike Rowe on Tuesday criticized Canadian government officials for their response to Freedom Convoy truckers amid a national protest over COVID-19 vaccine mandates. For weeks, thousands of demonstrators have camped in Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, and blocked border crossings with the U.S. in protest of the mandate and other coronavirus restrictions placed on truckers crossing the border.
In response to what the Canadian government deemed an “unlawful assembly,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, a measure that grants authorities sweeping power to restrict travel, disperse crowds, arrest demonstrators, and freeze their bank accounts, among other actions considered necessary to stop assembly. Over the weekend, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson even suggested selling off dozens of vehicles seized during the Freedom Convoy protests to cover the city’s costs incurred during the demonstrations.
During an interview with BlazeTV host Glenn Beck on Tuesday, Rowe pointed out how quickly the situation has changed now that some truckers find themselves on the bad end of state directives. Truckers, once considered essential to the economy during the pandemic, have in short order become enemies of the state, the “Dirty Jobs” star suggested.
As Canadian officials debate auctioning off the Freedom Convoy protesters' trucks, @mikeroweworks gives me his take: "Truckers were the very definition of essentiality. Within the course of 2 weeks, they literally went from heroes to villains." pic.twitter.com/zV3bEJOspI
“You know what strikes me about all of this?” Rowe asked, adding, “And maybe this is somewhat of a silver lining [because] I kind of feel like we’re about to close the loop.”
“When this started, truckers were right on the leading edge of heroes. They were the very definition of essentiality,” he said. “[But] in the course of two weeks, they literally went from hero to villain.”
That’s how fast things can change in today’s chaotic socio-political climate.
Beck noted that protesters have yet to be convicted of crimes or even appear in court. Nevertheless, the government is floating an auctioning off of property. The Canadian government responded quickly and harshly to continued protests in Ottawa over the weekend.
Police descended on the crowds, arresting at least 191 protesters and towing at least 76 vehicles since Friday. In one scene caught on video, police are seen charging on horseback into a crowd of demonstrators and knocking down at least two people, including an elderly woman on a mobility scooter.
One trucker recounted to Fox News host Tucker Carlson the moment that police repeatedly struck him while he was on the ground, complying to orders.
“They drag me in, they lie me down on my belly, and I don’t — I don’t recall how many were on top of me … I felt like I was beaten, but I took it like a man,” the trucker recalled.
“They broke my body a little bit, but not my spirit,” he added.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
A now-deleted portion of the Riverside, Califonia school district’s website obtained by The Federalist displays that the district promoted an essay that attacks people based on their inborn skin color. The essay, titled “Decentering Whiteness” by Jeff Hitchcock and Charley Flint, claimed that “attacking whiteness is not enough.” It sought to divide people on the basis of their race and argued that “whiteness” should be pushed to “the margin,”
Riverside Unified School District promoted the essay at least three separate times, under the “Professional Learning,” “Community Engagement,” and “Culture and Climate” sections of their Equity, Access, and Community Engagement resources page, according to screenshots.
The Federalist previously revealed that both Riverside Superintendent Renee Hill and Board of Education member Tom Hunt lied about the district teaching critical race theory. One parent from the district, who wished to remain unnamed, told The Federalist that the resources list that contained “Decentering Whiteness” was removed from the website following the exposé of the district’s dishonesty.
When asked why the resources had been removed, Communication Director Diana Meza stated that the district is “updating the Equity, Access & Community Engagement google site and landing page, the page should be back up soon.”
The school district has charge of nearly 40,000 students, according to federal data, and 35 percent of those students are white. School families’ median income is significantly above the national average, at approximately $73,000 per year.
Decentering Whiteness
The removed 19-page “resources” document, which can be viewed here, not only condemned “whiteness” but served as a guidebook for how institutions can fight it, so that “whiteness itself can be made more marginal.” The paper explained, “Decentering whiteness, as we envision it, is a collective process that can take place in organizations, sectors of society, personal lives, etc., over periods of days, months, years and generations.”
While launching into both anti-white attacks and blatant attempts to divide people on the basis of their immutable characteristics, the paper engaged in race essentialism. It cast race as a defining rather than incidental characteristic when it tells readers to “Assume whiteness, and race, always structures our experience, and thus needs to be consciously considered as part of any social process.”
White people are also openly villainized in the materials. One line reads, “white culture has, on balance, been based on principles of conquest and exploitation” while another says that in the attempt to marginalize whiteness, “simply attacking whiteness is not enough.”
The document did not oppose attacking “whiteness” out of an opposition to racism, nor did it express any concern over the potential fallout of seizing on racial fault lines for socio-political ends. Rather, it simply argued that openly attacking whiteness wouldn’t be strategically effective. It remarked “Simply attacking whiteness is not enough to accomplish this goal. Assaults on whiteness, depending on their nature, may have the effect of confirming and solidifying the central position of whiteness in American society.”
Lighter skin color has been and continues to be one of the prime targets of critical race theory. Noel Ignatiev, a Marxist Harvard professor who is cited in “Decentering Whiteness,” infamously claimed that “treasonous to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.”
He also remarked, “Make no mistake about it: we intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as ‘the white race’ is destroyed—not ‘deconstructed’ but destroyed.”
Perhaps most sinister, “Decentering Whiteness” clearly sought to encourage racial division and even racial conflict, calling on a multiracial coalition to “displace” whiteness. It read “It will take a multiracial effort to displace whiteness, one that includes people from all racial/cultural groups.”
How exactly any of this rhetoric benefits the students or staff at Riverside Unified School District is entirely unclear. The presence of this material in a school climate is in fact both un-American and undeniably harmful, not only to the white people who are maligned by it but also those of all other racial backgrounds whom the article attempts to conscript into a race-based power struggle.
Spencer Lindquist is an intern at The Federalist and a senior at Pepperdine University where he studies Political Science and Rhetoric and Leadership and serves as Pepperdine’s College Republicans President. You can follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach him at LSpencerLindquist@gmail.com. SPENCER LINDQUISTVISIT ON TWITTER@SPENCERLNDQST
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
In debates about critical race theory and other manifestations of identity politics, Americans are being confronted with a particularly virulent form of Marxism, which some call cultural Marxism. Its adherents think they can create a new reality, because at bottom they do not believe in objective nature. Conservatives engaged in an important conversation over the exact proportion of natural law and natural rights must ensure their attention is not diverted from sworn opponents who deny the existence of either.
Very roughly, the natural-law crowd emphasizes society’s “common good,” while those on the natural-rights side stress individual liberties. They have bigger problems than each other though.
Adherents of a new left have no time for fundamental truths, but believe that each era’s conceptual framework is what creates reality. Man may apprehend natural phenomena through his senses, but he can only comprehend the world through society’s reigning concepts.
Marxist Belief
Marxists believe those in power create this perceptional superstructure. “The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class,” Marx himself wrote in “The Communist Manifesto.” Max Horkheimer, the neo-communist who led the Frankfurt School in the 1930s and ’40s and first came up with Critical Theory, was as usual more wordy, but essentially said the same thing.
“The power of healthy human understanding, or common sense … are conditioned by the fact that the world of objects to be judged is in large measure produced by an activity that is itself determined by the very ideas which help the individual to recognize that world and to grasp it conceptually,” Horkheimer wrote in a foundational 1935 essay.
To critical race theory, an American mutation of critical theory, that powerful conceptual framework is white supremacy. In fact, the first task of CRT, wrote the editors of the 1995 collection of essays that serves as the theory’s tablet (which they refer to as “The Big Red Book”), is “to understand how a regime of white supremacy and its subordination of people of color have been created and maintained in America.”
It is embedded in the “‘ordinary business’ of society,” wrote Richard Delgado in his far slimmer primer on CRT.
Man Creates Reality
The obvious implication is that, if you eliminate the conceptual framework — presto! you change nature and reality. Horkheimer says this is what happens with each passing historical era: “There are connections between the forms of judgment and the historical periods. A brief indication will show what is meant. The classificatory judgment is typical of prebourgeois society: this is the way it is, and man can do nothing about it…. Critical theory maintains: it need not be so; man can change reality” (italics added for emphasis).
From this, we can extrapolate why members of this new left believe that man can change his sex, which is just “assigned” at birth: because they are both Godless and materialist, they believe man is omnipotent. Things are not as they are because God or nature made them that way. Things are as they are because we conceive them so. Man creates reality.
This turns philosophy and theory on their head. Philosophy studies the true nature of things. But since there is no fundamental truth, philosophy becomes the motor to create a new reality.
Marx himself, once again, started it, writing in 1843, “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” Five years later, he added in the Manifesto, “Communism abolishes eternal truths. It abolishes all religion and all morality.”
CRT’s Goals to Dismantle Society
About a century and a half later, Harvard University’s Derrick Bell, the godfather of CRT, wrote, “As I see it, critical race theory recognizes that revolutionizing a culture begins with the radical assessment of it.” The works of CRT are suffused with calls for “theoretical deconstruction” and the like.
These are the true foes of those who want to conserve what is good about America (i.e., conservatives). They see all of American society as an oppressive hegemonic narrative that should be destroyed and replaced with a counter-narrative. “I believe we all have work to do to keep dismantling the organizing principle of this society,”says Alicia Garza, a founder of Black Lives Matter, a force that has already done a lot of cultural dismantling.
But starting in late 2020, a force has risen to push back: parents. “It didn’t take long for parents of all races to figure out that their children were being indoctrinated into a repellent ideology. Since the implementation of CRT at the school level began, genuine parental resistance to it bubbled up,” writes Abe Greenwald in a Commentary piece chronicling the counter-revolution.
Conservatives Shouldn’t Forget Common Enemy
Bright conservative minds engaged in an intellectual debate over the future of conservatism cannot forget this other fight against our common enemies. On one side of the conservative debate (and this is an oversimplification) are some who believe the emphasis should be on natural law (the eternal precepts that govern man’s action); on the other are those who stress the natural rights, or the individual rights, that man has because of his nature.
As Catholic University’s Melissa Moschella recently told me, they are tied at the hip, however. We have a natural right to free speech because our nature permits us to speak, but also because free speech is a prerequisite for discovering truth, an aspect of human flourishing. Our nature also permits us to commit murder, but we have no right to exercise that capacity because it is contrary to human flourishing, and therefore to natural law. These distinctions, let me assure you, are lost on Marx, Bell, or Garza.
I have good friends and mentors on both sides of the conservative debate. They are intelligent, patriotic, and courageous. Their issues do matter. But let’s remember who are the real enemies of fundamental truth, and not become immersed in internal debates over theological principles, as the Byzantines did in 1453 when the Ottomans were at the gate.
Mike Gonzalez, the Angeles T. Arredondo senior fellow on E Pluribus Unum at The Heritage Foundation, spent close to 20 years as a journalist, 15 of them reporting from Europe, Asia, and Latin America. He is the author of the new book, “The Plot to Change America: How Identity Politics Is Dividing the Land of the Free.” MIKE GONZALEZ MORE ARTICLES
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Amid ongoing supervision from parents across America, the Episcopal School of Dallas has sought to reassure parents it is not teaching critical race theory or targeting students on the basis of their race. Despite this attempt, documents obtained by The Federalist prove that the institution is teaching critical race theory while telling parents it’s not.
The elite private school, which bears a whopping tuition price of $26,945 for kindergarteners and $34,075 for high school seniors, sought to insulate itself from backlash on its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion page, which preemptively responds to common critiques. The page warns against “misinformation” before assuring parents the school is “not teaching critical race theory,” nor is it teaching “that being part of an ethnic or racial group makes a person responsible for systemic problems, or to cast blame on or shame any member of the community for actions that took place in history.” According to other school documents, however, these claims are false.
Student assignments show the school is teaching the left-wing extremism that targets children in so many government-run K-12 schools.
CRT In The Classroom
One Episcopal School of Dallas reading assignment for a middle school history class titled “This Thing Called White” exhibited the defining characteristics of CRT. The assignment claimed that “Whiteness is a constantly shifting boundary separating those who are entitled to have certain privileges from those whose exploitation and vulnerability to violence is justified by their not being white.” It goes on to contend that race was created “with the purpose of giving power to white people.”
In an 8th grade history class taught by Ron Frankland, students were required to listen to a podcast from the 1619 Project’s Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Frankland also signaled his support for CRT while bemoaning the wave of pushback from parents who’ve voiced their opposition to the ideology.
Nevertheless, attempts to turn students into leftwing activists through indoctrination appear to be working. An open letter titled “Our Turn To Rise Up,” penned by students as part of a history assignment at the school, condemned America as “diseased” and endeavored to “spark a fire of revolution.”
Faculty Members Endorse CRT
Furthermore, several faculty members, including many who are in key positions, have demonstrated an allegiance to the doctrines of CRT, as well as expressed their intent to incorporate the divisive theory in the classroom.
Jennifer Jarnagin is the chair of the school’s Classical and Modern Languages Department, as well as a sponsor of the Middle School Diversity Club and a middle and upper school Latin teacher. Several of Jarnagin’s tweets display an anti-cop and anti-white bias informed by the teachings of critical race theory. During the height of the Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots of 2020, Jarnagin implied all police officers were violent.
She also stated that she was happy to “disrupt white nonsense,” and that she dreams of “throwing 90% of straight white men into the ocean.”
In Jarnagin’s Twitter bio, she states that she’s “dismantling white supremacy, misogyny and heteronormativity” and that she’s a “Latin teacher interested in proficiency, inclusion, and empathy.”
Tolly Salz, an English teacher and the chair of the English Department, has also signaled her support for ideas endemic to CRT. On Twitter, Salz promoted an article titled “White People’s Fear of Critical Race Theory is Based in Ignorance,” as well as one from Learning for Justice, a project of the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center, titled “Confronting the Weaponization of Whiteness in Our Classrooms,” which claims that white supremacy is “baked into America’s foundation.”
The article also condemned white womens’ emotions as instruments of oppression, making the claim that “Men going to war with armor is the same as white women waging war through tears.”
Salz also promoted a guide labeled “Teaching with the New York Time’s 1619 Project.”
Critical race theory also appears to have affected the Christian school’s religious leadership.
Antoni Luc-Tayengo, who recently became a chaplain at ESD, has publicly advocated for CRT. In an article titled “Predominantly White Churches & Racial Justice: Discern The Next Right Thing,” the female chaplain argues people should “look for color” and frames involvement in the openly Marxist Black Lives Matter movement as a moral imperative for Christians.
Her article also links to a “well-cultivated list of resources for anti-racism education of all ages.” The page includes the 1619 Project and work from critical race theorists Robin DiAngelo and Kimberle Crenshaw, among various others.
Rev. Nate Bostian is a senior chaplain at ESD. While his public remarks have not carried the same vitriolic tone of many others at the school, from his public remarks it’s clear that leftwing ideology influences his religious understanding. In this prayer he gave for LGBT pride month, Bostian begins by referring to God as the “God/god of Diversity and Inclusion.”
