More parents are speaking up about toxic Critical Race Theory in schools By Andrea Widburg
Just two weeks ago, Bari Weiss published two open letters, one from a teacher at a fancy New York private school and one from a parent whose daughter attended a different fancy New York private school. Both letters castigated the schools over their deep dives into Critical Race Theory (CRT), which was overtaking education entirely in those institutions. Since then, events are snowballing in a way that might lead to CRT’s overthrow. It turns out that lots of parents in New York find offensive the anti-white racism of the misnamed “anti-racism” programs in New York City schools, and they’re beginning to act.
On April 13, Bari Weiss published a statement from Paul Rossi, a teacher at Grace Church High School in Manhattan. He explained how CRT had become the central pillar of the school’s educational philosophy and was damaging the students. Three days later, Weiss published a similar letter that Andrew Gutmann, whose daughter attended Brearley School, another expensive private school, had written to other parents.
In subsequent days, we learned that Rossi lost his job and that the head of the school had admitted that he was harming his white students by calling them racists — only to deny that charge later. Thankfully, Rossi had him on tape. We also got to see the head of Brearley completely ignore the substantive charges against her school and, instead, claim that Gutmann was victimizing students by insisting that CRT is a problem.
It turns out that Rossi and Gutmann aren’t the only ones upset by the prevailing leftist wisdom in their communities. The New York Post reports that other parents are beginning to speak up and speak out:
Until last summer, Harvey Goldman had no idea that his 9-year-old daughter was learning about George Floyd’s death and Black Lives Matter as well as her own “white privilege” at the $43,000-per-year Heschel School in Manhattan.
Now he’s part of an underground network of parents in NYC and around the country, many of whom are left-leaning, fighting what they believe is the undue focus on race by schools as part of the new “woke” culture.
Many are reluctant to identify themselves publicly for fear of being labeled racist. But more are coming forward after Andrew Gutmann, the father of a 12-year-old girl at Manhattan’s posh Brearley School, wrote a scathing screed to administrators about their “anti-racism” obsession and went public in The Post last week.
Goldman reached out to the school but, he said, administrators were “arrogant and dismissive.” He then wrote the school a letter stating his position. The school told him in no uncertain terms that neither he nor his daughter was welcome there. The Post had other tales of parents pushing back:
Many parents, like Goldman, and Bion Bartning, whose kids were enrolled in the $54,000-a-year Riverdale Country School, only got wind of the situation after Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin killed Floyd in police custody last May or when they overheard evidence of it during their kids’ Zoom classes.
Bartning was so upset by what he said was the divisiveness and harm done to children as a result of Riverdale’s new “orthodoxy” about race that he pulled his kids out of the school.
Last month he formed the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR) to combat CRT in schools and promote a “pro-human” agenda. More than 20,000 people have already joined, Bartning told the Post.
Bartning is an especially good messenger for this new movement, because he’s Mexican, Yaqui, and Jewish. He is the wonders and vigor of the American melting pot. But wait! There’s more.
According to the Post, even public-school parents are starting to complain and get actively engaged in the situation, either setting up their own FAIR chapters or getting into local politics.
The problem with conservatives is that they are…conservative. That is, conservatism infuses not just their politics, but their approach to life. They have families to raise, jobs to do, bills to pay, and laws that they’re not inclined to break, so they’re…not complacent, but passive. They also don’t like to make waves in social or business settings. However, if conservatives can be brought to understand what is being done to them and, especially, to their children, they will fight back. And they’re certainly going to gain courage as they see other parents speaking up.
I cannot encourage American Thinker readers enough to go beyond reading this wonderful site and, in addition, to start acting. We’re not leftists, so our actions will be polite and legal. However, we can boycott woke companies (Coke, Kellogg’s, etc.), intelligently challenge foolish ideas, get involved in local politics, and generally just cease to be passive. These New York parents are proving to be a model for how it’s done.
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