Virginia Parents Have Had Enough of ‘Woke’ Lies at Their Schools By Asra Q. Nomani
Asra Q. Nomani is vice president of strategy and investigations at Parents Defending Education and a former Wall Street Journal reporter.
A diverse movement of concerned parents has arisen to oppose critical race theory.
Falls Church, Va. — Since Wednesday, October 6, Fairfax County Public Schools staffer Rob Kerr has been teaching a weekly two-hour course to teachers here at Marshall High School called, “AC-1608: How to Be an Antiracist Educator.”
If you happen to be white, look out — through the lens of this teaching, you’re racist. Consider this module in Kerr’s course: “Exploring and Understanding Whiteness,” which includes listening to a podcast by Bettina Love. She is the founder of the radical Abolitionist Teaching Network, whose core philosophy is that America’s schools, and especially its white teachers, are “spirit murdering” black children.
The Fairfax County “Antiracist Educator” syllabus, revealed here for the first time, borrows key concepts from the dour, divisive doctrine known as critical race theory, which holds that all white people are intrinsic oppressors of all minorities and especially black people. Lessons include “the Creation of Racist Systems,” “the building blocks of racism in the United States,” not to mention the ills of “whiteness.”
Education officials and politicians deny critical race theory is taught in K–12 schools, in a pattern of deception that parents are facing nationwide. We’ve heard of white lies, where folks fudge the truth. These are “woke” lies. But we’re now standing up with moral courage as unapologetic parents in a mama bear — and papa bear — movement. And we’re not just standing up against critical race theory. There’s a whole list of dubious woke education polices we’re fighting. These include: the elimination of merit exams for entry into once-elite schools; the elimination even of advanced math; the curating of pornography by some school libraries; and the cover-up of sexual assaults in schools.
Indeed, we’re seeing a “revenge of the parents.”
Yet Fairfax County Public Schools denies that it is teaching critical race theory. Spokeswoman Julie Moult says, “Critical race theory is a specific theory that has 5 tenets” that include: “The notion that racism is not an aberration,” “Interest convergence,” “The social construction of race,” “Story telling and counter story telling” and “A critique of liberalism.”
She continued: “While this is a course about race and racism is discussed, that alone does not make it emblematic of critical race theory. If you review the course outline you will notice these ideas are not present.”
But the facts don’t bear out her assertion. According to the syllabus, teachers must write their “Racial Biography” (so-called “story telling’) and accept that “systems of oppression” (which amounts to a “social construction of race”) create “gaps in opportunity, access and achievement” (an example of “interest convergence”) and they are, thus, obligated to “work towards disrupting and dismantling these systems” (a “notion that racism is not an aberration”). All of this amounts to a “critique of liberalism.”
We only know this course exists because a whistleblower shared the syllabus with me in my role as vice president of Parents Defending Education, a parents’ advocacy group we created earlier this year to call out indoctrination of America’s school kids.
Unfortunately, there is an effort to silence parents. In a debate in late September, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” The revelation of the Fairfax County course, however, exposes the enormous lie being told by woke educators, school-board officials, and activists: that critical race theory is not being taught in Virginia schools.
In early October McAuliffe flatly said critical race theory is “not taught in Virginia.” Campaigning for McAuliffe in late October, former president Barack Obama chided parents for our “fake outrage.” The lie expanded nationally when on Thursday, Miguel Cardona, Biden’s education secretary, was asked on The View if critical race theory is taught in America’s schools. “It is not,” he declared.
Across the country, certain progressive politicians, “equity warriors,” teachers’ unions, ideologues, and woke companies — often abetted by a gullible mainstream media — are trying to gaslight, silence, and intimidate parents by casting critical race theory as a phantom evil, fear of which has been conjured by “dark money.” As revelations such as Kerr’s show, however, the cat is clearly out of the bag. And the blowback is real: a full-blown rebellion by thousands of Virginia parents of all political stripes against woke school districts slipping this corrosive doctrine, and other dogmas of progressive education, into schools.