In another post, he cites infamous critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi before going on to provide a theological argument for diversity, inclusion, and equity.
ESD’s Institutional Ties To CRT
None of these examples are isolated incidents. Despite telling parents that they do not teach CRT or engage in shaming tactics against children on account of their race, ESD, as an institution, has done both. ESD sent parents a list of CRT information compiled by Elizabeth Goatley, the school’s director of diversity and inclusion. Parents were directed to a page called “Anti-Racism 102: Why Not All Discrimination Is ‘Racism.” Intended for children in grades K-4 and adorned with colorful cartoons, the page erroneously claims that white people cannot be the victims of racism, saying “reverse racism isn’t a thing. Stop trying to make reverse racism a thing.” It also claims everyone is complicit in systemic white supremacy and that “whiteness” must be “de-centered.”
The recommended reading list included Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility,” material from critical race theorist Kimberle Crenshaw, Kendi’s “How To Be An Anti-Racist,” the 1619 Project, “Anti-racism for Kids 101,” and Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” among others. The list also linked to a “K-8 Racial Literacy” curriculum from an organization called Pollyanna. Pollyanna’s Conferences for School page sheds light on the type of material the organization presents to children.
Topics include “Race, Privilege, and Community Building,” “Shaping & Sustaining Safe Schools for LGBTQ+ Community,” “Intersectionality,” “Cultivating Racial Awareness and White Engagement,” and “Implicit Bias.” The organization also claims systemic racism “permeates every aspect of our society and transcends person-to person interactions,” a core belief of CRT.
The school’s DEI page explains that both staff and students frequently attend several conferences, including the People of Color Conference hosted by the leftwing National Association of Independent Schools. The POCC overtly teaches CRT. One presentation from the conference describes kindergarteners as “natural social justice warriors,” while others explicitly outline how to create a curriculum based on CRT.
Another presentation condemns the American system, telling the audience to “burn sh-t down.” It also discusses the “White People Way,” with the presenter condemning “perfectionism” and “power hoarding” as defining characteristics of white people.
The Federalist reached out to multiple school staff for comment, inquiring about the 1619 Project, racially charged statements made by a faculty member, and CRT in the classroom. The Federalist also asked why the school was present at the POCC event, where teachers were taught how to develop a curriculum grounded in CRT, if there was no intention of teaching the racially charged ideology.
In response, ESD’s Director of Communications Julie Clardy provided the following statement: “We present challenging material that asks students to consider multiple points of view. For instance, we present the 1619 and 1776 projects together and ask students to analyze and argue their merits. Students are edified, not damaged, when they are asked to examine ideas they may disagree with.”
ESD Is Not The Only School Deceiving Parents
The Episcopal School of Dallas is by no means the first academic institution to lie to parents about teaching critical race theory. Over the summer, President of the American Federation of Teachers union Randi Weingarten falsely claimed CRT is not being taught in K-12 schools despite her organization previously bragging on national television about teaching the ideology.
The Federalist reporting has revealed that officials at both Riverside School District and Los Angeles Unified School District lied to their school communities, falsely claiming they did not teach CRT. Despite the obvious parallels with previous instances, the state of the Episcopal School of Dallas demonstrates that elite private schools are not immune from the left’s push for CRT in America’s K-12 institutions.
Spencer Lindquist is an intern at The Federalist and a senior at Pepperdine University where he studies Political Science and Rhetoric and Leadership and serves as Pepperdine’s College Republicans President. You can follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach him at LSpencerLindquist@gmail.com.
Davis Joint Unified School District in Davis, California, pushed leftwing distortions of gender and critical race theory through its Office of School Climate, which taught staff that “gender is a scam” and advertises the White Privilege Conference on March 9-12, 2022. The office is “responsible for supporting district staff and recommending and piloting ways to address structural oppression and to enhance school climate, equity, diversity, and inclusion,” according to their website.
The district, which includes approximately 8,500 TK-12 students throughout 16 different schools, also recently voted to adopt an Ethnic Studies requirement, which a press release notes will “explore issues of identity, analyze systems of power” and “examine social movements.”
Distortions Of Gender
The district’s site features a number of different resources that pushed radical leftwing distortions of gender. One presentation called “Supporting LGBTQ+ Students and Staff” was given to staff members at Harper Junior High School in May 2021 by two of the school’s teachers, both of whom use “they/them” pronouns. One also uses the abbreviation “Mx.” in lieu of Mr., Ms., or Mrs.
One slide bore a pride flag with transgender colors and black and brown stripes, both of which “sought to further represent the queer and trans identities of black and brown people.” Another one linked to a video titled “Gender is a Scam,” which compels audiences to “decolonize their language,” while a linked article called “15 Things LGBTQ people of colour want you to know” tells you “Why you might be guilty of white fragility.”
The slideshow instructed staff to use the pronouns they/them until someone says his pronouns and told them that “Posters/flags that support LGBTQ+ people are just the beginning” before going on to ask, “does your curriculum center primarily white/cis/straight voices?” The same slide warns against using medical and scientifically accurate terminology in regard to gender.
Meanwhile on the office’s LGBTQIA+ Supports page, a link to the activist group Human Rights Campaign promoted “LGBTQ+ Inclusive Picture and Middle School Books,” some of which are even aimed at children in pre-k. A link to the USC Rossier School of Education’s site “Students and Gender Identity Guide for Schools” also features a “Gender Identity Glossary for Schools” with woke vocabulary terms like “deadnaming,” “gender expansive,” “polygender,” “third-gender,” and “two spirit.”
Critical Race Theory and the White Privilege Conference
The office also promotes a trove of critical race theory resources intended for students, families, staff, teachers, and administrators under the subheading “Anti-Bias and Racial Justice.” The site opens by promoting free webinars from Embrace Race, a left-wing organization aimed at young children. Their webinars bear titles like “Addressing Racial Injustice with Young Children” and “RaceTalk among White Families Post-Floyd. Now What?”
The White Privilege Conference, a project of The Privilege Institute, is also promoted to staff members. The annual conference, not to be confused with the institute’s similarly named White Privilege Symposium, intends to provide “an opportunity for participants to discuss how white privilege, white supremacy, and oppression affects daily life while giving strategies for addressing issues of privilege and oppression and advancing social and economic justice.”
Last year’s conference hosted Robin DiAngelo, who discussed the subject of her latest book “nice racism,” which condemned all white people, including the far-left white people who comprise her audience, as definitionally racist.
The conference featured myriad workshops each day, which boasted titles like “Critical Race Theory/Critical Race Feminism: Creating a Plan of Action during the Biden-Harris era,” “A Good Womyn is Hard to Find,” and “The Making & Remaking of Whiteness.” The institute also hosts the Youth Action Project, with one-day institutes geared towards middle schoolers and high school students.
The district’s office also advertises the 1619 Project curriculum alongside a site called Learning for Justice, which they note “offers excellent, teacher-developed classroom curriculum.”
‘Dismantle White Supremacy’
Included under the heading “For Teachers, Staff, and Administrators” are K-12 frameworks for anti-bias and social justice education from Learning for Justice, a project of the extremist Southern Poverty Law Center whose mission is to “dismantle white supremacy” and “strengthen intersectional movements” by pushing critical race theory into schools.
One such video from The New York Times titled “A Conversation with White People on Race” features white people expressing guilt over their alleged privilege, with one person remarking “We’re all implicated in a racist system, and I play my part in it as a white person.”
The office adds that they have a library of books and videos for staff, including one titled “Cracking the Codes and Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible.”
Meanwhile, students and families are also directed to a number of critical race theory-inspired resources, including one link to a site titled “100 Race-Conscious Things You Can Say To Your Child To Advance Racial Justice,” which includes quotes of things parents have told their children when discussing race. Particularly striking is number 53, which makes the claim that “if you are White and you commit a crime … police might say ‘that was wrong, don’t do that again,’ and that’s all…but if you are Black and commit the same crime, they might arrest you and you might go to prison.” One quote under the subtitle “police violence” discusses black victims of police brutality, writing“The man who killed them didn’t like brown skin. He had white skin like us.”
The list isn’t exclusively focused on race, however, also promoting left-wing distortions of sex with quotes like“You know, some people are born with penises but feel like girls on the inside and some people are born with vaginas but feel like boys on the inside. We can’t always tell if someone is a boy or a girl just by looking at them and that’s okay.”
“Guidelines for Strong White Allies” is also included on the district’s list. Among the guidelines were requests for “resources,” “money,” and even “your body on the line.” Author Paul Kivel also told “white allies” to “understand and learn from the history of whiteness and racism” and to “assume racism is everywhere, every day.”
An anti-racist book list for children promoted by the district explains how parents can ease children into CRT by first starting “very gently” with entirely unobjectionable books that “just show kids that racial diversity exists.” The goal, however, is to eventually employ books that discuss “racial privilege, colorism, and the subtle tools that uphold white supremacy, such as white fragility and respectability politics.”
The district’s previous superintendent John Bowes signaled his belief in the leftist claim that America is fundamentally racist when, after the conviction of Derek Chauvin, he sent out a message explaining that he was reminded of the need to “rid our country of the systemic bias and institutional racism that exists in all parts of our society.” He went on to explain that “public education, including DJUSD schools, are part of the solution.”
Davis Joint Unified School District’s promotion of both critical race theory and leftist distortions of sex are part of a broader leftwing push in K-12 institutions throughout the country. In California alone, other districts have lied about teaching CRT, hosted LGBT clubs for four-year-olds, paid extremist organizations to “disrupt whiteness,” and promoted material that tells students to use witchcraft against those who say “all lives matter.”
The politicized nature of California’s government schools, along with general concerns regarding quality of education, may lead some to support a recently launched bipartisan campaign to pass a school choice initiative in the golden state.
Neither Superintendent Matt Best nor Climate Coordinator Kate Snow responded to The Federalist’s request for comment.
Spencer Lindquist is an intern at the Federalist and a senior at Pepperdine University where he studies Political Science and Rhetoric and Leadership and serves as Pepperdine’s College Republicans President. You can follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach him at LSpencerLindquist@gmail.com.
When Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced Senate Democrats’ New Year’s resolution to abolish the filibuster and ram through a partisan federal takeover of election administration, he framed it as an attempt to protect “free and fair elections,” the “foundation of our democracy,” from state governments. In reality, it is the leftist elites and their corporate allies, not the states, that pose the greatest threat to our constitutional system.
Free and fair elections are the foundation of our democracy, but the Democrats’ concerns about election rights are totally baseless. Progressives from all over the country — from President Joe Biden to Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and Schumer — claim that Republicans are passing “voter suppression laws” to exclude their political opponents from the vote.
In reality, it is easier to vote in 2022 than it ever has been. Voter registration has been streamlined, and record turnouts show that Americans of all backgrounds are freely exercising their rights.
The left’s proposed reforms would restrict Americans’ freedom, not expand it. Legalizing ballot harvesting, for instance, would present more opportunities for corruption.
More generally, taking election administration powers away from the states and handing them to the federal government would not eliminate the potential for abusing those powers, it would just make it easier for officials in Washington, D.C., to abuse them — and it would further undermine our system of federalism.
In 2020, when election integrity fears swept other parts of the country, the state of Florida conducted its elections with peace, security from interference, and respect for all citizens, all in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. This is proof that with strong leadership, state governments are perfectly capable of holding the responsibility of election administration. Ironically, this year will be the first time that the president’s home state of Delaware allows in-person early voting, whereas Florida has had it for years.
Left’s Broader Effort to Consolidate Power
Democrats’ campaign to centralize elections is part of a broader effort to consolidate power in the hands of a leftist elite class. This class wants to use that power to silence and disempower anyone who dissents from their radical progressive agenda.
Case in point: the very same people who said in 2005 that restricting the filibuster would mean losing to “the passions of the moment” and spell “doomsday for democracy” — Biden and Schumer — want to eliminate the rule now that they are in power.
This power grab masquerading as democracy reform is bigger than just what goes on in the Senate. In 2020, leftist politicians closed churches and restricted in-home religious services while they let political protests, and eventually full-scale riots, go unnoticed. In 2021, critical race theory advocates indoctrinated our children and tried to remove parents from our schools. And this year, the Biden administration will begin forcing millions of Americans to get a Covid-19 vaccine to keep their jobs.
Collaboration from Communists and Corporations
In this movement, the political left has been aided by social media giants and mega-corporations. To gain favor with the Marxists in Washington, D.C., Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter censor dissenting voices, labeling unpopular views as “misinformation.” Amazon blacklists conservative authors. And banks that taxpayers bailed out in 2008 cancel accounts based on Orwellian “reputational risk.”
Of course, behind closed doors many of these same companies are in bed with a genocidal regime, the Chinese Communist Party. While they are eager to appear human rights champions, they lobby for trading goods made with slave labor and protect communist propaganda from negative customer reviews. It makes sense that corporations comfortable with totalitarianism abroad would be happy to silence dissent in the United States.
Those of us who are not on board with the progressive agenda should take note. America is still a free nation, and it will take some time before the situation here begins to resemble the dystopia that is communist China. But if it can happen anywhere, it can happen here, and censorship and consolidation of power are two important steps on the road to tyranny.
Americans need to remember where the greatest threats to our democracy really lie. If we focus our attention on exaggerated problems and imaginary fears, rather than the leftist elite power grab unfolding before our very eyes, we do so at our own peril.
Marco Rubio is a U.S. senator from Florida. MARCO RUBIO MORE ARTICLES
California’s Jefferson Elementary School District will be the first district in the United States to implement ethnic studies courses in all of their elementary and middle schools, and their new curriculum for this includes teaching children to become leftwing “co-conspirators.” The district’s curriculum that brings new state requirements for high school into the earliest grade levels was created by Community Responsive Education, a leftwing organization run by critical race theorists at San Francisco State University.
The district, which is located in Daly City, California, and serves roughly 6,000 students across ten elementary schools and four middle schools, has agreed to pay the organization nearly $170k in taxpayer money.
Public Dollars to Make Leftist ‘Co-Conspirators’
District documents note that the radical curriculum will be piloted in the 2021-2022 school year. It was presented by Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, a professor at San Francisco State University and the co-director of Community Responsive Education. The presentation was given during a school board meeting in July 2021 and began with a land acknowledgment that described the Ohlone people, not the United States, as the rightful stewards of the land that JESD is on.
Tintiangco-Cubales, who uses the pronouns “she/her” in addition to “siya,” a Filipino word that means both male and female, explained that she is “a settler, an uninvited visitor” on Ohlone land before going on to note that JESD is America’s first district that “is committed to rolling out Ethnic Studies in all of their middle and elementary schools.” In late 2021, California passed a state mandate that “ethnic studies” be taught in all public high schools.
The presentation explains that the curriculum is designed to “eliminate racism and other forms of oppression” by “creating, learning, listening, uncovering, and sharing of the his/herstories, experiences, and current conditions of those who have been racially marginalized, underrepresented, and/or silenced.”
