School Superintendent: Critical Race Theory ‘Isn’t Optional Anymore’
School districts across the country have pushed Marxist critical race theory, either by requiring teachers to take “anti-racism” trainings or by embracing the discredited “1619 Project” or by championing the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Learning for Justice” lessons. Yet rarely have superintendents blatantly stated that there is no room for dissent from the idea that America is institutionally racist.
Yet in a Zoom equity committee meeting on January 28, 2021, Dan Grotting, superintendent of the school district in Beaverton, Ore., suggested that if teachers disagree with the anti-racism movement inspired by critical race theory, they should look for work elsewhere.
“I do want the message to get out there that this [anti-racism training] isn’t optional anymore,” Grotting said in the meeting, The Daily Wire reported. “We’ve waited for the willing, and if you’re not willing then maybe this isn’t the right place for you to work” (emphasis added).
Recommended: Watch: Teacher Rips Woke School District for ‘Racial Insanity’.
“Maybe we can free up your future, because if we’re going to become an anti-racist school district, it can’t just be a few people, it needs to be everybody, to include our staff, our students, our community, eventually everyone,” the superintendent said.
This statement may violate teachers’ First Amendment protections, but Grotting’s remarks illustrate just how noxious and widespread this movement has become. Some on the Left equate any disagreement with “anti-racism” with actual racism.
The “anti-racism” movement traces back to Ibram X. Kendi’s book How To Be An Antiracist. Echoing critical race theory, Kendi claims that racial disparities are ipso facto proof of hidden racial bias or discrimination (regardless of civil rights laws explicitly forbidding such discrimination), and that people must choose sides. Those who support the status quo are “racist” while those who advocate for leftist race-based overhauls are “anti-racist.”
These ideas trace back to critical race theory (CRT), a Marxist attempt to upend society by claiming that America is systemically racist……
Continue reading this article, published May 21, 2021 at PJ Media.
