Friday, May 20, 2022

Links - 20th May 2022 (2 - Critical Race Theory)

Ibram X. Kendi is the false prophet of a dangerous and lucrative faith - "Ibram X. Kendi’s name appears everywhere: in school curricula, corporate training programs, even the Navy’s official reading list. The Boston University prof is a blazing supernova in the constellation of radical-chic race activism. But be warned: His philosophy would jeopardize the bedrock American ideal of individual dignity and equality under law...   Born Ibram Henry Rogers, Kendi presents himself as a radical subversive. But in reality, he is an ideologist of elite opinion, buoyed by government and corporate patronage. Kendi’s work has been endorsed by Fortune 100 companies, the federal bureaucracy and the US military — the very power structures he claims to oppose.  Kendi’s core thesis — that racism is the single, self-evident cause of racial differences in everything from school grades to incarceration rates to income and thus must be rectified using “antiracist discrimination” — reiterates critical race theory’s basic concepts. Kendi’s “gift,” in other words, is for translating ivory-tower theories into media- and corporate-friendly narrative.   “When I see racial disparities, I see racism,” Kendi says, to the exclusion of other explanations. His logic often descends into dizzying circularity and tautologies. When asked to define the word “racism,” he told attendees at the Aspen Ideas Festival that it is “a collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas.”  In another nod to 1960s-style radicalism, Kendi also claims to oppose capitalism. “The life of racism cannot be separated from the life of capitalism,” he says. “In order to truly be antiracist, you also have to truly be anti-capitalist.” But Kendi, like his counterpart Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors, is a prolific capitalist in his personal life. He charges $20,000 an hour for virtual presentations and has merchandised his entire line of ideas, releasing self-help products and even an “antiracist” baby book. He gratefully accepts millions from tech and pharmaceutical companies on behalf of his Antiracism Center. Fighting Big Capital, it turns out, is a lucrative enterprise.   But Kendi’s actual policy proposals, from “defunding the police” to restricting free speech, are much more alarming than his fraudulent posturing. Kendi is an open advocate for race-based discrimination, arguing that “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.” Even worse, he has proposed a federal “Department of Antiracism,” unaccountable to voters or legislators, with the power to suppress “racist ideas” and veto, nullify or abolish any law at any level of government not deemed “antiracist” — a policy that verges on the totalitarian.   Fortunately, as Americans have begun to seriously consider his ideas, Kendi finds himself on the defensive. In recent months, he has released a series of touchy and short-tempered articles and statements, claiming that “there is no debate about critical race theory” in one moment, then distancing himself from CRT in the next — despite the fact that only two weeks earlier, he had claimed that critical race theory was “foundational” to his work.  When he’s put on the spot, Kendi reverts to word games and deflection, rather than defend his position on the substance."

Watch: Virginia School District Refuses Critical Race Theory Opt-Out - "an Albemarle County, Virginia school administrator saying parents cannot opt out a student from Critical Race Theory (CRT) lessons because they are “woven through” all class work.  Talk radio host Rob Schilling posted a clip of district Diversity Resource Teacher Chris Booz telling parents that there is no opt-out because the race theories are spread across all subjects...   In 2019, the Albemarle County school board unanimously voted to adopt an “anti-racism” policy intended to build “racial consciousness.”"

Alabama policymakers seek to keep critical race theory out of classrooms
Liberals are very upset over this, claiming it's censorship. But they are also very upset if you want to teach Creationism in Science class, and they want to ban that

Capitol riot suspects say they're 'force fed critical race theory' in jail - "Two Capitol riot suspects have written a letter claiming they are "force fed" critical race theory and subjected to “anti-white messaging” behind bars. Ryan Nichols of Longview, Texas, and Robert Morss of Pennsylvania, who have been charged with multiple offenses stemming from the Jan. 6 riot, wrote a letter decrying the conditions of the District of Columbia jail, where they are being held."

Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education - "The article argues for a critical race theoretical perspective ineducation analogous to that of critical race theory in legal scholarship by developing three propositions: (1) race continues to be significant in the United States; (2) U.S. society is basedon property rights rather than human rights; and (3) the intersection of race and property creates an analytical tool for understanding inequity... According to Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison... 'racism is as healthy today as it was dur-ing  the  Enlightenment... With this notion of property rights as a defining feature of the society, weproceed to describe the ways that the features of critical race theory mentioned  in  the  previous  section  can  be  applied  to  our  understanding  of educational inequity."
Weird. Liberals keep claiming that critical race theory is only about the law. This article doesn't even talk about policy that much

Critical Race Theory Is a Hustle - WSJ - "A majority of American fourth- and eighth-graders can’t read or do math at grade level, according to the Education Department. And that assessment is from 2019, before the learning losses from pandemic school closures.  Whenever someone asks me about critical race theory, that statistic comes to mind. What’s the priority, teaching math and reading, or turning elementary schools into social-justice boot camps?...   Wealthier parents will make sure their kids receive a decent education, even if it means using private schools or hiring tutors. But the majority of children are relegated to the traditional public-school system, where progressives now want to prioritize the teaching of critical race theory. In addition to being a horrible idea, the timing couldn’t be worse. As the country rapidly diversifies—for more than a decade, U.S. population growth has been driven primarily by Asians and Hispanics—liberals want to teach children to obsess over racial and ethnic differences. What could go wrong? Recently, the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, announced that they had jumped on the bandwagon... the NEA’s sister outfit, the American Federation of Teachers, has joined forces with Ibram X. Kendi, an activist-scholar who openly embraces racial discrimination against whites... the union announced that it will donate copies of his writings to schools, AFT members, educators and youth mentors... In a forthcoming book, “Woke Racism,” the humanities professor John McWhorter argues that proponents like Mr. Kendi and Ms. Hannah-Jones have mostly been given a pass because they’re racial minorities, they’re on the left, and criticizing them is politically incorrect.   “On the issue of the Revolutionary War, Hannah-Jones’s claim is simply false, but our current cultural etiquette requires pretending that isn’t true—because she’s black,” Mr. McWhorter writes. “Someone has received a Pulitzer Prize for a mistaken interpretation of historical documents about which legions of actual scholars are expert. Meanwhile, the claim is being broadcast, unquestioned, in educational materials being distributed across the nation.”  Mr. McWhorter is right to point out the racial double standards at work in elevating shoddy pseudoscholarship. He’s also correct in noting the general cowardice of his colleagues in the academy. There is no shortage of books about slavery or America’s founding, and none of them have been written by Ms. Hannah-Jones. To what, other than her race and politics, does she owe all this deference?   And while Mr. Kendi is using trendier language—“antiracism,” “implicit bias,” etc.—critical race theory amounts to little more than a fancy argument for affirmative action, and always has...  It’s employed by elites primarily for the benefit of elites, though in the name of helping the underprivileged. Ultimately, it’s about blaming your problems on other people—based on their race—which might be the last thing we should be teaching our children."

