Written with contribution from Sheriff David Clarke
The Biden administration’s Department of Education has determined that racially-based groups are not, in fact, segregation.
The so-called “affinity groups,” the New York Post reports, had previously been deemed to be a form of discrimination in the final days of the Trump administration back in January.
The findings had come in response to a complaint aimed at a Chicago-area school district’s “racial equity” training which utilized such groups, aimed at combating discrimination by separating students and staff into groups based on the color of their skin.
In a landmark US Supreme Court decision in 1954, it was ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. How is the Chicago school district getting away with this? Where is the NAACP that ironically fought against segregating school children based in skin color in 1954?
Last year, the Post exclusively covered the story of early childhood teachers being asked to segregate students into discussion groups based on skin color in the midst of the George Floyd protests over the summer.
They note that “One Manhattan principal even recently asked parents to reflect on their ‘whiteness’ to address ‘white supremacy,’ ’white privilege,’ and discrimination.”
This kind of language has grown shockingly common over the last nine months and while we might just be hearing about racial bias training taking place at some of the nation’s major corporations, in reality, schoolkids have been subject to this racist white-shaming for some time.
More from The Post on this disturbing educational trend:
The 18-page “letter of finding” — drafted by federal DOE Office of Civil Rights enforcement director Carol Ashley — was triggered by a complaint filed by a former NYC arts teacher who now works in the Evanston-Skokie, Illinois. school district.
The DOE findings said the Evanston- Skokie School District violated civil rights law by:
— Separating administrators in a professional development training program in August, 2019 into two groups based on race — white and non-white.
— Offering various “racially exclusive affinity groups” that separated students, parents and community members by race.
— Implementing a disciplinary policy that included “explicit direction” to staffers to consider a student’s race when meting out discipline.
— Carried out a “Colorism Privilege Walk” that separated seventh and eight grade students into different groups based on race.
“If you are white take 2 steps forward. If you’re a person of color with dark skin, take 2 steps back. If you’re black, take 2 steps back,” the privilege walk exercise said..
Yet another sensible step against dangerous, radical ideology taken by the Trump administration reversed under Biden.
Students are being told they shall “learn more about white privilege, internalized dominance, microaggressions and how to act as an ally for students of color,” as the privilege walk exercise lesson plan reportedly said.
This, Ashely at the DOE found to be “intentional race discrimination by coordinating and conducting racially exclusive affinity groups, which resulted in the separation of participants in district programs based on race in violation of the Title 6 regulation.”
It is, indeed, intentional race discrimination. It should never be tolerated in a truly free and equal society for a public institution to lead Americans through an exercise that asks them to separate into groups based on the color of their skin.
First of all, this is America. How many students in today’s public schools aren’t going to fall squarely into the categories of black and white?!
Second, these are not just Americans—they are children. The Founding Fathers wrote emphatically of the importance for public education to raise up future citizens of a functional constitutional republic; what are we teaching these children about how to engage in civic life and cherish their freedom and equality by making sure the white kids know they’re inherently privilege and the black kids know they are inherently disadvantaged?!
This runs completely contrary to every single one of our founding values as well as the values of those who fought for nearly two centuries to ensure the opposite—that every living, breathing, American citizen be ensured the same rights and freedom as everyone else, regardless of the color of their skin.
These children should not be forced to carry the emotional weight of our nation’s racist history on their shoulders, they should be told that every single one of them has the same rights, the same worth, and the same capacity for greatness. This amounts to the emotional abuse of a child, a felony in most states.
That they live in the land of the free and the home of the brave, where any man or woman can work hard and make what they can of themselves, regardless of what they look like or where they’ve come from.
These are our nation’s public institutions. If they are not teaching children to value the fruit of American liberty, how can we possibly expect them to perpetuate it when they take the reins of society?
Considering these are public schools under the eye of the most progressive president in history, perhaps we should consider that that’s the whole point.
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