Even in states with Republican legislatures, the educational establishment is strongly progressive, and sympathetic to critical race theory and “white privilege” training. North Carolina, which has a Democratic governor, is spending millions on Critical Race Theory, even though that annoys many members of North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature.
Legal Insurrection notes that “North Carolina is spending millions of dollars on a Critical Race Theory program developed at the University of North Carolina that teaches disabled preschoolers about the problems of whiteness. It’s stunning that someone looked at this and thought it was a good idea.”
The Daily Caller describes the program:
CRT Program Teaches Disabled Preschoolers That ‘Whiteness Affects Everything’
A program designed by the University of North Carolina (UNC) teaches 3 and 4-year-old disabled preschoolers to “deconstruct whiteness,” according to a report from Education First Alliance (EFA).
Education groups called on the North Carolina General Assembly to stop funding a statewide program that teaches Critical Race Theory (CRT) aligned ideas to special education students, according to an EFA press release.
The North Carolina State Board approved the extension of a contract with UNC Chapel Hill’s Frank Porter Graham (FPG) Child Development Center, which has worked with the Office of Early Learning (OEL) of the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (DPI) since 2013.
The “Equity and Cultural Responsiveness” program defines whiteness as how “customs, culture, and beliefs operate as the standard by which all other groups are compared,” and it encourages “deconstructing whiteness” by “challenging it” and “developing a personal vision for racial justice, and building skills to be accountable allies to people of color.”
Parents groups are displeased by this, but the progressive philosophy was summed up by former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, who said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,”
The Daily Wire describes parental outrage over the millions spent on Critical Race Theory:
A Red State Just Spent Money For Handicapped Pre-Schoolers On CRT Training
North Carolina is on blast from parents’ groups after the state school board approved a $7 million federal grant called the Preschool Handicapped Grant to be used for “Equity and Cultural Responsiveness in the Early Childhood Classroom.”
“Preying on disabled 3 year old children – getting them to participate in a political movement, and to hate themselves based on skin color in the process, shows our public schools to be more morally corrupt than all others,” Sloan Rachmuth, president of the group Education First Alliance, said in a press release. “With this vote, North Carolina’s schools became the most radically divisive system in America.”…
A slide says teachers should help preschoolers with “building racial identity” and “Encourage the children to question social, scientific, and historical facts. We want children to question whether information is true.”
In a section titled “General Supervision of Children,” which governs “children’s health and safety,” a page with the same watermark says controlling a preschool class requires “understanding that ‘control’ is based in white norms and is associated with white supremacist thought; it is appropriate to focus on social emotional teaching and learning.”
Rosiak notes that Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, an African-American Republican, is an outspoken critic of Critical Race Theory. But lieutenant governors are virtually powerless.
Detroit’s school superintendent, Nikolai Vitti, says critical race theory is deeply embedded in his school system: “Our curriculum is deeply using critical race theory, especially in social studies, but you’ll find it in English language arts and the other disciplines. We were very intentional about…embedding critical race theory within our curriculum.”
His school district is not alone. Twenty percent of urban school teachers report having discussed or taught critical race theory with K-12 students, as have 8 percent of teachers nationally, according to an Education Week survey. The Seattle public school district has employed a critical race theorist who applies the controversial theory to school policies and practices as part of the district’s efforts to embed it in elementary schools.
Critical race theory is a radical ideology that is hostile to the free market economy, equating it with racism: “To love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism….Capitalism is essentially racist; racism is essentially capitalist,” says the best-selling book promoting critical race theory, “How to Be An Antiracist.” That book is a “comprehensive introduction to critical race theory,” gushes the leading progressive media organ Slate.
And what does it teach? Not ending discrimination. The “key concept” in Ibram Kendi’s book “How to Be an Antiracist” is that discrimination against whites is the only way to achieve equality: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,” writes Kendi in that book. Kendi is a leading “critical race theorist.”
The public schools in Democrat-dominated Arlington County, Virginia have students read books by critical race theorists such as Ibram Kendi. Arlington distributed hundreds of copies of Ibram Kendi’s book “Stamped” to students at Wakefield High School. The book contains many errors and celebrates a Marxist anti-Semite. It also peddles conspiracy theories and is dismissive about Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass.
The progressive Loudoun County, VA public schools paid a contractor to train their staff in critical race theory, giving it $3,125 to conduct “Critical Race Theory Development.”
Under Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D), Virginia’s official “Roadmap to Equity” published by its Department of Education in 2020 thanked critical race theorist “Dr. Ibram X. Kendi” in its acknowledgments section, as having “informed the development of the EdEquityVA Framework.” Kendi says he was “inspired by critical race theory,” and that he cannot “imagine a pathway to” his teachings “that does not engage CRT.”
