Parents Against Critical Race Theory

The Daily Mail reports that the backlash against private school indoctrination in critical race theory is gaining momentum. Allowing woke teachers and administrators to indoctrinate your children in an ideology that will damage their future prospects is surely of vital importance.

Worse yet, parents have nothing to say about whether or not their children are being indoctrinated. They can either accept the new regime or they can pick up and leave. One understands that these programs, as is the entirety of critical race theory, are deeply unpopular. A recent Yale University study suggested that they will damage Democratic election prospects.

This means, to put a finer point on it, that Democrats do not believe in democracy. They do not respond to the will of the people or the people’s representatives. They want to impose their will on the nation and even the nation’s children. It is a frightening prospect, brought to you nationally by today’s ruling Democratic Party, and brought to you locally by the despotic leaders of the teachers’ unions, the people who bear the most responsibility for damaging the minds of poor minority children in major American cities.

When it comes to private school children, some parents are in full rebellion. When it comes to minority children, their parents have nothing to say. It is sad beyond imagining. 

So, to keep up to date on the parental rebellion, we begin with one Harvey Goldman, who pulled his daughter out of a New York private school, the Heschel School when he discovered that his daughter was being told to get in touch with her white privilege. He called it child abuse, and he was surely right.

The Daily Mail reports:

Parent Harvey Goldman said he pulled his daughter out of the $43,000-per-year Heschel School after learning that the fourth-grader was being tutored on her 'white privilege'.

Last September, he sent administrators a private letter, which he is now making public for the first time.

'First and foremost, neither I, nor my child, have 'white privilege,' nor do we need to apologize for it,' Goldman wrote.

'Suggesting I do is insulting. Suggesting to my nine-year-old child she does is child abuse, not education.' 

Goldman told the Post that administrators were 'arrogant and dismissive' in response, suggesting he pull his daughter out of the school if he was unsatisfied. 

He did, and moved the family to Florida, where his daughter now attends a free public school, which he vetted to ensure CRT was not part of the curriculum. 

Moving to Florida, attending a public school where critical race theory does not appear on the curriculum-- it's one solution.

And we have another parent, one Bion Bartning, whose children were attending another toney New York private school:

Riverdale Country School parent Bion Bartning was also so upset with the ideologies being taught there that he pulled his children out of the $54,000-a-year school.

But, Bartning organized a new group to fight back:

Bartning then went a step further, founding the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR) to fight back against what he calls a dangerous new 'orthodoxy'.

Bartning, who is Mexican and Yaqui on one side and Jewish on the other, said he was shocked to learn that schoolchildren are being forced to label themselves as privileged or oppressed by skin color.

'I don't fit into any of those race buckets,' Bartning told the Post. 'I think it is wrong to be teaching kids these socially constructed race categories.' 

'It's a destructive ideology, teaching children to be pessimistic and full of grievance rather than being optimistic and full of gratitude. It goes against all the values I was raised with, and there are many out there who feel as I do,' he said.

Setting one race against the other, it’s precisely what we should not be doing. Now, schools are doing it in the name of the vapid concept of equity:

Bartning said he had even encountered instances of children being given color palettes to match with their skin tone to assess their level of privilege.  

Happily, public school parents are beginning to join the movement-- and are running for public office.

Some public school parents have also joined the growing movement opposed to CRT. Maud Maron, a City Council candidate with four children in local public schools, slammed so-called anti-racist philosophy, as CRT is often branded.

'It's a really divisive, ugly orthodoxy and it's a multi-million dollar industry as well,' Maron told The Post. 'It's also very insidious because on the face of it, who wouldn't want to sign up to be less racist?' 

Now, Melissa Chen, a member of the advisory board of FAIR, has also spoken her mind:

In Wednesday's interview, Chen slammed CRT ideology as a 'new racist orthodoxy' that causes children to question if they are the oppressed or the oppressor because of their skin race. 

'They are being taught a very cynical, intolerant, kind of new racist orthodoxy that forces everyone to see each other - students really - by their immutable characteristics,' she said.

'So by their skin color, their gender, their sexual orientation. And it's very harmful, it pits them against each other. It assigns moral values. Are you an oppressor or are you the oppressed?

'Just purely based on skin color and that's what we're seeing with this language about demonizing white children because they are born oppressors.'

Chen said this is 'harrowing' that children are being taught this. 

She cited several schools mired in controversy recently as some parents and teachers have questioned their approaches to anti-racism.  

Because these schools are the 'elite of the elite', Chen said these teachings are being taught to children likely to go on to become the future leaders of the country and top institutions. 

'We've had several high profile cases already - you know Dalton school, Riverdale school this is happening at Grace Church school,' she said.

Truth be told, you can forget about any chance that children indoctrinated in this ideology are going to be future leaders in America, or anywhere. Hopefully, other children in other schools across America are not suffering the same brainwashing. Otherwise, when our legions of social justice warriors enter the fray against China’s armies of scientists and engineers, we are going to lose. It will not even be close.