I’m A Middle School Teacher And See How Critical Race Curriculum Is Creating Racial Hostility In School - "I have been a public school teacher for the past 22 years, with the past seven in Providence, Rhode Island.  I have had the honor of serving public school children and their families as an English teacher first at the high school level, and currently at the middle school level.  During my career I have always tried to provide the best education for my students. I am designated by the Rhode Island Department of Education a ‘Highly Qualified’ teacher, meaning, I have tenure and experience in my certifications.  I was awarded the English Speaking Union Shakespeare Scholarship for excellence in teaching Shakespeare. I helped implement curriculum and I have hosted multiple student clubs, literary magazines, youth groups and community outreach programs...  I am speaking about the controversial critical race theory that has infiltrated our public schools here in Rhode Island under the umbrella of Cuturally Responsive learning and teaching, which includes a focus on identities. You won’t see the words “critical race theory” on the materials, but those are the concepts taught. The new, racialized curriculum and materials focuses almost exclusively on an oppressor-oppressed narrative, and have created racial tensions among students and staff where none existed before...   Missing from our curriculum during the 2020/ 21 school year was the diversity, perspective, truth, and rigor that previously were taught. Previously vetted books were removed from our classroom and sent to recycling.  Gone was the diverse collection of American and World Literature: House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, James Baldwin Go Tell It On The Mountain, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, essays by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., poetry by Maya Angelou, Robert Frost, Anne Frank, Night, The Boy In The Striped Pajamas, Macbeth, Walt Whitman, The Salem Witch Trials, The Crucible , Holocaust studies, world genocide, world art, universal themes, universal characters and any book or short story from the literary cannon.  What saddened me most was that I would not be teaching the Holocaust any longer... sometime around January 2021, hundreds of new leaflet style booklets arrived, all poorly written, historically biased, inaccurate, and pushing a racial narrative.  I noticed the book covers right away.  They were odd.  In some cases the book covers browned out the faces of historical characters like Lincoln to look black or brown, none of the books were recognizable, and all the booklets seemed to revolve around slavery or oppression.  Perplexed, I thought there was a mistake. I asked a teacher leader what was going on and he looked jokingly at me saying “Comrade, we were told to remove all classroom sets of reading material in order to make room for the incoming sets of books.” I laughed, assuming this was a joke. But it was not a joke, this was real and happening in my school, in my classroom.   In isolation and without historical perspective, the thematic message in every book was clear: White Europeans were and are evil and African Americans were and are victimized by white oppressors. Woven into this new curriculum was a school-wide social push to focus on Black Lives Matter support groups and other social justice identity groups.  Teachers were encouraged to participate in “white educator affinity groups” where we would be given essays on how not to be a white supremacist in the classroom. This was a system-wide directive to separate white and non-white teachers for training...   Midway through the academic year, some students started calling me “America” because I was white. These students, whom I love, were turning against me because of my skin color. I don’t blame them, I blame the racial narratives being forced upon them in school.  Several of my colleagues stated I had “white privilege.” I was quickly made to feel as though I was becoming the enemy.  My black colleagues added more similar comments in passing, for example: “You have white privilege Bessinger, your gestures are a rich person’s gestures.”   The school culture for many was becoming increasingly tense. Children asked questions about the never-ending thematic focus on slavery.  They asked me to tell them why I lived in a “white castle.” Where were my students hearing this?  For sure in the new books and new curriculum.  At my school, the increasing hatred towards America seemed on the rise.  I blame the books, I blame the media, the literature showing kids themes akin to America is bad, and white people are the enemy. While some teachers embraced this ideology, many secretly modified the lessons to include historically accurate supplemental materials."
By Ramona Bessinger
Weird. I thought liberals claimed that not teaching Maus but using an alterantive book instead was censorship and not teaching the Holocaust

Providence Teachers Union Confirms Affinity Group Segregation, Historical Books Destroyed, Holocaust Education Ended (Ramona Bessinger Update)

Threatening messages reportedly directed at Rhode Island teacher who opposes critical race theory - "After speaking out about teaching policies centered on the ideology and whistleblowing on the school's alleged encouragement to participate in "white educator affinity groups," Bessinger was notified on Oct. 5 that she had to attend a "pre-disciplinary hearing" Wednesday — not for her views, but for violating a school safety procedure during a lockdown.  Photographs, allegedly of Bessinger's classroom whiteboard from when she was not present, appear to show threatening messages including "F*** ya b****," "Bye you fired," "b****," "Fire Ms. Bessinger," and many other scribbled phrases suggesting she leave.  Bessinger also reportedly called the police to her school Wednesday because she felt unsafe."

Education Horror Show, Continued - WSJ - "The harassment by fellow teachers and administrative officials increased this year after some media outlets highlighted her story. Last month a union representative at a faculty meeting said teachers were circulating a petition against her. On Oct. 3 she filed an internal complaint about retaliation and a hostile working environment...   The district would be unlikely to win a disciplinary case against Ms. Bessinger for opining online about critical race theory because the Supreme Court in Pickering v. Board of Education (1968) held that the First Amendment protects teachers from retaliation for speaking on matters of public concern. Hence, the district needed a pretext to target her.   Readers may recall a 2019 report by the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy (see our editorial “An Education Horror Show,” July 2019) documenting teacher misconduct, chaotic classrooms, student violence and academic failure in Providence public schools. Teachers were rarely disciplined even if they abused students, skipped classes, dozed off or lied about grades.  Although the state subsequently took over the district, collective-bargaining agreements and teacher tenure protections have impeded reform. Maybe the bigger problem is the progressive education establishment cares more about enforcing its ideology than improving instruction."