The curriculum is divided into four different units, labeled “self,” “systems,” “social movements,” and “solidarity.” Each unit is accompanied by a corresponding set of “essential questions” and “enduring understandings.”
One such “enduring understanding” under the “self” unit reads: “Learning about our own identities and those of others allows us to become more empathetic and builds our capacity to go from being allies to co-conspirators/accomplices in the elimination of oppression.”
Teaching Kids America Is Inherently Evil
The second unit condemns America as institutionally racist and teaches children that white supremacy is entrenched in American systems such as education. The unit also indicts white people as the beneficiaries of racism, claiming that they use the system of white supremacy to maintain their “wealth, power, and privilege.” Additionally, students learn that “institutional racism is the way in which white supremacy continues to oppress non-white people.”
Children are then turned into ambassadors for critical race theory at the end of the unit when they are tasked with creating a public service announcement that “denounces systems that are oppressive,” which could, according to the curriculum, include American education systems if not America itself.
Directly after accusing America’s systems of being fundamentally racist and condemning white people as beneficiaries of racism who maintain white supremacy, teachers tell children how to mobilize and engage in “transformational resistance” in the third unit.
The unit focuses on social movements and blatantly aims to turn students into racially motivated leftist revolutionaries. Tintiangco-Cubales notes that special emphasis is placed on “the notion of transformational resistance.” Students are asked “How do we build social movements to create change and impact society?”
The final unit teaches children how they can “pursue true liberation” through an understanding of “solidarity, liberation, collective action, intersectionality, and dismantling systemic oppression.” Children are also taught that “To achieve true liberation, we must actively and collectively work together to dismantle various systems of oppression (ie: institutional racism, white supremacy, etc.).”
Making Children Into Political Agitators
Students’ transformations into leftist activists are completed with their “solidarity praxis project,” where students create a campaign to address a problem in their community. Even the presentation’s imagery leaves no doubt regarding the curriculum’s intent. Each unit is introduced by a cartoon-esque flat art character holding a protest sign.
District Pays Nearly $170k For CRT Courses
Tintiangco-Cubales presented the curriculum on behalf of Community Responsive Education, an organization that offers “professional and curriculum development services for community organizations and educational institutions to begin or sustain the journey of becoming community responsive.”
At a meeting in February 2020, the district agreed to pay Community Responsive Education $40,000 in taxpayer dollars to facilitate the development of Ethnic Studies units and lessons to be piloted in Jefferson Elementary School District,” according to the meeting’s public records.
Then in August 2020, Jefferson Elementary School District unanimously approved a motion to pay the organization $28,502 for “services during the 2020-21 school year to facilitate the development of Ethnic Studies units and lessons to be piloted in Jefferson Elementary School District,” according to the school board meeting’s minutes.
The district also voted to pay Community Responsive Education an additional $100,000 “for Ethnic Studies Curriculum and Teacher Development for both Middle and Elementary school teachers beginning on July 1, 2021 until June 30, 2023” for a total of $168,502.
The concept of “community-responsive education” from which the organization draws its name, just like “culturally responsive education,” is effectively a rebranding of critical race theory. The curriculum from Community Responsive Education is predicated on a belief that U.S. institutions are defined by racism and that collective action must be taken to dismantle them, a core tenet of critical race theory.
Furthermore, CRE, just like CRT, takes the traditional Marxist dichotomy that pits the oppressed proletariat against the oppressive middle class and reapplies it to race, thereby designating moral value, victimhood, and collective guilt on people as a result of immutable characteristics.
A Dangerous Model for Extremists In Education
As America’s first school district to implement ethnic studies curriculum in all of its elementary and middle schools, Jefferson Elementary School District could have significant influence on other ethnic studies curricula across California and America.
Without sacrificing any of the usual extremism inherent to CRT, this curriculum may mark a shift towards a more strategically oriented method of instruction. Rather than simply indoctrinating children with the beliefs of systemic racism, privilege, and oppression, this course is blatantly designed to create the next generation of extreme leftwing activists operating from these false premises.
This model will not be specific to Jefferson Elementary School District. In fact, a report from Parents Defending Education found that Community Responsive Education has a foothold in a variety of other school districts, including six others in California and one each in New York, Texas, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
A number of other California districts have also taken steps to indoctrinate children with CRT. One Bay Area school district promoted materials that told children to use witchcraft against people who say “all lives matter.” The Los Angeles Unified School District lied in claiming that CRT is not taught in its K-12 institutions despite hosting a critical race theorist who taught staff to “challenge whiteness” and inviting the director of UCLA’s Center for Critical Race Studies to give input on their ethnic studies curriculum.
This overt leftwing takeover of government schools has led some California parents to support a bipartisan campaign that would enshrine school choice and tether taxpayer dollars to students. Should it receive the required number of signatures and pass a vote, the initiative would allow parents to take their children — and their money — out of schools that prioritize indoctrination over education.
Neither school board President Clayton Koo nor Tintiangco-Cubales responded to requests for comment.
Spencer Lindquist is an intern at the Federalist and a senior at Pepperdine University where he studies Political Science and Rhetoric and Leadership and serves as Pepperdine’s College Republicans President. You can follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach him at LSpencerLindquist@gmail.com.
WAUKESHA, Wis. — The banquet hall buzzed with impassioned chatter as parents, friends, first-time school board candidates, and other locals congregated for a Saturday morning town hall that felt more like a strategy session. After two major public school districts, Milwaukee and Madison, shut down yet again and blamed COVID, parents were fired up. Talk of critical race theory, leftist administrators, mask mandates, and school shutdowns hummed through conversations with the kind of first-hand animation that could propel once-complacent Wisconsin parents into a movement of activists capable of unleashing an unquenchable red wave in the Dairy State. They saw what happened in Virginia, and now they want to bring it home.
Former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, who’s now running to unseat Democrat Gov. Tony Evers in November, organized the event. Although Kleefisch is in campaign mode, the overarching energy of the gathering wasn’t as much, “Help get me elected,” as it was, “How can we get more of you elected?”
Calling All Parents
“We need more parent activists. This is that important,” Kleefisch said while moderating a panel of concerned moms-turned-activists.
One of those moms was Scarlett Johnson, a mother of five who, after discovering the apathy in the Mequon-Thiensville School Board, decided she needed to run for a seat.
“We just started paying closer attention,” Johnson said to the room of eager fellow parents. “I hadn’t attended school board meetings. I vote, but I never voted for a school board candidate.”
But that all changed this last year. Johnson said she and a group of other moms started getting together and doing their research. When they did, they found toxic racial propaganda in their kids’ classrooms, such as teachers assigning books like Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility.” The moms started making phone calls and sending emails to school officials. “It started a movement,” Johnson said.
In the course of her run for school board, Johnson said she’s been called a white supremacist and received death threats, but noted, “I’m still here, I’m still fighting.”
Kylee Zempel/The Federalist
No Room for Apathy
Parents aren’t just fired up about nefarious actors in the school systems, however. They’re also on the lookout for complacent school board members and district officials. Another mom on the panel, Alyssa Pallow, is getting involved simply because her school board doesn’t seem to really know anything about dangerous ideologies such as critical race theory. Kleefisch agreed, stressing to parents that they don’t have to wait to get involved until one of their kids cracks a textbook or assignment that makes their jaw drop open. “It can be that you’re horrified by the apathy,” Kleefisch said.
“It snowballs,” said another mom, Amber Schroeder, regarding parent activism. “You will inspire people to get involved.” Schroeder and Johnson worked together in the Mequon-Thiensville district to organize a recall election of four school board members.
“People are afraid to do it alone,” Schroeder continued. “Once you realize you’re not alone, a lot more people get involved. … If you build it, they will come.”
A Time for Choosing
Other parents have been shocked to watch their children become casualties in the left’s Covid crackdowns. Mattie Allen stressed the importance of school choice after her kids had a horrible academic year due to lockdowns. Allen’s son spent his first year in school doing it virtually, “which was horrendous,” she said. Her daughter spent one year at Milwaukee Public Schools, where her GPA plummeted, and it was “one of the worst years.” Thanks to school choice, they’re now in a charter school with just one grade per class. “Their school is so open, and I love it,” Allen said, noting that her daughter’s GPA is back up, she’s on the honor roll, and she’s playing volleyball.
But some families aren’t so fortunate. One of Allen’s friends who is stuck with her kids in Milwaukee Public Schools is watching the district once again shut down. This single mom has a first-grader and a third-grader, meaning she had to switch to third shift just so she could fulfill the roles of both teacher and provider. She’s “up all day, up all night,” Allen said, getting choked up. “How do we give all moms that [school choice] option?”
Maggie Vinopal, a mom in the Eau Claire school district, has also had enough with the COVID madness, saying school officials are weaponizing Statute 252, a state quarantine law, to punish and quarantine unvaccinated kids. Her healthy seventh-grade daughter has been quarantined four different times for a total of 14 schools days, despite coronavirus posing almost zero risk of severity to healthy children. Anyone who tests positive for COVID-19 is required to “isolate,” Vinopal told The Federalist. But when students come into contact with a positive case, only the unvaccinated have to “quarantine,” despite the ability of the vaccinated to contract and spread COVID.
On the very first day of school, Vinopal’s daughter was seated at the same lunch table as a vaccinated student who later tested positive and had to isolate. While the vaccinated students at the table were allowed to proceed as normal, Vinopal’s daughter was required to quarantine and provide proof of a negative test.
Jumping in the Ring
Covid nonsense like this is what inspired people like first-time Waukesha School Board member Kelly Piacsek to run. When a number of people decided to “abuse our children in the name of science, I got really mad,” said Piacsek, who is now known for holding firm on a decision to end a harmful federally-funded school lunch program in the face of vicious and dishonest attacks. “That’s what motivated me.” Running for school board is “absolutely worth it,” she told parents. “We’ve got to take this on because we have a front-row seat to the consequences.”
Piacsek inspired people like Slinger parent Bill Brewer to run for his school board. Brewer, a veteran, has lived in Slinger for approximately 18 years. He coaches youth football there and is now involved in the league’s leadership. But the school board’s apathy and lack of urgency against dangerous ideologies have prompted him to get involved.
“Marxism doesn’t come and punch you in the face in round one. It creeps in,” Brewer said. “I just can’t have that, not for my community, not for these kids. They deserve better.”
Rebecca Kleefisch Campaign
Brewer said his strategy isn’t so much a campaign “as a giant, three-month listening tour.”
“Once I get elected, that’s not going to stop,” Brewer said.
That seems to be the Kleefisch campaign strategy too. Rather than spending two hours rattling off campaign promises, the gubernatorial candidate opened the floor on Saturday for parents to voice their concerns and asked attendees to fill out cards with the top three issues that matter to them to help guide her policy. That’s more than these weary parents have gotten from Evers, who has worked to keep parents in the dark. In December, the governor — who was the state superintendent of public instruction for a decade — vetoed education transparency legislation that would have required districts to publish classroom materials online. This anti-parent action from Evers followed his school-closing impulse that kept kids home and tanked their academic advancement.
“We need you to be successful and aggressive,” Kleefisch rallied, encouraging the parents fighting in local races. If the energy in the Waukesha banquet hall was any indication, these parents won’t have any problem with that.
Kylee Zempel is an assistant editor at The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religious liberty, and criminal justice. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.
The woke-o-meter in public schools is about to ramp up. Parents who think they don’t have time to homeschool may soon realize that, compared to the effort involved in monitoring and countering the nonsense from leftist classrooms, homeschooling is the relaxing alternative. Not all teachers buy into the leftist narrative of race-obsessed anti-Americanism. But leftist K-12 administrators want to ensure that, eventually, all teachers will present only approved ideas and counter any wrongthink children are taught at home. Many of these educrats are now embracing a technological fix.
Trade publication Education Week recently reported that about 500 school districts around the country are rating teacher applicants according to their “cultural competency,” another code for “wokeness.” Many of these districts are contracting with a teacher-hiring company called Nimble, which uses artificial intelligence to examine applications and interview answers to determine which candidates harbor the correct political and cultural attitudes.
A central concern of Nimble and its leftist clients is mindsets about race. The goal is to hire only teachers who are “anti-racist” activists, who will reject equal treatment of all students in favor of discrimination against some (whites) for the supposed benefit of others (racial minorities). Note that under this rubric, Asian students, who as a group work hard and consequently excel, don’t qualify as an oppressed racial minority.
“Now that we’ve become a little more aware of the concept of anti-racism and maybe a little more woke as a culture, I do think that districts have started to emphasize these questions a little bit more,” Nimble CEO Lauren Dachille told EdWeek. “They might be more common, they might be more explicit.”
Anti-racism as a motivating societal force was popularized by Ibram X. Kendi, who along with other savvy race grifters is profiting handsomely from the concept. Getting points for honesty if not integrity, Kendi teaches that discrimination against white people is a positive good, and indeed necessary to establish the “equity” of equal outcomes for all regardless of intelligence or effort. This is what is meant by anti-racism: “If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist.”
Note the racism inherent in anti-racism. “Anti-racists” assume that black and brown children are “less than” white or Asian kids—they can’t excel in academics, they can’t follow basic rules of personal conduct. It’s necessary to change all standards to accommodate these presumed “inferior” beings. Such a theory ensures minority kids will never overcome personal obstacles because they’re told they don’t have to. This is the system that, with Nimble’s help, many schools are trying to establish and perpetuate.
EdWeek identified a Boston elementary school principal who “will tell candidates the school’s priorities around anti-racism and ask them to respond.” To make crystal clear the political attitudes expected from successful candidates, “she will ask them what they’ve done personally or professionally to be more anti-racist.” Presumably, getting arrested at a Black Lives Matter riot would be, as Rush Limbaugh used to say, a resume enhancement.
Applicants in Indianapolis may be asked “how [they would] ensure that student outcomes are not predictable by race, ethnicity, culture, gender, or sexual orientation.” Of course, there’s only one way to ensure such an outcome: manipulate it to guarantee that all students end up at the same low level. Any students who threaten the leveling by working too hard or achieving too much will have to be brought to heel—at least, if they’re the “wrong” race.
Indianapolis teaching applicants may also be asked, “Why do you think that low-income students predictably perform lower on standardized tests than their more-affluent peers?” One would be pretty safe to assume a preferred answer would be “because of systemic racism,” not “because those students, largely due to decades of misguided government policies, are more likely to come from fatherless families and grow up in a dysfunctional environment.”
Throughout the article, district officials emphasize the importance of hiring teachers who are amenable to the schools’ “priorities” and “values.” But how is it appropriate for a public institution, funded by taxpayers who hold a wide range of political opinions, to institutionalize one set of those opinions? Even worse, how is it appropriate for the institution to guarantee the propagation of those opinions by limiting hires to candidates who agree with them?
