By Sergey Novikov @ Shutterstock.com
Is your baby racist? It sounds crazy, and it is, but if you have doubts, there’s a book you can use to teach your baby about critical race theory.
Antiracist Baby is a real book, and it’s the Left’s preferred first step on the lifelong critical race theory indoctrination they have planned for your child.
Once your child gets to school, you can hand over the responsibility for teaching your child about their bigotry to trained educators who will make sure your angels know exactly how racist they are.
In the National Review, Caroline Downey explains how critical race theory is remaking the school district of Guilford, Connecticut, writing:
In private and public schools alike, teachers and administrators are evaluating and reforming their curricula along the racist vs. anti-racist binary advanced most prominently by Ibram X. Kendi.
In cities and small towns, Kendi’s central thesis — that “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination” — is taking root.
The suburban town of Guilford, Ct. is one such place.
Guilford’s Progressive Parents Organize
As America’s so-called racial reckoning was unfolding in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, progressive parents and teachers in Guilford began organizing.
They formed the Guilford Anti-Bias Anti-Racist (ABAR) Alliance earlier this year. The group is composed of members representing each of the parent-teacher organizations in Guilford, and boasts a sleek, well-curated website that provides resources on bias and racism for educators to deploy in the classroom.
“We realize that as a predominantly white, cis-gendered community we are shaped by our privilege and limited ability to fully understand the impact of bias and racism,” the group’s mission page states.
ABAR advocates a hyper-focus on race in early childhood education on the grounds that impressionable minds will develop racist attitudes almost immediately if not otherwise instructed.
Are you sending your kids to school so they can “hyper-focus on race?” You probably thought they were learning math or English.
There are some parents, in the mode of Andrew Guttman, who are fighting back. Downey continues:
While activists in the Guilford community are moving strategically to racialize the district, other concerned parents, teachers, and citizens have joined the resistance, and it’s gaining momentum.
Dave Holman, a Guilford resident, first sounded the alarm on CRT when he stumbled upon a disturbing sight while walking in his quiet neighborhood. Last August, Holman noticed a bunch of young kids, who he estimated were under ten years old, sketching radical slogans such as “Defund the Police” and “Abolish Ice” in chalk on the sidewalk. Holman was stunned to see such young kids embracing politically charged talking points, and suspected they were getting their ideas about fraught racial subjects from their teachers.
Holman hurried to his computer and wrote emails to officials in the Guilford school district.
In an email exchange from August 2020 obtained by National Review, Superintendent Freeman responds to Holman’s inquiry asking him to confirm whether CRT and the New York Times’ 1619 Project will be incorporated into Guilford curricula.
Freeman answers, “While we do not directly reference either the 1619 Project or Critical Race Theory in our curriculum, they are both valuable approaches to historical instruction.”
“In a system where most of our teaching staff and leaders are white themselves, these are important texts,” Freeman added in reference to the books Waking Up White, White Fragility, How to Be an Antiracist, and White Kids.
“We need not whitewash our history in order to help our children to grow to be thoughtful and skillful and proud of themselves as well as compassionate and fair and inclusive of others,” he wrote.
But Holman and his allies believe Freeman is advancing a false dichotomy by presenting just two options: teaching history according to anti-racism advocates or whitewashing it altogether. Rather than explore multiple historical angles and discuss various interpretations, the Guilford initiative will result in looking at matters through one narrow lens, they say. When history is seen through that lens, race is central to every aspect of it, often with whiteness playing the central villain, they contend.
Holman is part of a local group in Guilford called Truth in Education (TIE), which has multiplied in membership from six to over 50 people in the last year. He’s also leading a charge to convince the Guilford BOE to sponsor a public debate on critical race theory, a request they’ve so far allegedly ignored. When asked for comment, Freeman said, “We do not teach Critical Race Theory in the Guilford Public Schools. In fact, I am unaware of any K–12 schools in which it is taught.”
While Holman has had success rallying parents against the newly racialized curricula, he’s met resistance from the local paper, the Hartford Courant.
The Courant sent a reporter to cover TIE’s informational meeting on critical race theory on June 24 and subsequently published an editorial accusing the group of using “racist dog whistles” and “echoing the KKK.”
In a letter to the editor obtained by National Review, TIE member Danielle Scarpellino responded by demanding that the Courant retract the op-ed, and she defended the position of many Guilford parents who believe that racializing the school’s curriculum will harm children.
“It is CRT’s racist beliefs, alongside its denunciation of science and rationality in public policy formation, our Constitution, our genuine history, our belief in equality among citizens, Enlightenment values, Western culture, masculinity, and the civil rights tenets of Martin Luther King, that drives the objections of citizens. Assemblages of bipartisan and multiracial citizens across our country object to CRT, not due to their philosophical affiliation with the KKK, but due to CRT’s irrational and racist beliefs,” Scarpellino writes.
In an email obtained by National Review, Scarpellino said she attended a meeting with Superintendent Freeman, during which he made the comment, “For the last three years, it has been my goal to elevate Guilford on its whiteness.” Freeman didn’t deny he made the statement but pointed out that nothing like it appears in the district’s official communications.
After she scheduled a mutually agreed-upon follow-up meeting to ask more questions about the scorecard and other equity and inclusion initiatives coming down the Guilford school pipeline, Scarpellino said Freeman suddenly canceled, with no opportunity to reschedule. Freeman neither confirmed nor denied the meeting’s cancellation.
Scarpellino said that since Freeman has stopped engaging with her, she has resorted to FOIA requests, incurring fees in the hundreds of dollars, to gather more information about what’s happening in Guilford schools. Last year, she spearheaded two separate petitions calling for Freeman’s firing and an end to teaching “social justice indoctrination,” collecting over 300 signatures.
Action Line: Take a leading role in educating your children about America and their place in it, or someone else will. Click here to sign up for my monthly RAGE Gauge alert if you’re serious about staying on the pulse of American sentiment. But only if you’re serious.
E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy
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