Teach Respect, Not Critical Race Theory - WSJ - "  Before I was elected to the school board, Loudoun County Public Schools in early 2019 spent $400,000 on an “equity consultant” to analyze graduation rates and other data to determine how racist the school district was.  After breaking down the data by race, the consultant found tiny differences in the graduation rates of black high-school students and white ones. These gaps, often only 1 percentage point, weren’t statistically significant. Yet the LCPS superintendent deemed them sufficient evidence to bring in other outside groups, which declared that Loudoun County was systemically racist, and that the administration needed to embrace critical race theory’s concept of equity...   A survey released last month by the Association of American Educators, a nonunion trade group, found that less than half of members (44.7%) favor CRT being an option for educators, while only 11% believe CRT should be required or mandated. Yet the National Education Association has vowed to push for mandatory CRT curriculum in the classroom.  Parents also see the toxicity of CRT and don’t want it in schools. Elected officials’ obfuscation and inaction has driven frustrated parents to take charge through petitions to recall six of the nine members of the Loudoun County School Board for supporting the CRT curriculum."

Loudoun Mom Explains How She Discovered School-Sanctioned Racism - "They had a table that they published, and there were two columns: one was oppressor, and one was oppressed.   They listed a number of traits: man/oppressor, woman/oppressed; black/oppressed, white/oppressor; and it went down. It went into such granular detail about things, and I fell in both columns. I’m oppressed because I’m a woman but I’m an oppressor because I’m white and then I was also oppressed because I’m divorced. It went into such crazy things.  I don’t want my children going to school and being taught that they’re oppressors. They’re not oppressors, they’re just trying to get an education. By keeping the schools closed we have really been able to take a hard look at what these school systems are focusing on. I don’t hear a lot about academic excellence, but I’ve heard a whole lot about “equity.”   How do you explain that to your kid? “You’re half in this column, and half in the other.” How confusing is this for a biracial child? I have friends who are in mixed-race marriages, and how do you explain that to your kid: “Your dad’s an oppressor and I’m oppressed?”  Many people are coming out on social media saying we’re crazy because Loudoun County doesn’t teach critical race theory. Our superintendent claims we’re not teaching critical race theory. However, our previous superintendent admitted they were using a lot of those ideologies in our education system here in Loudoun County. We had a school board member pretty much admit the same thing two weeks ago.   I’ve had one or two teachers talk to me about how demeaning some of these trainings have been for them. I know for a fact they held one last summer, and I’ve confirmed this with at least two teachers that I know. They actually had a session called “Whiteness.” These trainings they’re making these teachers sit through are going to cause a lot of good teachers to quit...
How did you and your fellow activists react to former governor and current gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe’s comments that critical race theory in schools was a “right-wing conspiracy” theory? Do you believe it will have an impact on his election chances?
Some immediately thought, “Could you be any further out of touch?” Anybody who has talked to parents who have been living this for the last 15 months, he’s just completely out of touch. It’s really a slap in the face to parents. We do our homework. We have [open records] documents, and we have documentation. You would think somebody running for office would want to maybe talk to parents and not just dismiss us.   I’m part of Fight for Schools, which is a nonpartisan organization. I don’t belong to any political party, although seeing what’s going on in public education has made me lean definitely more on the conservative side.  We have a lot of Democrats joining us, and they say, “You know what? I’m a Democrat but I’m with you guys.” I think he’s missing the boat on such a huge issue. I don’t know who his strategist is, but [Republican gubernatorial candidate] Glenn Youngkin has been fantastic about listening to us.
What do you hope you and the other involved parents can accomplish?
For starters, I want the politics out of schools completely. These are lessons that are taught at home. I want the public schools to focus on academic excellence, math, English, science. I want my children to be prepared for college. I don’t want them being put in positions where they need to talk about political hot-button issues in front of their peers. They have those conversations anyway. They should be happening in the lunchroom.   The schools’ priorities are out of whack, especially since my kids will have missed out on 18 months of school — even if the board says we’re going back in August, but I don’t trust this board as far as I can throw them. Our number one priority right now should be getting everybody back up to speed...   If you look at the Loudoun County Public Schools’ website or any documents or emails they put out, there’s very little about academic excellence. It’s all about feelings and I don’t need my children being taught how to feel. Teach them how to think"