These questions illustrate the bubble mentality of the left. Leftists are so certain of the objective correctness of all their views that they cannot conceive of any person of goodwill taking a different position. In the leftist mind, anyone not willing to engage in discrimination against whites or Asians in the name of “equity” is the moral equivalent of a Klansman. And who would object to screening out Klansmen from the teacher corps?
Parents who hope the public schools are still salvageable might want to reconsider. The skyrocketing wokeness of administrators who control teacher hiring will ensure that all classrooms are increasingly devoted to indoctrination rather than education.
How exhausting it is for parents to constantly monitor what their children are being fed in every class and then try to repair the intellectual and moral damage at home. Viewed in this light, does choosing another schooling arrangement really seem so hard?
Jane Robbins is an attorney and a retired senior fellow with the American Principles Project in Washington DC. In that position she crafted federal and state legislation designed to restore the constitutional autonomy of states and parents in education policy, and to protect the rights of religious freedom and conscience. She is a graduate of Clemson University and the Harvard Law School.
While documenting my former high school’s attempt to indoctrinate me with critical race theory six years ago, I remarked that now, several years later, “the situation has undoubtedly worsened.” Worsened it has. Now, Campbell Union High School District has promoted more than 100 “equity resources” to students and staff, including a document that taught students how to put a curse on those who say “all lives matter.”
Colorblindness, Cops, and Curses
The page serves as a vast library for CRT resources and features 60 different links, including a Google Drive folder with 45 different documents. The list made sure to include the full range of CRT buzzwords, with links like Raising Race Conscious Children, the infamous 1619 Project, Anti-Racism for Beginners, and Social Identities and Systems of Oppression, among others. One link takes you to an “Anti-Racism Resource List,” which teaches about “white fragility” and claims that racism can only be perpetrated by white people. One of the “resources” provided was a Trevor Noah speech labeled “Why rioting makes sense,” followed by an unhinged anti-white rantfrom Sonya Renee Taylor, demanding that white people “throw your white body” on police officers and “put their bodies on the line for the purpose of justice.”
The list also addresses white people when it says, “We are socialized into white supremacy from the moment we are born” before going on to say, “It is about completely dismantling how you see yourself and how you see the world, so that you can dismantle … white supremacy.”
Samuel Martin graduated from CUHSD’s Branham High School in 2019 and was appalled by the district’s actions. He told The Federalist, “The idea that white students must ‘dismantle themselves’ in the context of their personality is cultish. Not only is it cultish, but it is deliberate in that this school system wants its’ white students to hate themselves. Do these people honestly think that drilling racial identitarianism into childrens’ heads from a young age is going to make them less racist?”
CUHSD also links to the Black Lives Matter Resource Guide, specifically their section labeled “high school,” which itself includes 45 different texts. Amid a wide variety of CRT inspired assignments is a document that includes writing prompts on police brutality and racist violence.
One section titled “Hex” tells the reader, “Hexing people is an important way to get out anger and frustration.” It becomes increasingly deranged, suggesting that those who say, “all lives matter” or commit “microaggressions,” should be targeted. “Write your own hex poem, cursing that person,” it instructs.
When asked her thoughts on the document that instructed K-12 students to use witchcraft on political opponents, Branham teacher Meredith Allen told The Federalist she hasn’t read the documents her district recommends, so she “can’t comment,” but that she is generally “opposed to the ‘all lives matter’ message.”
Another section labeled “A World With No Police” cites police and military as “systems or institutions that … contribute to oppression.” It asks, “What would the world be like without them?” before telling the reader to write a poem discussing “a world without these institutions.”
“The Black Radical Tradition,” is a 565-page e-book that includes articles from the Communist League and Noel Ignatiev under the pen name Noel Ignatin. Ignatiev was a Marxist who argued that “abolishing the white race is … so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed white supremacists.”
Then there’s a slide show entitled “What is the Black Lives Matter Movement?” which is made for children and was produced in part by teachers at LAUSD. It includes a glossary of terms like “white supremacy,” the definition of which includes the line, “systems, like schools and jails, have white supremacy built into them because white people have had so much power for so long.”
The ADL’s linked document “George Floyd, Racism, and Law Enforcement” defines racism as “the … oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people,” a definition that reinforces the malicious lie that white people can’t be the victims of anti-white racism.
The district’s equity resources page is just the most visible result of a series of steps in support of CRT that started long ago. In fact, the district was a testing ground for CRT before it spread throughout the nation. The book “Research Studies on Educating for Diversity and Social Justice” was published in 2018 and describes the process. An entire chapter, written in part by my former teacher, is dedicated to discussing how CRT was used at my high school so it could be replicated.
The book noted the use of the theory, saying, “CRT is used here to centralize the discussion of race and racism at Branham High School.” It went on to describe an “equity advisory” class that I was placed in as a sophomore, where “Students learn about the different types of oppression along with the privilege it affords the oppressors.” The authors hoped their tactics would spread, writing, “the intent behind sharing the process Branham underwent is to provide a model that could be followed by other schools across the nation.”
The district’s Board of Trustees supports this agenda, recently offering unanimous support for a resolution resolving to “dismantle institutionalized racism in our society and our school district” and is “committed to … implicit bias training, Ethnic Studies, and resources that foster dialogue around the guiding principles of #BlackLivesMatter.”
Note the district’s adoption of the term “equity” rather than “equality.” Here’s superintendent Robert Bravo two hours and 39 minutes into a board meeting saying he believes “equity is about equity of outcomes.”
CUHSD even established an Anti-Racism Team, which is divided into eight Equity Teams that include teachers, principals, administrators, and even two students who must be “BIPOC.” That means white students are banned from the “Equity” Teams. They’re tasked with “challenging imbalances of power and privilege,” among other roles.
Michael Espinoza is a member of one such Equity Team and a teacher at Branham High School who won the district’s teacher of the year award. Here he is calling a Native American tribe the “rightful stewards of the lands our schools and district offices stand on” and telling teachers to recognize “the power of critical race theory and use it in our lesson plans.”
He also gave a speech to the class of 2021, where he levied leftwing complaints against America and quoted Huey Newton, imploring students to engage in revolution instead of “conforming to the machine that is the United States.” On his Instagram account, Espinoza celebrates mandates for ethnic studies classes and complains of living under “white supremacist, heteropatriarchal rule” in a plea to his “co-conspirators.”
If this is CUHSD’s model teacher, what does their model student look like? Espinoza’s students created a variety of leftwing posters in his ethnic literature class. One poster demanded “Dear White PPL: Start Listening, Stop Talking” and others that said, “Wear UR F-cking Mask” and “Give us back our land.” Principal Lawton took down the posters amid outcry before caving in and apologizing to the leftwing agitators.
Co-Conspirators? Or A Conservative Counter Culture?
The full ramifications of our education system’s descent into leftwing radicalism is yet to be fully realized, although we can be certain that many of the students it doesn’t lose to homeschooling will be successfully transformed into “co-conspirators.” But as the rhetoric of revolution becomes standard for stodgy school administrators, its appeal to youth might wane.
Conversely, they run the risk of creating a small but clever cadre of conservative youth who understand from firsthand childhood experiences the consequences of toxic racial grievance politics. Don’t be surprised if the propagandizers who intend to give permanency to left-wing hegemony instead give rise to a nascent conservative political force that will uproot it.
Spencer Lindquist is an intern at the Federalist and a senior at Pepperdine University where he studies Political Science and Rhetoric and Leadership and serves as Pepperdine’s College Republicans President. You can follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach him at LSpencerLindquist@gmail.com.
The Los Angeles Unified School District Office of Human Relations, Diversity & Equity prepared a presentation that told students critical race theory isn’t being taught in schools while the district made presentations that did precisely that. The district also mandated that teachers take an “antiracism” course taught by a known critical race theorist who told them to “challenge whiteness.”
LAUSD Lies, Denies That Critical Race Theory Is Being Taught In Schools
A LAUSD presentation titled “Critical Race Theory and Racism in K-12 Education” starts out by defining the theory as a “Theoretical Framework through which researchers and scholars try to understand how structural and racial inequities exist and endure in our society.”
The PowerPoint implores students to rename a headline referring to critical race theory, “since we now understand that Critical Race Theory is not taught in schools.” A separate document, which claims “there is no evidence that CRT is widespread in K-12 education,” is also listed on LAUSD’s website.
Although administrators at LAUSD claim CRT isn’t taught in their schools, the district created lesson plans that embed the corrosive theory in their very own classrooms, all after the district brought in a critical race theorist to tell teachers how to “challenge whiteness.”
K-12 Students Subjected To Critical Race Theory By Diversity And Equity Team
The LAUSD Office of Human Relations, Diversity and Equity introduces its advisory lessons by highlighting their desire to speak with students “about power, privilege, oppression, and resistance.” The section of the website labeled “Human Relations, Diversity & Equity” lists several critical race theory-inspired presentations, including slideshows that teach Thanksgiving is evil and propose an alternative holiday.
One presentation told students to check their privilege and included a video called “What is Privilege.” It shows people engaging in a privilege walk, an activity that I had to do six years ago as a freshman at my California high school. In it, people line up and take steps forward or backward depending on their answer to a series of questions. It is incredibly easy to manipulate the results through selective questioning in order to make people believe CRT’s sweeping claims of privilege and oppression based on skin color.
The presentation claims that white people, among others, are uniquely privileged, before telling students how to become an ally of left wing social justice movements. There’s also a slideshow about the Black Lives Matter movement that includes a note signed by the LAUSD Human Relations, Diversity and Equity team. The presentation mocks the phrase “all lives matter” in a comic.
It also includes the infamous tagline “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family” and featured a grab bag of intersectional insanity, imploring students to “celebrate queer people,” “dismantle patriarchal practices,” and undermine “hetero normative thinking.” One graphic demanded that our society “fund counselors not cops” and “mandate black history and ethnic studies.”
The presentation discussed white supremacy, which it defined as “The belief that white people are better than other races” and claimed that “Some systems, like schools and jails, have white supremacy built into them because white people have had so much power for so long.”
The administrators are evidently not fazed by the irony of peddling the conspiracy theory that America’s schools are fundamentally controlled by hegemonic white supremacy while they, as influential members of the nation’s second-largest school district, engender animosity against their white students by offering a state-sponsored crash course on racial identity politics.
A wide variety of other presentations also peddled the same themes and pushed for CRT.
Teaching critical race theory and then lying about its presence in schools isn’t new. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, has claimed CRT isn’t taught in schools after her organization boasted of teaching it on national television.
LAUSD Enshrines Core Tenets of Critical Race Theory
One slideshow focused on the Cleveland Indians changing their name, claiming that various teams were named after racial slurs and that Native Americans are the only people group whose identity has been turned into a mascot, conveniently forgetting about teams such as the Minnesota Vikings, Boston Celtics, and Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
A whole section on the LAUSD website is dedicated to “Election, Insurrection, and More.” One slideshow focused on “domestic terrorism,” invoking Jan. 6, 2020. It also features discussion of white supremacist domestic terrorism, while making no mention of Black Lives Matter riots or the rape and murder-infested Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.
When asked why the Human Relations, Diversity and Equity team told students that CRT is not being taught in schools despite teaching it themselves, the team’s coordinator Judy Chiasson avoided the issue, responding, “We encourage students to hear different perspectives, become critical thinkers, and build camaraderie across identities so they may become the leaders of tomorrow.”
LAUSD Brings In Known Critical Race Theorist
Lest you believe these presentations were simply the handiwork of a rogue team of far left administrators, turn your attention to this memorandum from the LAUSD that mandates that teachers take a course dubbed the “Anti-Racist Journey.”
During the training, Howard tells teachers to “celebrate people of color,” and then discusses the need to “challenge whiteness,” which he bizarrely connects to ideas of merit and individualism. As Howard and one facilitator guide notes, “Whiteness’ … does not mean an indictment of white people and refers to a majority perspective and construct.”
But critical race theorists frequently use the term to secure this indictment. Psychoanalyst Donald Moss published an article claiming that whiteness is a “parasitic condition” without a “permanent cure,” while Noel Ignatiev, the communist and Harvard lecturer who founded the journal “Race Traitor” and claimed that “treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity,” argued that “abolishing the white race is on its face so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed white supremacists.”
Yet we’re somehow expected to believe that these critical race advocates are just trying to end racism. They’re not being anti-white. They’ve simply constructed an ideology around attributing some of the worst evils to “whiteness.”
In the face of the district’s lies, there might be reason to rejoice. It might be an indicator that even school districts in incredibly far-left areas have realized just how quickly they’re losing ground on the issue among decent people of all races. By lying, LAUSD might’ve accidentally admitted a greater truth about critical race theory: that parents and voters can stop it.
Howard, the LAUSD School Board, and Superintendent Reilly did not respond to requests for comment.
Spencer Lindquist is an intern at the Federalist and a senior at Pepperdine University where he studies Political Science and Rhetoric and Leadership and serves as Pepperdine’s College Republicans President. You can follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach him at LSpencerLindquist@gmail.com.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe generated reactions across the country after making a controversial statement about parental involvement in education during the Sept. 28 gubernatorial debate with Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin.
“I’m not gonna let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions,”said McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee who previously served a term as governor from 2014-2018. He went on to boast of his 2016 veto of legislation that would have allowed parents to block sexually explicit books.
Terry McAuliffe: "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." pic.twitter.com/7S15pTv1gY
Virginia’s Fairfax County Public Schools recently were forced to pull two books, “Gender Queer” and “Lawn Boy,” after explicit material was revealed by Stacy Langdon, a mother, during a school board meeting on Sept. 23. Neighboring Loudoun County has been the flashpoint for debates over the use of critical race theory (CRT) in schools.
CRT holds that America is fundamentally racist, yet it teaches people to view every social interaction and person in terms of race. Its adherents pursue “antiracism” through the end of merit, objective truth and the adoption of race-based policies.
“Terry McAuliffe believes that parents should have no say in their children’s education so that he and his radical special interest allies can keep pushing their political agenda into classrooms. As governor, McAuliffe shut down parents who wanted a better education and more choices for their children, and his disastrous policies and lower standards have led to plummeting SOL scores and more students being left behind” Youngkin campaign spokesman Christian Martinez said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Glenn Youngkin will get politics out of our schools and be a champion for parents and students.”
Are you a parent who wants to have a say in your child's education?
“The public schools in Virginia do not exist to raise our children, they exist to teach them math, science, reading, writing, and history. They definitely shouldn’t be providing pornographic material, encouraging gender confusion, and teaching children that they are either oppressed or oppressors,” Ian Prior, a Loudoun County parent and executive director of Fight for Schools, told the DCNF.
“Well, it’s unfortunate that one of our governor candidates, McAuliffe, feels parents do not have a right to their own children in the schools. We do not co-parent with the government, we do not co-parent with teachers or with the school board. We are the parents and ultimately, we have the final decision over our children,” Patti Hidalgo Menders, the president of the Loudoun County Republican Women’s Club and a parent with children in Loudoun County Public Schools, told the DCNF.
