A growing number of American parents are getting together to find ways to block the spread of the quasi-Marxist critical race theory (CRT) in schools where they send their children.
They see the doctrine as a culprit in creating a toxic environment and exacerbating problems it claims to ameliorate. School officials have been responding with denials or silence.
CRT has been spreading throughout academia, entertainment, government, schools, and corporations. It redefines America’s history as a struggle between “oppressors” (white people) and the “oppressed” (everybody else), similarly to Marxism’s reduction of human history to a struggle between the “bourgeoisie” and the “proletariat.” It labels institutions that emerged in majority-white societies as “systemically” or “structurally” racist.
CRT’s entry into schools went largely unnoticed by parents due to its being dressed up as “equity,” “anti-racist,” or “culturally responsive” initiatives. It has spawned an industry of speakers, trainers, and consultants who get paid to diagnose an organization as “systemically racist,” prescribe CRT-based initiatives as the remedy, and then to help implement it over the years to come.
The existence of “systemic racism” is usually claimed based on disparate outcomes for different groups, such as lower average test scores or more detentions for black students.
Scholars have pointed out that the argument is specious.
“Every system you could possibly think of produces some kind of racial or sexual or class discrepancy,” said Wilfred Reilly, an associate professor of political science at Kentucky State University who specializes in empirically testing political claims. “And this allows the radicals to be radicals eternally, and to claim that everything is racist.”
Once parents learn what CRT is, they often disagree.
One group that attracted media attention is the Parents Against Critical Theory (PACT) in Loudon County, Virginia.
Local parents began to organize in June 2020, asking for the reopening of schools that had been shuttered in response to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic. However, it was the remote learning the district put in place that allowed parents to learn more about what their children are being taught, which raised some red flags.
“We’re seeing what our kids are learning and our goal changes from opening schools to ‘Oh my gosh. What are we sending our children back to?’” one parent, who asked to remain anonymous because of concern about reprisals, told The Epoch Times.
“Basically, they’re categorizing children by race to determine the quality of education each will have, which is absolutely unacceptable,” she added.
She said her children won’t be returning to that school.