Public School Graphic Dubs Christians As ‘Privileged,’ Women, Children As ‘Oppressed’ - "A Virginia public school district’s equity lead sent out a graphic claiming that Christians are privileged and women, children, and people over the age of 50 experience “oppression.”   Lottie Spurlock, the equity director for Loudoun County Public School (LCPS) district — one of the most affluent school districts in the nation — passed out a graphic that used immutable characteristics to divide people into two groups — oppressed and privileged.
According to LCPS, the following groups experience “privilege”:
Men
White People
Christians
Heterosexual
20-50 Year Olds
U.S. Born
Owning/Middle- or High-Income Background
Currently Able-Bodied
College Educated or Parents College Educated
Not Adopted or Foster Child
English as a Primary Language
“Average” or “Thin” (referencing weight)
Lighter Complexioned People of the Same Race
The graphic claims that the following groups experience “oppression”:
Women
Children
People of Color
Non-Christians
Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Queer
Gender Non-conforming
50 Years and Older
Immigrant
Working Class/Lower Income Background
Disabled
Not College Educated or Parents Not College Educated
Single Parent or Raised by a Single Parent
Adopted or Foster Child
English as a Second Language
“Overweight”
Darker Complexioned People of the Same Race...
“Loudoun County Public Schools’ state-sanctioned racism and bigotry seemingly knows no bounds,” Prior said. “Not only are senior staff forcing teachers and students to see everyone as part of an identity group instead of individuals, but now they are attacking peoples religious beliefs.” Following the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, school districts across the nation caved to activists and began implementing “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) training. LCPS has taken “DEI” a step further and called its approach to teaching, “DEIJA,” which stands for “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Justice, and Anti-racist work.”   The push for “DEIJA” at LCPS is being spearheaded by Spurlock. In a recent training, Spurlock encouraged administrators to use the terms “Black and Brown” people or “BIPOC” instead of the term “minority.”   The training also listed the “15 characteristics of white supremacy culture,” which includes traits such as “perfectionism, individualism, objectivity,” and believing that there is “only one right way.”... LCPS is planning to allocate over $6 million in “equity” and “equity training” for the 2022 fiscal year budget."

Meme - "Critical Race Theory"
"If it's about teaching historic truths, then why is it called "Theory"?")

James Lindsay, fun on Twitter - "The purpose of Critical Race Theory is to turn America against itself. That's it."

Math instruction program funded by Bill Gates tells teachers that encouraging students to get the right answer is racist - "“A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction” is a teacher’s workbook that claims to dismantle racism in mathematics instruction.  Reportedly, the program has been used in school districts in California, Oregon, Ohio, and Georgia. In February the Oregon Department of Education encouraged teachers to participate in the course, which derides individualism and capitalism.  Black educators have harshly criticized the program, with one stating that the program communicates that “Black kids are bad at math, so why don’t we just excuse them from really learning it.”"

UCLA Lecturer Gordon Klein Suing UCLA Over Controversy Related to E-Mail Rejecting Student Request for Exam "Leniency" for "Black Students" - "1. Plaintiff Gordon Klein ("Plaintiff"), a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles ("UCLA" or "University"), was severely punished by UCLA after he refused to implement a different grading policy solely for black students.
2. This dispute originated in June 2020 when a non-black student asked Plaintiff to grade his "Black classmates" differently than other students. Plaintiff rejected this request, knowing that his employment contract – and California law – required him to apply the same grading standards and requirements to all students. He also refused because his faculty supervisor recently had encouraged instructors to reject requests for special exam accommodations.
3. After Plaintiff's email reply to the student was posted on social media, some furious individuals called Plaintiff "woefully racist" and organized an online campaign to attack Plaintiff and the UCLA Anderson School of Management ("Anderson School"), where Plaintiff teaches. The Anderson School hastily buckled under this pressure and sought permission from the University to impose disciplinary sanctions on Plaintiff, including terminating his employment. But, as noted below, the University rebuffed the Anderson School, warning that "the School may not take any action … at this time" against Plaintiff.
4. Despite this firm directive, the Anderson School administration abruptly suspended Plaintiff from his teaching duties, banned him from its campus, and hired others to replace him in future scheduled courses. Moreover, the Dean of the Anderson School, Defendant Antonio Bernardo ("Bernardo"), disparaged Plaintiff to alumni and the general public based on the private communications between Plaintiff and the student who had requested preferential race-based grading policies ("Student"). Dean Bernardo even went so far as to publicly disclose the adverse personnel action the School had improperly imposed on Plaintiff.
5. After examining the facts, the University eventually closed its investigation and reinstated Plaintiff. Later, the UCLA Senate Committee on Academic Freedom criticized the Anderson School administration, noting that it had violated Plaintiff's rights and, more broadly, that such conduct "chills" instructors from expressing views that differ from prevailing campus orthodoxy."