“We have every right to know the materials they are reading in the schools. That’s our right as a parent,” she added.
“The intentional efforts made by certain elected officials starting from the school board all the way up to a gubernatorial candidate like Terry McAuliffe to silence and shut out parents from their children’s education and insert themselves as the government as the primary educator instead of the parents being the primary educator of the children is appalling.” Elizabeth Schultz, a former member of the Fairfax County school board who has a child in middle school said.
“Every parent, regardless of their political affiliation, regardless what age their students are, should be repelled by the notion that the government alone is in charge of what your children learn,” she added.
Across the country, parents have been speaking out about the use of critical race theory in classes. In Missouri, an online training seminar became controversial when the trainer, Dr. LaGarrett King of the University of Missouri, coached teachers on how to sneak teaching social justice past “Trump country” parents. In Loudoun County, several school board members were part of a secret Facebook group that sought to publically expose parents who opposed the use of critical race theory in school curricula. The revelation triggered a recall campaign targeting six of the members. Loudoun County Public Schools denied using critical race theory, but evidence provided by parents contradicted that denial.
McAuliffe’s remarks also drew criticism on social media.
“Terry McAuliffe should learn Virginia law. #VAgov § 1-240.1. Rights of parents. A parent has a fundamental right to make decisions concerning the upbringing, education, and care of the parent’s child,” McAuliffe’s opponent, Glenn Youngkin, posted on Twitter,
Glenn Youngkin: "I believe parents should be in charge of their kids' education."
Radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt vowed on Twitter that he was playing McAuliffe’s comment “coming into every break” during his program.
“Last night on the gubernatorial debate stage Terry McAuliffe stood before you and said ‘I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach’. The choice is CLEAR. Vote @GlennYoungkin,” Aliscia Andrews, a Loudoun County parent and former Republican candidate for Congress, tweeted.
Julie Perry, the Republican nominee for the 86th House District for the Virginia House of Delegates, noted McAuliffe’s endorsement of her opponent on Twitter, and after quoting his remarks, asked if her opponent would “distance herself from the top of her ticket.”
Steven Law, whose Twitter profile describes him as CEO of the Senate Leadership Fund, noted in a tweet that the issue with McAuliffe’s statement went beyond what he said.
Terry McAuliffe: "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." pic.twitter.com/7S15pTv1gY
In July, campaign finance disclosures revealed that McAuliffe’s campaign received $250,000 from the American Federation of Teachers. The Virginia Education Association’s political action committee has endorsed McAuliffe’s candidacy.
People hold up signs during a rally against “critical race theory” (CRT) being taught in schools at the Loudoun County Government center in Leesburg, Virginia on June 12, 2021. | AFP via Getty Images/Andrew Caballero
An activist who spent over two decades advocating for critical race theory has opened up about how she came to understand how the theoretical framework contradicts Christian teachings. Now she is encouraging supporters to reach out to friends and loved ones “wrapped up in the critical social theories.”
Monique Duson, the co-founder of The Center for Biblical Unity, spoke about her experiences with woke ideology and CRT as part of a livestream event sponsored by Southern Evangelical Seminary in North Carolina on Saturday. CRT, which is tied to Marxist critical theory, criticizes the U.S. and Western nations as being oppressive and promoting institutional “systemic racism” or “white supremacy.” It teaches that systemic racism is ingrained in every aspect of American life.
Chantal Monique Duson, the co-founder of The Center for Biblical Unity, speaking about her time as a proponent of critical race theory at a virtual event held by Southern Evangelical Seminary on Saturday, Aug. 7, 2021. | Screengrab: YouTube/Southern Evangelical Seminary
When discussing her eventual rejection of CRT and overall woke ideology, Duson said that “leaving wokeness is never done alone, and it’s rarely done without a fight.”
Duson cited her lengthy dialogue with theologian Krista Bontrager on issues like CRT, social justice and other provocative topics as a key factor in her leaving “secular frameworks.”
“If your friends or loved ones are wrapped up in the critical social theories, critical race theory or social justice, don’t get mad at them,” Duson advised.
“It’s usually done or embraced from a posture that is very compassionate and wanting to do good. They’ve just not been [given] a proper exegetical framework.”
Duson told her audience to encourage their CRT peers, especially their Christian friends sympathetic to the worldview, “to truly get into the Word of God to understand truly what it means.”
“We must have compassion as we embrace young people and older people who are espoused to this ideology so that we can influence them with the Gospel of truth,” she continued. “Jesus is our only hope for racial unity.”
“If someone in your life is espousing critical race theory or the social theories, know that it is not too late for them to walk out. Your participation is going to be desperately needed.”
Duson talked about her upbringing in South Los Angeles, California, growing up in a predominantly black neighborhood. She explained that her childhood involved living in a crime-ridden neighborhood rocked by the Rodney King riots of 1992, with a heavy emphasis on learning to be black, especially “in contrast to what it means to be white.”
Duson noted that while the term “critical race theory” was not used by the people she knew growing up, “everyone used some of the same terms or some of the same phrases.”
These terms and phrases included the ideas that racism was pervasive, that whites will not change on a race-related issue until it directly benefits them and allegations of “white privilege.”
“I knew Bible verses, but I didn’t know context. I knew about justice, but I didn’t know the bigger story of the Bible,” said Duson, who became a Christian as a teenager. “These are things that help to prevent or offer boundary with things like critical race theory.”
“Knowing proper context, knowing the bigger history or the bigger story of the Bible. Like many CRT-affirming Christians, I participated in syncretism, where I mixed Scripture and culture.”
Regarding her eventual departure from CRT beliefs, Duson credited “divine intervention,” saying, “I did not wake up alone.”
“It takes divine intervention,” she stressed. “God Himself is the primary agent of my awakening. He orchestrated specific encounters with people who caused me to begin to question my paradigm.”
This included meeting white individuals who were victims of racism or suffered economic injustices comparable to African Americans living in the inner-city, such as rural whites living in Appalachia. Duson was part of a one-day virtual event titled “Awaken: Thinking Well About Wokism, Social Justice, & Racial Reconciliation.”
In addition to Duson, other featured speakers for the digital event included civil rights activist Bob Woodson of 1776 Unites and former police officer Eric Muldrow of Code Red Conversations.
“The ‘Awaken’ event will examine the questions surrounding systemic racism in America, police violence and people of color, the nature of true social justice, and how someone can escape wokism,”explained SES.“We cannot love others well by sacrificing truth on the false altar of wokeness ideology.”
The Christian Post’s Executive Editor Richard Land was the president of SES until July 2021 and presently serves as an adjunct professor and president emeritus.
And listen for the “Tsk, tsk, you don’t really understand what we’re about, dear.” That’s how it will be in Minnesota and probably elsewhere if a leftist teachers union can spread its ideas on how to respond to its promotion of critical race theory.
Before reading the following, you might want to take a deep breath and exhale or whatever it is you do to reduce stress. You might have to do that after reading it, too.
Education Minnesota is trying to counter growing community pushback against CRT around the state, so it has published a guide on how teachers should respond, a copy of which was obtained by Powerline and publicized by Minnesota’s Alpha News. First of all, the union tells teachers not to call what they’re teaching critical race theory. They know parents are catching on. And the guide presents buckets of mush designed to obscure the issue and talk down to critics.
It’s a classic snow job using the special language of “educanto,” a term coined by the late Paul Greenberg, public school critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning Arkansas newspaper editor. Education Minnesota tells teachers that when asked why they teach kids that all white people are racist, they should give the following response:
“First off, I’m thrilled you’re taking such a deep interest in how and what our kids are taught, a conversation that I feel is long overdue.
“What I know most Americans believe is that we expect our students — whatever their color or background — to be able to learn hard truths and handle honest history and civics.”
May I pat your head?
“I believe in children’s potential to meet new challenges and have an honest reckoning, and when we try to edit and distort our history, we are doing them, and our future, a disservice. My loyalty is to children and who and what they can become.”
That’s how teachers should respond to your question about their “evil white people” push. And, of course, as the left always says: It’s for the children.
Education Minnesota does more than purr in its teacher voice. In its guide for its union members, it provides does some hard-knuckle political messaging against CRT critics by presenting “Key Concepts for Responding.”
Here are excerpts:
“Seize the moral high ground and engage on our terms. With attention on education, let’s talk about the teaching and curricula we support and communicate how it benefits all students.”
“Ascribe motivations to the opposition. Instead of reflexively repeating the opposition’s claims to dispel them (e.g. ‘we are not teaching grade schoolers about XYZ’) talk about why they’re attacking standards, equity and classroom educators.”
“Bring the conversation back to what we want. Don’t stay on defense.”
“Avoid the academic term ‘critical race theory. This phrase, unfamiliar to most audiences, has been redefined by the political right as an all-purpose racial dog whistle. Talk instead about the more honest and more complete education our students deserve.”
“[I]t is so disappointing to see that a few billionaires, and the promoters and talking heads they pay for, have launched a national campaign to mislead Americans about the lessons educators teach about history, culture, gender and politics.”
“Once again, they’re trying to distract and divide us so we don’t demand the richest 1 percent and the largest corporations pay what they owe for what our communities need, like affordable health care for all.”
Leftist educators try to hide what they’re teaching, but word is getting out. The Center for the American Experiment has been monitoring CRT in Minnesota and produced a video noting instances of it. It found that in Burnsville, fourth-graders were reading a book that said police officers were “mean to black people but nice to white people” and deliberately shot black men.
The video cited officials in the Minneapolis suburb of Hopkins as saying school operations were built on “white supremacy” values of logic, linear thinking, perfectionism, objectivity and “requiring black students to turn in assignments on time.” Letter grades are gone since they are part of “a dominant white culture.”
White Bear Lake sixth-graders were divided into groups based on race, sex, religion and place of birth and told to address issues of oppression and privilege.
Edina kindergarteners through second-graders did an exercise on how to identify themselves by their skin color. Kindergarten through second grade!
St. Louis Park scrapped the gifted and talented program, opening it to everyone and focusing on “anti-racist talent development.”
Minnesota teachers are taking anti-racism training, which, in effect, advocates new forms of racial discrimination, according to the video.
It’s not known if Minnesota schoolchildren are learning, like first- and second-graders in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, that “whiteness is a bad deal” and that if you are white, you essentially are a devil oppressing people of color, as reported Wednesday in a RealClear Policy piece that included shocking curriculum photos.
Education Minnesota defines CRT as “an academic framework that is more than 40 years old and is centered on the idea that racism is systemic, not just a product of individual bias or prejudice, and embedded in our policies legal structure.”
Indeed, CRT came from legal theorists during the 1970s and ’80s. The problem is it left the campus, and no matter how groups like Education Minnesota try to hide it, it is gumming up primary and secondary education.
Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist scholar and social commentator whose gravitas stems from also having been a farmer, points out a problem with woke nonsense being dreamed up on the college campus. College professors, Hansen has said, were once like court jesters of old. They could say all kinds of crazy things and no one was offended, not even the king, because everyone knew professors, like jesters, had no real power. Now, according to Hansen, crazy ideas have escaped the campus and are setting public policy.
Classic Marxism may have hit some resistance since its call for dividing people by income and class could be hindered by the relative affluence of most of the U.S. population, at least by world standards. But for sure, today’s Marxists are focused on dividing by race and gender to class. And critical race theory fits right in.
There’s a lot to process here: lying teachers, overt racism, emotional oppression upon very young children. You might want to take that deep breath.
Mike Landry, PhD, is a retired business professor. He has been a journalist, broadcaster and church pastor. He writes from Northwest Arkansas on current events and business history.
Last week I shared a quote from a very important column “How Adherents See ‘Critical Race Theory’” by William A. Galston, a former Clinton administration veteran (1993-95) who is currently a fellow with the Brookings Institution (a liberal “think tank”) and a weekly columnist with the Wall Street Journal.
(Photo: The Christian Post/Katherine T. Phan)
I know Galston and have participated on various panels with him in Washington, D.C. I like Bill. He is liberal but he’s honest and a “straight-shooter” as we would say in Texas. That common sense, patriotic streak may be attributable to his having served a four-year stint in the United States Marine Corps when he was a young man.
In that July 14th column, Galston concludes with the following observation: “But, one thing is clear: Because the Declaration of Independence – the founding document of the American liberal order – is a product of Enlightenment rationalism, a doctrine that rejects the Enlightenment, tacitly requires deconstructing the American order and rebuilding it on an entirely different foundation.”
It took the courage of a Marine to write that column in the face of a withering propaganda barrage in favor of critical race theory in the progressive media. After this week’s column, “A Deeper Look at Critical Race Theory,” it would be wise for Bill to employ a food taster at Capitol Hill receptions and D.C. dinner parties. Why? It is quite simple – he has told the truth to the progressive elites, and they often react viscerally and violently to such effrontery.
Galston “unmasks” CRT as a mortal threat to the American constitutional and judicial system and he does so in no uncertain terms.
Having dived into the original sources, Galston reports several devastating facts about CRT.
First, “Critical Race Theory denies the possibility of objectivity.”
Second, CRT makes “race the center of our focus,” which is in direct opposition to Dr. King’s focus and vision. As such, CRT harshly critiques the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s as making only “symbolic” and “token” solutions for systemic racism.
Third, Galston notes that CRT “is an explicitly left-wing movement inspired by the thinking of an Italian neo-Marxist Antonio Gramsci.”
Fourth, CRT’s founders “identified with Black Power movements much more than with those who were working for integration.”
Lastly, CRT “rejects the principle of equality of opportunity” and asserts that the real goal must be “equality of results,” measured by the “black share of income, wealth and social standing.” CRT rejects policies such as affirmative action as mere “diversions” meant “to make the mythology of equal opportunity plausible.”
Galston concludes his exposé and critique by quoting Ibram X. Kendi, the author of the best-seller, How to Be an Anti-Racist, where he asserts that “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” This would condemn America to a perpetually racist future in perpetuity.
Bill Galston has committed the unpardonable progressive sin. He has told the plain, unvarnished, democracy-destroying truth about CRT. The counter-culture lynch mob will be out in force in full-throated rage.
We need more Americans and especially more progressives to display this kind of extraordinary courage and intellectual honesty.
I hope you will join me in applauding Bill Galston’s courage, and his intellectual honesty. Please also join me in praying for him in the days ahead, because the proto-fascists and black shirts masquerading as progressives will be out to destroy him.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com., and WhatDidYouSay.org..
Source: AP Photo/Ron Harris
As we discussed last week, “critical race theory” is a subtle philosophical construct where the answer to everything is: THAT’S RACIST! Teachers hawking this glop are being defended by their journalist allies, who sneer that CRT critics are too stupid to understand the nuances of the theory. The Aristotelian ideal of this sneer was Elle Reeve‘s “special report” for CNN — pre-taped to eliminate any danger of Elle being contradicted by someone smarter, such as a 10-year-old.
CNN’s Brianna Keilar introduced the segment by asking her: “Do these vocal opponents of critical race theory actually understand fully what it is?”