Look what’s happening in the Virginia governor’s race, where Republican Glenn Youngkin, running against McAuliffe, gained ground after he said, “Parents matter.” Suddenly, as education became the focus of the governor’s race, a contest that once looked like a McAuliffe landslide is too close to call. Even a Washington Post poll acknowledged that education is the deciding issue in the election. Even if Youngkin doesn’t win, education and parents are in the fore as a hot-button election issue that could very well help decide even the next presidential election.
Starting in spring 2020, our mama bears and papa bears emerged as accidental activists. And we will still be around Wednesday morning — and beyond.
We’ve touched a nerve — in fact, we stand atop the moral high ground — because of the hysteria of the other side’s response. On September 29, just a few miles west on Route 7 in Alexandria, Va., the National School Boards Association sent a now-notorious letter to President Joe Biden, equating parents protesting at school boards to “domestic terrorism.” It’s only the moral courage of parents that allowed us to get the school-board association to back down. That night, I put “Mama Bear ‘Domestic Terrorist’” in my Twitter handle, even though I knew the words might put me on a watchlist. Why? Because we have to be unapologetic.
The next day, we organized a coalition of 20 groups, representing more than 400,000 people, around the country to express opposition to the letter. On October 5 U.S. attorney general Merrick Garland responded to the school-board association’s SOS with a memo, marshalling the FBI against parents who had been protesting at school-board meetings in Virginia and elsewhere. Garland’s memo has been criticized roundly as an appalling, undemocratic overreaction. What makes it even worse is something we at Parents Defending Education exposed from a tip a northern-Virginia mama bear gave us: Garland’s son-in-law cofounded an educational-technology company, Panorama Education Inc., that profits off the data mining of America’s kids. Its research — you guessed it — is often used by woke school districts to push doctrines like critical race theory — and the stuff of the syllabus at Marshall High School.
The National School Boards Association backed down on October 22 and apologized to its members for its letter. But that wasn’t the half of it. It turns out the Association didn’t even have the backing of at least 23 of its own members, didn’t disclose its intentions to its board, and had been colluding with the White House to put pressure on Garland to send out his odious memo. We discovered emails in which the school-board leader said the Association had been talking with White House officials for “several weeks” before sending up their flare. Garland has since said he doesn’t believe protesting parents amount to “domestic terrorists.” But he hasn’t recalled the memo.
Meanwhile, despite all that, the Washington Post published an op-ed recently, asserting that, “Parents claim they have the right to shape their kids’ school curriculum. They don’t.” But we do have a right. It’s a sacred right given to us when we got the divine gift of a child in our lives.
But that’s not the only myth our opponents have tried to spread. One of the more staggering examples propagated by the mainstream media is that the anti–critical race theory movement is “right-wing,” “dark money” Astroturfing meant to manufacture a false illusion of widespread, “grassroots” public opinion.
In fact the opposite is true. The movement against critical race theory is made up of parents and advocates across the racial and political spectrum of America. Opposition has emerged in school districts in the liberal suburbs of suburban Washington, D.C., California, Connecticut, and New York State, as well in middle-of-the-road Midwestern and Southern cities.
My own story is instructive here. I’m a Muslim immigrant single mother who came to the United States from India at the age of four, knowing not a word of English. Having grown up in West Virginia, I am a product of America’s public-school system. I was proud that my state was on the correct side of history on the issue of slavery. I am a liberal progressive Democrat and only moved to Virginia in 2008 to raise my son because the state voted for President Obama.
And I oppose the illiberal ideas of critical race theory. At its heart, critical race theory is a doctrine of shaming. It bears the hallmarks of judgmental fundamentalist religion but without forgiveness. It impugns the character and morality of people based on race and the color of their skin. No one should be allowed to indoctrinate our kids or teachers with this odious doctrine. America is not perfect. But even within its imperfections, it has made room since its founding for countless millions of people of all races, political persuasions, religions, and genders to flourish in the spirit of comity, enterprise, prosperity, and freedom. Critical race theory makes no allowances for any of the virtues of the American experience. It is anti-American propaganda with a racist core.
All of these folks trying to gaslight and silence us seem to have forgotten a metaphorical truth about mothers. We have eyes in the back of our heads. We can clearly see through the “woke” lies to the racism and critical race theory in the syllabus of a course like, “How to Be an Antiracist Educator.” We must return to something very simple: the Golden Rule, where we respect others as we wish to be respected.
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