Opinion | California's Proposition 16 shows how unchecked progressives inflict progress - The Washington Post - "California, our national warning, shows how unchecked progressives inflict progress. They have placed on November ballots Proposition 16 to repeal the state constitution’s provision, enacted by referendum in 1996, forbidding racial preferences in public education, employment and contracting. Repeal, which would repudiate individual rights in favor of group entitlements, is part of a comprehensive California agenda to make everything about race, ethnicity and gender. Especially education, thereby supplanting education with its opposite... Proposition 16 should be seen primarily as an act of ideological aggression, a bold assertion that racial and gender quotas — identity politics translated into a spoils system — should be forthrightly proclaimed and permanently practiced as a positive good. California already requires that by the end of 2021 some publicly traded companies based in the state must have at least three women on their boards of directors, up from the 2018 requirement of one woman. Last month, the legislature mandated that by the end of 2021 at least one director shall be Black, Latino, Hispanic, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian or Alaskan Native, or identify as LGBTQ. And by 2022, boards with nine or more directors must include at least three government-favored minorities.  Where will this social sorting end? Proposition 16’s aim is to see that there is no end to the industry of improvising remedial measures to bring “social justice” to a fundamentally unjust state, and nation. The aim is to dilute, to the point of disappearance, inhibitions about government using group entitlements — racial, ethnic and gender — for social engineering. Most important, Proposition 16 greases the state’s slide into the engineering of young souls. They are to be treated as raw material for public education suffused with the spirit of Oceania in George Orwell’s “1984”: “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” Progressives have a practical objective in teaching the essential squalor of the nation’s past. The New York Times’s “1619 Project” — it preaches that the nation’s real founding was the arrival of the first slaves; the nation is about racism — is being adopted by schools as a curriculum around the nation. If the past can be presented as radically wrong, radical remedies will seem proportionate.  Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed legislation requiring all 430,000 undergraduates in the California State University system to take an “ethnic studies” course, and there may soon be a similar mandate for all high school students. “Ethnic studies” is an anodyne description for what surely will be, in the hands of woke “educators,” grievance studies... Writing in the British journal Standpoint, Charles Parton, with 22 years of diplomatic experience working in and on China, explains that President Xi Jinping’s hostility to freedom’s prerequisites includes root-and-branch rejection of education, understood as the development of individuals’ abilities to think critically. Xi, who calls teachers “engineers of the soul,” wants education to be, Parton says, “collective, ideological and political.” The Chinese Communist Party says education begins by “grasping the baby”; primary school promotes “loving” the party, socialism and the collective; secondary schools inculcate “the ideology of socialist builders”; and universities must be, in Xi’s words, “CCP strongholds.”... the CCP is more candid than California is about replacing thinking with the regurgitation of government-stipulated orthodoxies."

Critical Race Theory Resolutions Disappear From NEA Website - "the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in America, passed resolutions promoting Marxist critical race theory (CRT) in schools and committing to fighting CRT opponents. Days after the 2021 Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly, dozens of those assembly resolutions and proposed resolutions disappeared from the NEA website."

'CRT Teaches My Daughter Her Mother Is Evil': Father Gives Testimony Before School Board - "A father at a school board meeting blasted critical race theory (CRT) for teaching his daughter that "her mother is evil," in his words, and influencing students of different races "to hate each other."  Ian Rice, a parent in Caledonia, Michigan, spoke out against CRT, calling out the district's schools for "failing" students, including his own two children... Rice added that the problem he has seen in schools that teach CRT lies with the educators themselves. He said the educators are not properly trained to teach such a theory. "Instead, they're using it as their own agenda to indoctrinate the kids to hate each other," he said.  Rice, who is black, also said the teaching of CRT has been especially harmful to his daughter. "Critical race theory is teaching that white people are bad. That's not true. That would teach my daughter that her mother is evil." He also brought up an instance where a teacher pulled his daughter aside and told her, "Well, you're a minority, so you know better than to engage in certain things," which elicited gasps from the crowd around him.  He mentioned that his daughter was ridiculed after he initially brought up the matter to the school board. "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."... Schools across the U.S. are seeing a backlash after implementing CRT in their curriculums. A June poll from The Economist/YouGov showed that 58 percent of Americans find the controversial theory somewhat or very unfavorable."