(That’s what’s known as a “rhetorical question,” kids!)
Elle: “No.” [Bored] “And why should they? It’s an academic theory taught mostly at the grad student level. But what they think it means is teaching white kids that all white people are bad and racist. And so, of course they’re afraid of that.”
They’re afraid!!! Wait — remind me: Who’s banning books, again? Who’s flipping out about “microaggressions”? Who’s demanding that Big Tech censor people? Who’s demanding “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” from speech they don’t like?
Parents aren’t “afraid”; they’re incensed. They’re paying the salaries of people who spend all day telling their kids that America is racist. (Elle didn’t give that explanation. Perhaps it frightens her.)
The “vocal opponents” of CRT who “don’t actually understand fully what it is” seem to be mostly billionaire investment bankers — at least judging by the articles in the Daily Mail. Elle’s conclusion: A “theory” that consists of going around shouting “RACISM!” is too complex for those guys to understand.
The format of Elle’s pre-taped report consisted of her interviewing opponents of CRT … then nailing them with her brilliant comebacks! Except even with CNN doing the editing, the CRT opponents sounded perfectly reasonable, while Elle’s comebacks kept revealing her yawning stupidity.
Early in Elle’s report, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is shown saying, “Critical race theory says America’s fundamentally racist.” What a dope!
About 60 seconds later, Elle deferentially asks a hijab-wearing high school teacher to explain CRT. The teacher exclaims: “Race and racism is literally the building blocks of this country!” (Were I the editor of Elle’s piece, I think I would have cut that part of her answer.)
Next, Elle talks to a parent fighting CRT, who says: “Don’t force on our kids a particular worldview. Taking a wide brush and painting this country as structurally racist, it’s insane … it’s a lie.”
To this, Elle patronizingly informs the parent that America’s racism “isn’t distant history.” Her evidence of contemporary racism? “In the ’90s, the crime bill gave much more severe sentencing to crack cocaine versus powder cocaine simply because black people were perceived as doing crack cocaine and white people weren’t …”
HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HAVE TO GO THROUGH THIS? The reason crack penalties were so severe is because the Congressional Black Caucus demanded it.(And as long as I’m correcting Elle’s false facts, the crack penalties were passed in 1986 and 1988, not “in the 1990s.”)
Black churches, black leaders and black members of Congress were enraged by what the crack epidemic was doing to their neighborhoods. A 1986 New York Times article reported on “all-night vigils” held by the leaders of 60 black churches, who called the crack epidemic “a new form of genocide.” Urban League President John Jacob railed against communities “held hostage by crack dealers,” saying “drugs kill more blacks than the (Ku Klux) Klan ever did.” Running for president in 1988, Jesse Jackson spoke of the scourge of crack cocaine and told a cheering crowd, “When I become president, the drug pusher is in trouble.”
White supremacists — right, Elle?
This has been patiently explained roughly 1 million times. But why bother knowing stuff when smug arrogance is good enough for CNN?
Elle’s next big “gotcha” was even more embarrassing, if that is possible. She rolled out the old chestnut about blacks being considered “three-fifths” of a human being in our Constitution. Yes, she really did that.
Here’s her exchange with a college Republican:
COLLEGE REPUBLICAN: To paint the country as an inherently racist country from its founding I think is dangerous.
REEVE: The three-fifths compromise is written into the Constitution in which slaves are counted as three-fifths of a person.
SCORE!
How can you be in journalism and have no idea what the three-fifths clause means? No research is involved, Elle! Just read it.
The three-fifths clause means exactly the opposite of what Elle thinks it means. This was not a general statement on the slaves’ humanity: It was about congressional apportionment. The slave states wanted to count slaves as full “persons” in order to increase the number of their representatives in Congress.
If you adored slavery, you’d want the Constitution to count each slave as a full person — as 20 people! The slaves still couldn’t vote, but their slave masters would get more votes in Congress. It’s the same idea behind California’s demand that illegal aliens be counted when determining that state’s congressional apportionment.
I can’t even believe there’s anyone in America who needed that explained again. (Next time, I’ll just say: Get a home-schooler to explain it to you, Elle.)
It must have been embarrassing for everyone at CNN to watch this bimbo misstating well-known facts in a network “special report” that was supposed to show what cretins CRT critics are.
So how did the CNN hosts react? They were gobsmacked by the genius of Elle’s report!
JOHN BERMAN: That was so great.
KEILAR: Right?
BERMAN: I mean, that was just so great, and just the way the questions are asked. Just by asking simple questions you revealed so much. I mean, that was just fantastic.
ELLE: Thank you.
My idea of hell is being condescended to by an idiot, forever and ever, with no respite. In other words, watching CNN.
Students listen to a teacher in a classroom. | Unsplash/NeONBRAND
As the debate about critical race theory continues to engulf the political discourse in the United States, grassroots organizations and activists rely on a variety of methods to combat “woke” ideology’s influence on American education and counter what they characterize as a “destructive message.”
Over the past year, parents have become increasingly aware of content that their children have been exposed to in public, private and religious schools, as the coronavirus pandemic led to the widespread adoption of online learning. The implementation of critical theory and elements of what they call “woke” ideology in the curriculum of American schools has caused some parents and conservative activists particular concern. It’s also led to several conservative politicians voicing their outrage with the promotion of the academic framework, and some states to pass policies banning its teaching in schools.
American schools’ embrace of critical theory, controversial sex education, gender ideology, sexually explicit teaching material and other “woke” curriculums has led many parents and concerned citizens to launch advocacy groups committed to raising awareness about the situation in American education and providing parents with the tools to combat it. It has also led to the launch of political action committees seeking to elect school board candidates who oppose critical race theory.
One group is Parents Defending Education, which describes itself as a “national grassroots organization working to reclaim our schools from activists promoting harmful agendas.”
“By the time students are 18 years old and they get to college … they have never received a proper civics education, they hate America, they don’t understand the First Amendment,” Nicole Neily, the mother of two who founded Parents Defending Education this past March, told The Christian Post.
“So, if the first time you hear … free speech or First Amendment is this is why [white nationalist] Richard Spencer can come to campus, then yeah, you’re going to hate it.”
Previously having run an organization called Speech First that “defends students’ rights on campus primarily through litigation,” Neily said that she was inspired to launch Parents Defending Education after seeing news articles about how some schools were providing benefits to minority groups and discriminating against white students in the name of diversity.
Parents Defending Education has compiled an “IndoctriNation” map of schools teaching students controversial curriculum based on tips from parents that also includes a directory of parent groups set up to combat “woke” ideology within public schools. She clarified that the map does not include “hearsay.”
“Everything is backed up with a screenshot, a URL … a Freedom of Information Act request,” Neily stated. “We asked the schools for comment. We asked the schools to verify that the information is correct. … We are only putting up information that we stand behind.”
“We have on our map about 100 parent groups across the country that have been created mostly within the past year, specifically to address political indoctrination in schools — not math, not reopening, not school choice, specifically political indoctrination,” Neily explained.
Among the concerns that Neily has with “woke” curriculums is the promotion of critical race theory.
“I honestly don’t think [critical race theory] should be banned,” Neily told CP. “When I did my master’s degree, I had to read Karl Marx.”
“Where I have a problem is when … [critical race theory] is taught to students … as the only way,” she said. “How some of these things are implemented, I think … it encourages discrimination.”
What is critical race theory?
Encyclopedia Britannica defines critical race theory as “an intellectual movement and loosely organized framework of legal analysis based on the premise that race is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category that is used to oppress and exploit people of colour.”
According to the reference source, “critical race theorists hold that the law and legal institutions in the United States are inherently racist insofar as they function to create and maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites, especially African Americans.”
Proponents of critical race theory, such as those at the New York-based Leadership Academy, argue that the steadfast opposition to the ideology arises from “fear and misunderstanding.” The organization trains educators on how to dismantle “systemic inequities in schools.”
“Critical race theory, at its core, is about acknowledging the existence and impact of race and racism in our communities and society,” wrote the Leadership Academy’s Mary Rice-Boothe and Jill Grossman. “It is about valuing multiple points of view and life experiences, which are essential for helping students learn to think critically about and participate in our global and diverse world.”
The scholars alleged that critical race theory is “central to culturally responsive leadership, which research and our experience supporting thousands of leaders across the country has shown is critical for disrupting inequities in our schools.”
Additionally, they stated that “equity and culturally responsive policies and teaching practices are about making sure students of every race, ethnicity, language, and other characteristics of their identity, feel valued and respected and have what they need to achieve academic, social, and emotional success.” Rice-Boothe and Grossman summarized critical race theory as “simply about humanity.”
The most prominent example of curriculum embracing critical race theory is The 1619 Project, a partnership between The New York Times and the Pulitzer Center that portrays the arrival of enslaved Africans on American soil in 1619 as “the beginning of the system of slavery on which the country was built.”
Launched in 2019, the curriculum framework places the institution of slavery at the center of the national narrative around the country’s founding instead of 1776 and the American Revolution.
Christopher Rufo, a writer, filmmaker and researcher who has studied the issue extensively, defines critical race theory as “an academic discipline that holds that the United States is a nation founded on white supremacy and oppression and that these forces are still at the root of our society.”
Rufo, an outspoken opponent of critical race theory, added that “critical race theorists believe that American institutions, such as the Constitution and legal system, preach freedom and equality, but are mere ‘camouflages’ for racial discrimination.”
According to Rufo, adherents to critical race theory believe that “racism is a constant, universal condition” that “simply becomes more subtle, sophisticated, and insidious over the course of history.” He characterized the discipline as a reformulation of “the old Marxist dichotomy of oppressor and oppressed, replacing the class categories of bourgeoisie and proletariat with the identity categories of white and black.”
“…….the old Marxist dichotomy of oppressor and oppressed, replacing the class categories of bourgeoisie and proletariat with the identity categories of white and black.”
James Lindsay, who hosts the “New Discourses” podcast, elaborated on critical race theory in a video for the nonprofit media organization Prager University. An opponent of critical race theory, he quoted from two of its proponents, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, in an attempt to portray the philosophy as un-American: “Critical Race Theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, enlightenment rationalism, and the neutral principles of constitutional law.”
NEA embraces CRT as the public remains lukewarm
Earlier this month, Rufo reported that “the nation’s largest teachers’ union has approved a plan to promote critical race theory in all 50 states and 14,000 local school districts.” He shared screenshots showing that the National Education Association approved New Business Item 39 at its annual meeting and representative assembly two weeks ago.
New Business Item 39 calls on the NEA to make it clear that “we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and/or The 1619 Project.” The measure advocates for the publication of an “already-created, in-depth, study that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, racism, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society.”
The item also indicated an intention for the union to double down on its support for an “accurate and honest teaching of social studies topics … including critical race theory.” It also signaled an intent to “join with Black Lives Matter at School” to create a “national day of action to teach lessons about structural racism and oppression” and “conduct a virtual listening tour that will educate members on the tools and resources needed to defend honesty in education including but not limited to tools like CRT.”
While critical race theory has achieved a lot of support in academia, it remains very unpopular with the American public as a whole. A poll released last month found that 38% of Americans had a very or somewhat favorable opinion of the ideology. In comparison, 58% had a very or somewhat unfavorable view of critical race theory. Majorities of Democrats, liberals, African Americans and Americans between the ages of 30 and 44 viewed critical race theory favorably, while majorities of all other groups hold the opposite views.
The teaching of critical race theory at American schools is part of a broader trend of educational institutions embracing what critics refer to as “toxic new curriculums.” Parents across the country have spoken out in opposition to these curriculums, with parent opposition in Loudoun County, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C., receiving much media attention.
At a school board meeting earlier this year, concerned parents read aloud texts that the county’s children were exposed to in freshman honors English classes that included portrayals of domestic violence and graphic descriptions of sex acts. A video of the parents reading excerpts from the books, published by the grassroots organization Fight for Schools, has received more than 150,000 views [Warning: video contains graphic and sexually explicit language].
‘It is in everyone’s backyard’
Neily told CP that in addition to spotlighting groups of concerned parents and schools exposing children to material widely seen as problematic, she sees the mission of Parents Defending Education as seeking to “empower, expose and engage.”
The activist hopes to “empower” American parents by “[telling] people what their rights are” if their children attend a public school, specifically mentioning the First Amendment, Title VII and Title IX. She illustrated that while students have rights at public schools, “they generally do not have the same rights at private schools.”
Neily hopes to get parents engaged in their children’s education and equip them with the tools needed to share their concerns, such as “How do you write a letter to the editor?”“What are questions to ask your school board?” “How do you get involved in a school board race?” “How do you … file a Freedom of Information Act request?” “How do you file a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education?”
Expanding on her organization’s goal to “expose,” Neily stressed that she’s “very much a believer in the saying that ‘sunshine is the best disinfectant.’”
She illustrated the need to make American parents aware of what their children are learning at school.
“A lot of this has been happening. People have no idea it’s in their backyard,” she explained. “Many people believe that this problem is like primarily a California and a New York problem. It is not. It is in red states. It is in blue states. It is in private schools. It is in parochial schools. It is in everyone’s backyard.”
Neily said that during the pandemic, American parents “saw what their children were learning on a regular basis because classrooms were then in their living rooms.” She called that the “silver lining” of the coronavirus pandemic.
She recalled how finding out what their children were learning motivated parents to reach out to her and ask, “How do we get the schools to listen to us?” and “What can we do?”
The activist said an action taken by the public school system in Wellesley, Massachusetts, earlier this year is the worst example of “woke” ideology.
Following the shooting at Atlanta-area spas that left several Asian masseuses dead, the school district held a “healing space for Asians and people of color”during school hours, with the invitation for the event specifically highlighting that “white students [were] not allowed.”
Characterizing the event as “modern-day segregation,” Neily’s organization filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights with the U.S. Department of Education, citing the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled school segregation unconstitutional.
People hold up signs during a rally against “critical race theory” (CRT) being taught in schools at the Loudoun County Government center in Leesburg, Virginia on June 12, 2021. | AFP via Getty Images/Andrew Caballero
‘We’re fighting Marxism’
Parents Defending Education is not the only group dedicated, at least in part, to opposing critical race theory.
Kevin McGary, the co-founder of Every Black Life Matters, is a staunch critic of critical race theory. | Kevin McGary
Kevin McGary, the father of two children, co-founded Every Black Life Matters approximately nine months ago. The group is a response to the “race hatred” and “violence” that resulted from the video of African American George Floyd’s “atrocious” and “heinous” death in police custody.
His organization aims to counter the Black Lives Matter movement, which he referred to as “radical revolutionary Marxists” in an interview with The Christian Post.
“We are founded based on fundamentals that say the nuclear family is important, that protecting black life from conception to the grave is important, that helping encourage black life from early childhood development in education is important,” he asserted. “We believe that having an active father as a part of children’s life is important.”
