Mason Beasler
AFA Journal staff writer
December 2021 – Late August normally brings a back-to-school flurry of parents buying backpacks, pencil sharpeners, and new sneakers for their young scholars.
Last fall, however, parents were stunned by a subtle ambush of curriculum issues as schools reopened their doors. Across the nation, moms and dads rose up in protest, not over crazy schedules, but over critical race theory (CRT).
Promotion of the ‘theory’
This CRT “theory” posits that racism is systemic, baked into the nation’s legacy and its institutions. If you are white, you are an oppressor by definition. If you are not white, you are a victim by definition. It’s ethereal, always present, floating around the country and permeating every facet of American life.
On the other hand, if you are a minority and you’re happy, you shouldn’t be because you are being oppressed, and you don’t even know it!
Take it from the “experts,” the CRT social engineers. For example, Robin Wildman, a CRT activist who has worked closely with public schools in Rhode Island, opined:
I believe in working for justice and not equal rights. The difference is, in reality, while you may be offered the same opportunities, you can easily be denied access due to your race because the vast majority of those [who] control all of the systems in our country are white, due to racism. Justice means breaking down the oppressive systems that prevent BIPOC [black, indigenous, and people of color] from accessing opportunities in your community that white people have.
CRT messaging has targeted children, teachers, and parents alike. For example, in Cupertino, California, third-graders at an elementary school were forced to “deconstruct their racial identities” and “rank themselves according to their privilege.”
“We were shocked,” said one Asian American parent. “They were basically teaching racism to my 8-year-old.”
Propaganda for whites
Cherokee Middle School in Springfield, Missouri, required teachers to locate themselves on an “oppression matrix.” During diversity training programs, teachers were given documents that define white heterosexual males as “privileged,” while women, minorities, transgenders, and LGBTQ people are “oppressed social groups.”
When one teacher asked, the matrix trainer acknowledged its Marxist roots.
For many parents, the CRT progressives spurned parental concerns until parents took to school board meetings, social media, and news media to get their message out concerning what exactly schools are teaching their children.
In New York City, a public school on the East Side asked white parents to reflect on their “whiteness.” Literature sent home to parents praised “white traitors” and offered a helpful graphic, “The 8 White Identities,” for any white parents who weren’t sure just how racist they are.
Not a racist? Not an option! You are.
The colorful picture showed a meter, with eight sectors spanning left to right from “White Supremacist” to “White Abolitionist.” As with all good propaganda, a legend was included so these terms could be understood. For a parent to qualify for the “White Abolitionist” club, one would have to be “dismantling whiteness and not allowing whiteness to reassert itself.”
In essence, this bizarre theory claims that “whiteness” is inherently evil and must be stamped out. Many public schools have adopted this line of thinking, but parents have taken exception to their children being labeled either perpetual racists or eternal victims.
‘Plantation’ for blacks?
“As a black person,” said one father (unnamed in a video school board meeting), “I look at CRT, and I see [it] as something that wants to victimize us again, that wants to make us look like we’re oppressed, that we can’t do anything, that we can’t help ourselves. I want to tell you right now, I’m not getting back on the plantation of dependence. … This is just another attempt to keep us divided.”
On August 12, Derrick Wilburn, a black man, stood at a school board meeting in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and gave testimony that mercilessly obliterated CRT rationale.
He explained that he is a direct descendant of slaves on both sides of his family tree. He then declared: “I am not oppressed, and I’m not a victim. … I have three children, and they are not oppressed either.”
Wilburn concluded: “Putting critical race theory into our classrooms is taking our nation in the wrong direction. Racism in America would, by and large, be dead today if it were not for certain people and institutions keeping it on life support. And sadly, one of those institutions is the American education system.”
“Critical race theory is pretty much going to be teaching kids how to hate each other,” Ty Smith, another black father, explained at a school board meeting in Bloomington, Illinois.
“How do I have two medical degrees [if] I’m sitting here oppressed?” Smith asked. “I worked for myself from off the streets to where I am right now. [You’re] going to sit there and tell me this lie of critical race theory? When it all comes down to is … the ones [who] are going to be hurt from this [are] the kids.”
In Loudoun County, Virginia, parents left no question where they stand on the issue. “My child is not oppressed,” declared one black mother during a school board meeting. “As long as you Marxists push your unconstitutional agenda on my child, she will not be returning to Loudoun County schools.”
Protection for offenders
The CRT agenda falls in line with typical leftist education methodology: Keep it a secret, especially from parents.
In Raleigh, North Carolina, for example, an organization called Equity Collaborative was scheduled to offer a course to public school teachers called “Intro to Critical Race Theory.”
The course description read, in part: “Deep inside the Equity Collaborative brain, we see schools through the lens of critical race theory. Join us to explore how CRT helps explain everything about why public schools continue to perpetuate inequities, possibly permanently. ...”
The North State Journal reported that, after the paper filed a records request to see the course materials, the course was quietly canceled by the school district.
For a personal horror story, look to the stunning case of Nicole Solas, a South Kingstown, Rhode Island, parent, who was sued by the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers’ union. Why? Solas wanted to know if her child would be taught CRT in kindergarten this year.
Kindergarten!
After a months-long, contentious dialogue with her local school board, Solas refused to back down. During her repeated requests for public records – yes, public records – she received one invoice for $75,000. At press time, AFAJ could not confirm if her battle had been resolved.
A Loudoun County, Virginia, mother summarized the basic wisdom and expectation of parents of students in public schools: “Our schools are not for ideology. Our schools are for education.” 
Editor’s note: This article is condensed and updated from an August 25 blog on afa.net/thestand.
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For more insight on CRT
▶ See “CRT: Determined to destroy” in the June issue of AFA Journal (p. 14) or at afajournal.org.
▶ Purchase A Biblical Response to Critical Race Theory, a two-disc DVD set from resources.afa.net or 877.927.4917.
▶ Progressives try to cancel parental input in schools
Public school leaders from D.C. down to local school boards have often displayed arrogance and disdain for parents. Energized by a Joe Biden administration, school officials appear determined to intimidate parents who demand to know what schools are teaching their children. The fallacious critical race theory is one primary bone of contention.
Links to articles illustrating this are listed below. Two of the articles illustrate the progressive bully pulpiteers – and one shines a bright ray of sunshine:
▶ National assault: Parents may be 'terrorists'
▶ Progressive state leader: Parents, butt out
▶ Saner minds: Parents own public schools