Video Analysis of Popular "Critical Race Theory" Texts - "note (for those who focus on identity politics) that the following academics and scholars cited in this presentation are black academics and scholars: Thomas Sowell, John Hope Franklin, William Julius Wilson, Robert Woodson, Ian Rowe, Martin Luther King, Jr., Frederick Douglass, Roland Fryer, Coleman Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Larry Koger.  Deidre McCloskey is transgender...
As Kenny Xu points out in his book An Inconvenient Minority … “Asian Americans [were] one of the poorer ethnic groups in American life between 1880 and 1940, with low comparative social mobility from father to son …” “[But by] 1980, Asian Americans had greater incomes than white Americans and exceeded Black incomes in California by a factor of an entire educational degree.”
Within the black community, kids from two-parent homes tend to do better on a variety of metrics.  Researcher Van C. Tran of Columbia University examined cultural differences between West Indian second-generation young people and native black young people in New York City.  Both group’s skin tones are the same.  The researcher did this to determine what might explain the greater success of those West Indian second-generation young people... "West Indians reported outcomes similar to those of native whites … [A] key difference was family structure"...
The most comprehensive study of American black families from the end of slavery to 1925, Herbert Gutman’s The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925, concluded that:
 “At all moments in time between 1880 and 1925 – that is, from an adult generation born in slavery to an adult generation about to be devastated by the Great Depression of the 1930s and the modernization of southern agriculture afterward – the typical Afro-American family was lower-class in status and headed by two parents … The two-parent household was not limited to better-advantaged Afro-Americans … It was just as common among farm laborers, sharecroppers, tenants, and northern and southern urban unskilled laborers and service workers.”
In a review of the book on its cover, John Hope Franklin states “Gutman has successfully challenged the traditional view that slavery virtually destroyed the Afro-American family.”...
As Ian Rowe has testified before Congress:...
"[t]he same 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances that shows the average black family has one seventh the wealth of the average white family also shows the reverse when family structure is considered. Indeed, black households headed by two married parents have slightly higher wealth than the median net worth of the typical white, single-parent household... And when education is considered, on an absolute basis, the median net worth of two-parent black households is nearly $220,000 and more than three times that of the typical white, single-parent household"...
Dr. King was advocating the compelling moral principle of colorblindness.  He was advocating for equal rights, regardless of race. But Kendi explicitly rejects the concept of colorblindness.  He writes, “The language of color blindness -- like the language of ‘not racist’ -- is a mask to hide racism.”... Kendi so despises the concept of colorblindness that he even maintains “The most threatening racist movement is not the alt right’s unlikely drive for a White ethnostate but the regular American’s drive for a ‘race-neutral’ one.” Who was the founder of the modern movement for race-neutrality?  It was Martin Luther King, Jr.  Kendi thinks Martin Luther King Jr. is the founder of a movement that’s more dangerous than movements advocating white supremacy.  Does that make any sense to you?...
Matt Yglesias, who used to write for Vox and the Washington Post, writes, “From any normal standpoint, the idea that “requiring people to think in a linear (logical) fashion” is racist is itself racist.  People of all ethnic backgrounds can think logically!”...
I want to close with some quotes from Professor William Julius Wilson of Harvard, who writes the following in a book called “The Truly Disadvantaged.”... “even if racism continues to be a factor in the social and economic progress of some blacks, can it be used to explain the sharp increase in inner-city social dislocations since 1970?  Unfortunately, no one who supports the contemporary racism thesis has provided adequate or convincing answers to this question.”... “Indeed, because this term [“structural racism”] has been used so indiscriminately, has so many different definitions, and is often relied on to cover up lack of information or knowledge of complex issues, it frequently weakens rather than enhances arguments concerning race.”"

blog comments powered by Disqus