Acknowledging that “we’re sort of leveraging the momentum of Black Lives Matter,” McGary held up his organization as “the exact opposite of BLM” and the “antithesis” to the left-wing advocacy group.
Every Black Life Matters includes a “template library of … letters that are already pre-written for school boards, city council, other … people that are running for political office or are holding political office.” McGary told CP that all concerned parents have to do is “put their names on it and send it to those people.”
While much of the focus in the effort to push back against critical theory has focused on public schools, the ideology has infiltrated religious schools as well.
As The Christian Post previously reported, Loyola Academy, a Catholic school based in a suburb of Chicago, faced backlash from several parents after employing “diversity consultants” and conducting Zoom meetings where teachers included their gender pronouns.
Noelle Mering, a fellow with the Washington-based think tank Ethics & Public Policy Center, wrote an op-ed arguing that critical theory is incompatible with the teachings of the Catholic Church. She discussed parents’ concerns about Loyola.
“Students were racially segregated for school assignments on privilege,” she wrote. “A working-class student was bewildered to learn that because of his skin color, he is an oppressor to his peers, some of whom live in multi-million dollar homes.”
The Grace Church School, a private Episcopal school in Manhattan, came under fire from both teachers and parents for integrating a “repressive ideology” into its curriculum.
Paul Rossi, a former teacher at the school, wrote an op-ed accusing the Grace Church School of pressuring students to “identify primarily with their race before their individual identities are fully formed” and assigning “the morally compromised status of ‘oppressor’” to one group of students “based on their immutable characteristics” as “dependency, resentment, and moral superiority are cultivated in students considered ‘oppressed.’”
McGary attributed the presence of critical theory and “woke” ideology in religious schools to the fact that “they are using critical race theory within our seminaries.”
“And so, we have woke theologians now that are coming out and spreading a false Gospel,” he said.
Echoing Rufo’s analysis, McGary sees the implementation of critical theory and “woke” ideology in both public and religious schools as part of a larger effort to advance Marxist ideology in the U.S.
“Marxism is really what we’re fighting against on all fronts at the moment,” he said. “It’s not necessarily these individual elements — CRT, liberation theology … social justice. Fundamentally, at their core, they’re all based in … Marxism. And so, we’re fighting Marxism.”
“What we need to help people understand is that Marxism has led to more human atrocities, more human deaths, more economic damage and collapse than any other system in world history,” he continued.
“… part of a larger effort to advance Marxist ideology in the U.S.“
Lambasting Marxism for causing over 100 million deaths and “all economic collapse,” McGary emphasized that “there is no actual great, perfect track record with Marxism.”
While he admitted that “capitalism is not perfect either,” he praised the economic system as “better than Marxism” by “any viable metric.”
McGary maintained that schools “should teach the good and bad of history.”
“If indeed we do have … Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, a lot of other founders and/or presidents who were slave owners … that’s fine,” he said.
“We should know the good and bad of … our patriots and heroes and our founders.”
He criticized the move to “expunge history and say that these guys were strictly bad guys,” pointing to some curriculum, “saying that George Washington was a plantation owner … and a slave owner.” He feels “they focus on that and really exclude the fact that he was an American Revolutionary War hero, that he was the first president.”
McGary opined that rather than teaching “accurate history,” critical race theory proponents instead seek to present a “revisionist history.”
‘A more patriotic curriculum’
In May, Ryan Girdusky, a conservative writer and political commentator, founded the 1776 Project PAC, a political action committee supporting school board candidates who explicitly oppose critical race theory.
Speaking to The Christian Post, he emphasized the importance of school boards. He stressed his organization’s mission to “get school board people in there who can actually start reversing it” by changing the superintendents and textbooks as well as pushing “for a more patriotic curriculum.”
He wants school boards to “start negotiating and countering these principals and these teachers who are pushing this policy.”
“There are many institutions working on creating an alternative curriculum in history,” Girdusky said, including Hillsdale College.
“There’s many institutions on the right that are looking to … get involved … with the program of changing curriculum. So hopefully, we can have a meeting of the minds and find the best options that we can put in front of school board members and say, ‘Can you consider this?’”
Girdusky clarified that his organization was not recruiting candidates but rather “supporting candidates who are opposed to critical race theory and the 1619 Project.” He elaborated on the role of school boards, which he characterized as “the only check really for the public school systems that voters have.”
“They can hire superintendents, negotiate with the schools. They can try to hold teachers and principals more accountable within the school system,” he added. “They can pick out which textbooks are … acceptable, and they purchase textbooks in many cases. They can pick out which outside reading material is acceptable.”
Girdusky acknowledged that “conservatives have been trying [for decades] to get children out of the public school into either private school … or charter schools.” However, he maintained that it is still essential to focus on fixing the public schools because “a majority of children will always go to public schools.”
Girdusky, who comes from “a very large family” with “a lot of younger cousins,” was motivated to start the 1776 Project PAC after discovering that as “many of [his cousins] were in school at home … on Google classroom” as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Teachers were incorporating things inside their classrooms that were pretty horrendous and pretty shocking,” the activist claimed. For example, “children as young as 8, 9 years old were being taught things … about racial profiling from police. And one of the teachers basically … said that … police are all racist.”
“What’s happening at the schools and inside classrooms that I find horrendously shocking is … teachers telling … children that there’s implicit bias against them if they’re non-white or that white students have … implicit bias against … non-white people, and that the institutions that really … created this country and … keep our civilization are … inherently created to work against them.”
Consequences for society as a whole
Neily told CP that she worries that “we are encouraging people to hate each other, to doubt each other, to make judgments about each other based on immutable characteristics.”
She slammed critical race theory’s “destructive message.” Girdusky agreed, calling critical theory a “cancer that society is pushing.”
“It’s telling non-white children that they are handicapped in the society that they are raised in on purpose to hurt them. And it says that everyone from our Founding Fathers to entrepreneurs to … the heads of major companies today to their local government and their police force is implicitly working to … keep them down,” he explained. “It’s telling white children, some of which … are extremely young and have no understanding of race or the history of race in our country … that they are racist, that they are born racist … and that’s a terrible lesson to learn.”
Girdusky contends that this ideology will have “detrimental” consequences for the health of American society:
“In a nation that is … multiracial now and increasingly more diverse, it breeds [an] immense amount of social distrust.”
McGary said that the widespread promotion of critical race theory extends far beyond the classroom.
“The net impact is people are viewing … each other with a certain amount of distrust. African Americans have adopted critical race theory to such a degree that a lot of them are viewing white people with complete disdain just because they’re white, and … they’re viewing Asians with disdain,” he stated.
“There’s been a lot of Asian hate, but there hasn’t been a whole lot of coverage as to what is the predominant … ethnicity of the person carrying out those hate crimes and that’s because it’s an inconvenient truth that … blacks are viewing Asians as white-passing and they’ve internalized racist white supremacy. And so, they’re going after Asians with the same vigor that they have towards whites.”
McGary stated that the American public as a whole is “over-sensitized to race.”
“Every conversation, every civic discussion … 10, 12 years ago, we didn’t go around labeling people based on their skin color, whether you’re an oppressed, oppressor, whether you’re privileged or … supremacist … or racist or whatever. Twelve years ago, that didn’t exist.”
He warned that in “every real and every domain,” people are making “snap assessments about people based on the color of their skin and not the content of character.”
McGary connected the adoption of critical theory and “woke” ideology to the rising crime rates across the country. He predicted that “we’re going to see a lot more racial hatred and a lot more crimes based on race as opposed to any other factor.” He believes the “if people don’t get a handle on this stuff, we could actually see a certain amount of mass civil unrest in certain cities between races.”
“we’re going to see a lot more racial hatred and a lot more crimes based on race as opposed to any other factor.” He believes the “if people don’t get a handle on this stuff, we could actually see a certain amount of mass civil unrest in certain cities between races.”
All three agreed that critical theory runs contrary to the teachings of the late civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. Girdusky is concerned that “too many people confuse critical race theory with Martin Luther King Jr.’s conception of having a colorblind America and equality when, in fact, it is using race as the cornerstone of every inequality and inequity in society.”
“What happened to Martin Luther King? What happened to the … content of our character and not the color of our skin?” Neily asked.
McGary lamented that the country is “moving away from … the encouragement and admonition that Dr. Martin Luther King gave us.”
“We’re sort of moving away from that. We’re moving towards strictly analyzing people based upon the color of their skin,” McGary said.
Victories in the battle against CRT
Neily told CP that in the short time since Parents Defending Education was established, there had been “victories that have happened in different places.” She pointed to the town of Southlake, Texas, outside Dallas, where “they just cleared house with their school board” in an “anti-CRT wave that was swept in.”
She also praised the school district in the Chicago suburb of New Trier, Illinois, for adopting a K-12 version of the “Chicago statement” from the University of Chicago expressing support for “free speech and free expression.”
Another example of success against critical race theory is Palm Beach County, Florida. As The Palm Beach Post reported, following backlash from parents, the school board voted to retract a portion of an “equity statement” highlighting its commitment to “dismantling structures rooted in white advantage.”
It’s not just groups like Parents Defending Education, the 1776 Project PAC and Every Black Life Matters working to combat critical race theory and “woke” ideology in education. Several states have already banned the teaching of critical race theory or “divisive concepts” in their public schools, and others are in the process of doing so.
According to Education Week, 26 states have introduced bills or taken other steps to restrict the teaching of critical race theory or limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism, while 11 states have enacted those bans as of July 15.
Crowds gathered outside the Luther Jackson Middle School in Virginia, where concerned parents were rallying against critical race theory being taught to students in Fairfax County Public Schools. During Thursday’s “Stop CRT Rally,” a PTA and NAACP official spewed rhetoric against the parents, including proclaiming, “Let them die!”
“LET THEM DIE!”
An event flyer for the “Stop CRT Rally” stated: “It’s not about race or equity, it’s about a Communist Radical Takeover of America!” At the rally, there were counter protests, including a diatribe delivered by federal employee Michelle Leete, who is also the vice president of training at the Virginia Parent-Teacher Association, vice president of communications for the Fairfax County PTA, and first vice president of the Fairfax County NAACP.
Leete lambasted anti-critical race theory parents, even going so far as to say, “Let them die!”
So let’s meet and remain steadfast, steadfast, in speaking truth, tearing down double standards, and refuting double talk. Let’s not allow any double downing on lies. Let’s prepare our children for a world they deserve. Let’s deny this off-key band of people that are anti-education, anti-teacher, anti-equity, anti-history, anti-racial reckoning, anti-opportunities, anti-help people, anti-diversity, anti-platform, anti-science, anti-change agent, anti-social justice, anti-health care, anti-worker, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-children, anti-health care, anti-worker, anti-environment, anti-admissions policy change, anti-inclusion, anti-live-and-let-live people. Let them die. Don’t let these uncomfortable people, don’t let these uncomfortable people deter us from our bold march forward.
Asra Nomani, an education activist and vice president for strategy and investigations for the watchdog group Parents Defending Education, shared footage from the rally and counter protest on Twitter.
“I listened, stunned, as Michelle Leete, an executive of the NAACP and the PTA, put a target on the backs of parents just because they have a different point of view,” said Nomani, whose son recently graduated from Fairfax County Public Schools.
“What we heard tonight was hate speech, pure and simple. It was shocking that anyone would cheer and applaud a call to violence,” Nomani told the Daily Wire, “Ironically, her hateful, intolerant words are a perfect illustration of the divisive ideology of critical race theory in action. In the name of tolerance, it preaches intolerance and is a betrayal of all values of humanity and decency.”
Harry Jackson, who has three children in the Fairfax public school system and is president-elect of the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology Parent Teacher Student Association, told the Daily Wire, “I was in shock looking at the crowd, watching Ms. Leete pander to white liberals with her hateful rhetoric … Her call to violence against every kind of parent, including parents who oppose changes to admissions policies at schools like TJ, also reveal that she has a serious conflict of interest.”
In May, Nomani delivered a stirring speech where she slammed the Fairfax County Public Schools board for pushing “anti-racism” propaganda.
“And then by the fall, every single one of you voted to remove the merit-based race-blind admissions test to TJ. And we pled with you, as Asians, as an immigrant (I came at the age of 4, I knew no English), and you didn’t listen to us,” Nomani scolded the school board.
Thomas Jefferson School for Science and Technology, ranked the top math school in the country, instituted a “merit lottery,” where race became a factor in admissions and academic qualifications were a lesser determinant.
The Daily Mail reported that admissions data for the class of 2025 at the prestigious school shows that black students rose from 1% in 2021 to 7%, Hispanics grew from 3% to 11%, white students increased from 18% to 22%, but Asian students dropped from 73% to 54% because of the new standards.
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One of the unintended consequences of teachers using COVID to refuse to do their jobs in 2020 is that their students suddenly had to take classes remotely — within earshot of Dad. A mother at a fancy New York City private school told me that the wokeness curriculum was nothing new, but mothers never made a fuss about it. Then the fathers overheard their kids’ remote classes — and all hell broke loose.
Now that the teachers’ anti-white agenda has been exposed (thank you, fathers of America!), the left is spinning a series of increasingly hilarious defenses of “critical race theory,” which is just a more boring version of the left’s usual hatred of Western civilization.
Their current position is that they simply can’t discuss CRT with you because it’s too complex and can only be understood by high-level graduate students after years of study.
Paul Begala on CNN: “It’s a graduate-level construct.”
CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “It started in the ’70s, as I understand, in sort of academic circles, law schools.”
“Dr.” Ibram Kendi — who is a “doctor” in the same sense that Jill Biden is — explaining his position on CRT:
“I’m not a legal scholar. So I wasn’t trained on critical race theory. I’m a historian. … Critical race theory is taught in law schools. I didn’t attend law school, which is where critical race theory is taught.”
Oh, cut the crap. The “theory” is: Everything is based on racism.
The preposterous conceit that CRT rises above the level of a child yelling “THAT’S RACIST!” has the advantage of allowing liberals to refuse to debate it.
Here’s MSNBC’s Joy Reid dismissing Christopher Rufo, a Manhattan Institute scholar, brought on her show putatively to debate CRT: “Are you like an expert in race or racial history? Are you a lawyer? Are you a legal scholar? Is that part of your background?”
How else could Rufo possibly understand a “theory” that says:
America is racist!
Criminal law is racist!
Policing is racist!
Arrests are racist!
Incarceration is racist!
Standardized tests are racist!
Mortgages are racist!
Oh my gosh, how am I ever going to master this complex theory? I thought the quantum field theory of subatomic particle forces was tough, but THIS? I guess I’ll be hitting the books tonight.
Anne Elk: “My theory, that belongs to me, is as follows … (throat clearing) This is how it goes … (clears throat) The next thing I’m going to say is my theory. (clears throat) Ready?”
Presenter: (whimpers)
Anne Elk: “My Theory, by A. Elk (Miss). This theory goes as follows and begins now …
“All brontosauruses are thin at one end; much, much thicker in the middle and then thin again at the far end. That is my theory, it is mine and belongs to me, and I own it and what it is, too.”
