Critical Race Theory… Continued

Last week I wrote about Critical Race Theory that is being presented in some schools. I got lots of feedback. Thank you for reading and for your comments.

Most of the comments were from parents expressing their concerns about what  children are hearing in the classroom.  They are concerned about the divisive nature of  the theory that white children are privileged because of their skin color and black children are victims of those same children? This is wrong and dangerous for all our children. They are all innocent victims in this ideology. 

North Carolina’s Lt. Governor, Mark Robinson, set up a task force in March to look at this issue. It caught his attention when a student was asked to write about a prominent black person who had influenced her life. The student chose to write about the Lt. Governor (who is black) and was told he didn’t qualify. He became interested and decided to look deeper. 

The task force is called Fairness and Accountability in the Classroom for Teachers and Students, F.A.C.T.S. The reason for the task force was due to concerns, expressed by parents and teachers, about cultural indoctrination in classrooms, especially CRT. The group consists of educators from elementary school to university professors as well as parents and administrators. A portal was set up for the task force to receive submissions from the public regarding their concerns. 

Carolina Journal recently reported on some of the submissions and details of CRT in our classrooms. It is stunning.

Some parents reported their Academically or Intellectually Gifted students were assigned ‘Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You.’ Other parents reported their elementary students received vocabulary sheets that list Donald Trump as an example of ‘xenophobic.’ North Buncombe High School seniors claim that the teacher uses a sociology class as a social justice course and requires white students to list their white privilege and apply Marxism as the solution.

One teacher writes, “We all know this is a political movement, not just a teachers rights movement. By encouraging students we are turning them into political activists.”

Another group of high school students, in an American History class, were asked to identify institutional racism in the United States and were presented with “police unions and judicial system” as correct answers. Children at Sycamore Creek Elementary School were given an assignment of exalting Vice President Kamala Harris. 

A Wake County teacher reports being ostracized for “not being WOKE” and the school principal calls to “teach for social justice.” The teacher claims that professional development is dominated by issues of race, far left policies as well as LGBTQ politics.

Wake County gained national attention in a report in the City Journal. The headline reads “North Carolina’s largest school district launches a campaign against “whiteness in educational spaces.” An equity based teachers conference held sessions on “whiteness,” “microaggressions,” “racial mapping,” and encouraged educators to form “equity teams” and push the new party line: “antiracism.”

The article points out that parents should be considered an impediment to social justice, according to teachers at a conference. One teacher asked, “how do you deal with parent push back?” The answer was to ignore parents and push the ideology of antiracism directly to students. Some comments made by teachers  were “You can’t let parents deter you from your work,” white parents’ children are benefitting from the system of whiteness, and children are not learning at home about diversity (LGBTQ, race, etc).” Teachers are told they have an obligation to subvert parents’ wishes. They are told that “pushback” is because white parents fear “that they are going to lose something,” and it’s “hard to let go of power and privilege.” www.city-journal.org 

Wake County has an official Equity in Action plan. It was founded in 2013 and has a $1 million budget. The office hosted a series of “courageous conversations” about race and asked participants to consider how “whiteness” contributes to “police shootings of unarmed African Americans,” “acts of domestic terrorism,” and “unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice and hiring.”

 This isn’t new stuff. It’s been going on under the radar for some time. Once again, we can look at one positive benefit of the pandemic. Parents have found out exactly what their children are learning in schools and it’s not a pretty sight.  It’s not just reading, writing and arithmetic.