Presenter: “That’s it, is it?”
CRT advocates talk in hushed tones about where the “theory” was “invented,” like they’re describing the apple falling on Newton’s head.
In fact, CRT grew out of black student protests in the 1970s, forcing universities to hire more black professors. That’s literally how the father of critical race theory, Derrick Bell, got his job. Black students protested the lack of black professors, so Bell was given a professorship at Harvard Law School.
How’d you like to be hired by the (then) premier university in the world, not based on the excellence of your scholarship, but because of students threatening to burn the campus down? Instead of being embarrassed and hoping no one ever asked how he got his job, Bell rationalized his hiring by accusing Harvard of … well, I’d tell you, but it’s too complex for you to understand. On the other hand, I don’t know how else to convey the intricacies of this deeply intellectual theorem, except to just state it:
Bell accused Harvard of … RACISM!
And thus a new academic discipline was born. (I guess all the new hires had to teach something.)
The idea that our country is steeped in white supremacy is laughable. Most of what built this country had nothing to do with race — conquering the West, the invention of electricity, the telephone, the automobile, airplanes and steamboats, bringing drinking water to Manhattan, smashing the Nazi war machine and on and on and on.
I’m sorry, Black America, but all this was happening with or without you.
Yes, slavery was an abomination, the worst thing that ever happened within the borders of the United States. But there are whole vast areas of the American economy that didn’t have anything to do with slavery.
In fact and to the contrary, the slave economy had turned the South into a backwater. If the South had won the Civil War, not only would slavery have continued, but half the country would have had a primitive third world economy.
No need to feel bad about it. The main players in America’s explosive growth weren’t women, immigrants, Hispanics or Asians, either. Somehow we got over it. On the plus side, we get to live in the best country in the world.
Jealousy and obsessive self-regard are not the stuff of an intellectual movement. The daily denunciation of white men is more akin to the tantrum of a 4-year-old.
Which, by the way, is exactly how liberals think of black Americans. If there were an international symbol for liberals, it would be one adult patting another on the head. Otherwise, liberals would just come out and say: CRT’s not a theory! It isn’t complex, it isn’t interesting, and it isn’t true. (Also: We think you’re capable of getting a voter ID.) Instead, liberals coo to the CRT devotees, It IS your birthday every day!
A black father in Michigan blasted Critical Race Theory during a recent school board meeting in Caledonia, Michigan.
Ian Rice, whose wife and mother of his children is white, demanded that the anti-white racist curriculum will teach his daughter that “her mother is evil,” and cause children of different races “to hate each other.”
— James Lindsay, uncitable (@ConceptualJames) July 5, 2021
“This theory was never meant to be brought into grade schools, high schools—at all. It’s actually taught in the collegiate atmosphere—and more importantly, the legal portion of the collegiate atmosphere—to see different laws through the lens of race…from an ethical standpoint, not for grade schoolers and high schoolers,” Rice began.
A big problem with teaching this crap to younger children, he explained, is that the teachers are not qualified to do so.
“Instead, they’re using it as their own agenda to indoctrinate the kids to hate each other,” he said.
Rice also addressed the racism against white people.
“Critical race theory is teaching that white people are bad. That’s not true. That would teach my daughter that her mother is evil.”
“What is your criteria to educate the educators?” Rice asked. “And who are you to educate my children—or any of our children—in life issues? That’s our job. Your job is to teach them math and science. Our job is to teach them about life.”
Cassandra Fairbanks is a former leftist who came out in support of Donald Trump in 2016. She has been published in the International Business Times, RT, Sputnik, The Independent and countless other publications.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Senator Ted Cruz moved this week to block federal funding for the promotion of ‘Critical Race Theory’ in public institutions and ensure US taxpayers don’t “contribute to this radical ideology.”
“The federal government has no right to force a political agenda onto Americans, especially one that aims to tear down our institutions and divide us based on race. Critical Race Theory originated out of the critical race studies movement. It is a Marxist ideology that sees the world as a battle, not between the classes – as classical Marxism does – but between the races. This is inherently bigoted,” Cruz said of Critical Race Theory.
“On President Biden’s first day in office, he rescinded the Trump administration’s commonsense executive order ensuring no government funding goes to anti-American or racist and sexist training, like CRT, in the workplace. President Biden’s decision was unsurprising but shows the Democratic Party will stop at nothing to indoctrinate Americans,” he added. “I am proud to introduce this bill to block federal funding for CRT and ensure the U.S. government doesn’t contribute to this radical ideology.”
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
A.F. Branco coffee table book “Keep America Laughing (at the left)” ORDER HERE
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated– $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Let me tell you how my story ends: I become a tenured, award-winning professor of political science at an Ivy League university, and then at one of the leading universities in the South.
Now let me tell you how my story begins: I grow up in rural Virginia, literally dirt poor. I drop out of school in the eighth grade and have three children by the time I’m 20.
I consider myself to be a reasonably modest person, but even I have to admit that’s quite a journey.
How did I do it?
I worked hard. Not crazy, 24/7 hard—just hard. I made good decisions. Not brilliant, three-dimensional-chess decisions—just good ones. I met people along the way who helped me and sincerely wanted to see me succeed—not because they had something to gain, but because they were decent people. Almost all of these individuals, by the way, were white.
But mostly, I think I was blessed in one crucial way: I was born in America, a true land of opportunity for anyone of any color or background. In this country, where you start your life does not determine where you end up.
That works in both directions, by the way. You can start out with every advantage and waste them all. Or you can start out with nothing and become a success. It all depends on you. Your attitude is far more important than your race, gender, or social class in determining what you will accomplish in life.
When I hear young blacks—or anyone, for that matter—talk about systemic racism, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I want to laugh because it’s such nonsense. I want to cry because I know it’s pushing untold numbers of young blacks into a dead end of self-pity and despair. Instead of seizing the amazing opportunities America offers them, they seize an excuse to explain why they’re not succeeding.
I was born into a world where systemic racism was real—no-fooling, outright-bigotry, back-of-the-bus real. But here’s what you need to know: Yes, that racism shaped the black experience—but even then, it did not define it. Change was in the air. Call it systemic reform.
The modern Civil Rights Movement was in its infancy, and the leaders who fought for equal rights for blacks were men and women of all races. They believed in America and were determined to see it live up to its highest ideals—ideals manifest in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.
Did I know, growing up, that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves? I don’t think I ever thought about it. If I did, I’d like to think that I would have had enough common sense to know that we can’t judge men who lived 250 years ago by the moral standards of our own day.
But I know that Jefferson wrote the words in the Declaration of Independence that made slavery ultimately impossible: that all men are created equal. And I know that Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, Adams and the rest of the Founders risked everything to make my world, my America, possible. How could I not be grateful for that and for the sacrifices so many others have made to preserve it?
The truth is I cannot remember a time when I did not love America and feel pride in the belief that I live in the greatest country in the world. I knew if I diligently pursued my ambitions, I could leave the poverty of my early years, with all its abuse and depression, behind me.
I was fortunate in another way. I was spared the life-sapping, negative messages about America that are crippling a generation of young people. These ideas are poison:
☆ White privilege.
☆ Whiteness as a form of property.
☆ Unconscious racism.
☆ Reparations.
☆ Microaggressions.
☆ Police have it out for blacks.
☆ That the United States was created to protect and promote slavery.
These are the ideas young people are told they must accept. And then they’re told to reject the ideas that can save them—the antidote: the success principles that enabled me and millions of other Americans to escape lives of poverty.
These principles aren’t complicated: work hard, learn from your mistakes, take personal responsibility for your actions. When I made the decisions to get my high school equivalency, attend a community college, and then earn four additional college and university degrees, I believed that my education would open doors. And it did.
It was only when exposed to academic theories of oppression in graduate school that I was informed that because I was black, poor, and female, I could never do what I had already accomplished.
Thank God, it was too late for these toxic messages to stop me. Don’t let them stop you.
______________________________________________
Carol Swain is a professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University.
Ty Smith — a black man who has two sons, 17 and 19 — absolutely annihilated critical race theory during his comments to an Illinois school board earlier this month, saying it will teach children of different races to “hate each other” and will reverse Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that all people may be judged by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin.
“You’re going to deliberately teach kids, ‘This white kid right here got it better than you because he white?'” Smith asked the board of Bloomington School District 87. “You’re going to purposely tell a white kid, ‘Oh, the black people are all down and suppressed.’ How do I have two medical degrees if I’m sitting here oppressed?”
Watch this parent absolutely obliterate Critical Race Theory at an Illinois school board meeting:
Smith added that he grew up with no mother or father in the house and “worked my way through college, sat there and hustled my butt off to get through college. You’re going to tell me somebody look like all y’all white folks kept me from doing that? Are you serious? Not one white person ever came to me and said, ‘Well, son, you’re never gonna be able to get nowhere because, you know, the black people,’ but guess what? What’s sickening about this whole thing is what y’all doing right now is already something I do in my community right now, to speak out against [this stuff] because black folks are getting told by other black folks, ‘Oh, you know, you ain’t going to be able to do nothing out there in the world because them white folks ain’t going to let get no … the white man gonna keep you down.'”
Smith said he wasn’t buying critical race theory because how he chose to live his life proved to him that his skin color wasn’t a barrier.
“How did I get where I am right now if some white man kept me down? How am I now directing over folks that look just like you guys in this room right now? How? What kept me down? What oppressed me?” Smith asked what appeared to be a room full of mostly white listeners. “I worked for myself from off the streets to where I am right now, and you’re going to sit here and tell me this lie of critical race theory? … The reason why black folks can’t get ahead because of white folks? Are you kidding me? This is what we’ve come to? I can’t believe we even talking about this right now.”
He added that if critical race theory is allowed to be taught to children in the schools, it will reverse King’s dream of racial equality: “So, when February comes, don’t talk about Martin Luther King … if y’all going to sit there and just pretty much just pee on his grave with this nonsense. That’s exactly what’s about to happen.”
Smith concluded his remarks by saying critical race theory is “BS.”
Following his school board address, Smith spoke with Fox News’ Martha MacCallum about his concerns regarding critical race theory and his life experiences. Smith — who is host of “Cancel This with Ty Smith” on WRPW-FM — told MacCallum that despite the disadvantages he grew up with, he made decisions along the way to make his life better.
“I went beyond this stuff,” he said, which led to him “becoming successful.”
Indeed, Smith’s radio station bio notes that he “grew up in the tough neighborhoods of Decatur, and knows first hand the struggles people in poverty have. He will dive into why the media’s message to disadvantaged people is wrong, and what we should be telling those struggling.”
Smith also wasn’t buying leftist virtue-signaling — particularly those who march in the streets with “their fists up,” because he said “none of them” ever go to the communities he works with every day. He added to MacCallum that he also began asking questions like, “This systemic racism, where’s it at?” But in the end, despite trying to find it so he could figure out how to deal with it, no one could ever show Smith evidence of systemic racism.
Xi Van Fleet, whose son graduated from Louden High School in Virginia, speaks about what she endured under Mao’s cultural revolution in China during a speech condemning critical race theory at a school board meeting on June 8, 2021. | | Screengrab: Twitter/The Virginia Project UAC
A woman who grew up in China during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution condemned the teaching of critical race theory in U.S. schools, saying it’s “heartbreaking” for Chinese Americans to see the communism they escaped infiltrate the country.
“I have been very alarmed about what’s going on in our schools. You are now teaching, training our children to be social justice warriors and to loathe our country and our history,” said Xi Van Fleet in a statement at the Loudoun County School Board meeting on June 8 that was later shared by The Virginia Project, a political action committee working to combat what it deems as “un-American” ideologies, including CRT.
“Growing up in Mao’s China, all of this seems very familiar,” she continued. “The communist regime used the same critical theory to divide people. The only difference is they used class instead of race.”
Van Fleet, whose son graduated from Loudon High School in 2015, told Fox News Wednesday that she lived through the Mao’s Cultural Revolution until she immigrated to the United States. The Cultural Revolution was led by Mao, a brutal dictator who purged so-called “impure” elements of Chinese society. The Cultural Revolution lasted from 1966 to 1976, and resulted in the death of around 1.5 million people, while millions more were imprisoned, tortured or humiliated, according to History.com.
“To me, and to a lot of Chinese, it is heartbreaking that we escaped communism and now we experience communism here,” Van Fleet continued in her statement to the school board.
CRT, which is tied to Marxist critical theory, criticizes the U.S. and Western nations as being oppressive and promoting institutional “systemic racism” or “white supremacy.” It teaches that systemic racism is ingrained in every aspect of American life. Many opponents have noted that the ideology uses Marxist tactics of “class struggle” to divide people among race, gender and ethnicity. Critical theory, which first arose in academic journals three decades ago, is now being taught at public schools, government agencies and business training programs.
Van Fleet said CRT reminds her of growing up in Maoist China.
“They are a communist regime [that] uses the same critical theories to divide people,” she said. “The only difference is that they use class instead of race. During the cultural revolution, I witnessed students and teachers turn against each other, we changed school names to be politically correct, we were taught to denounce our heritage. The red guards destroyed everything that is not communist … statues, books and anything else.”
Evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein, a former professor at Evergreen State, was among the first to warn the public that critical theory, now CRT, was not going to remain an issue on college campuses but would later affect all aspects of society.
“The critical race theory has its roots in cultural Marxism. It should have no place in our schools,” Van Fleet said as she concluded her remarks that were met with applause.
“I just want Americans to know that their privilege is to be here living in America, that is just the biggest privilege,” Van Fleet told Fox News. “I do not think a lot of people understand. They are thinking they are doing the right thing, ‘be against racism’ sounds really good. But they are basically breaking the system that is against racism.”
CRT has received pushback and condemned as “toxic” and divisive in nature. Former President Donald Trump banned critical race theory training in federal agencies, but President Joe Biden reversed it on his first day in office. When Biden reversed Trump’s ban, Christopher Rufo, a director at the Discovery Institute, announced a new coalition to stop critical race theory and “wage relentless legal warfare against race theory in America’s institutions.”
“Critical race theory is a grave threat to the American way of life. It divides Americans by race and traffics in the pernicious concepts of race essentialism, racial stereotyping, and race-based segregation—all under a false pursuit of ‘social justice,’” Rufo wrote at the time.
Florida’s Board of Education announced Thursday that it voted 8-0 to prohibit CRT from being taught in public schools in an effort to stop the “distort[ion] historical events,” according to The Washington Examiner.
“Some of this stuff is, I think, really toxic,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said about CRT in a video.“I think it’s going to cause a lot of divisions. I think it’ll cause people to think of themselves more as a member of particular race based on skin color, rather than based on the content of their character and based on their hard work and what they’re trying to accomplish in life.”
“The woke class wants to teach kids to hate each other, rather than teaching them how to read, but we will not let them bring nonsense ideology into Florida’s schools,” DeSantis said in a statement.
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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