Expensive St. Louis School Teaching Students and Staff to 'Witness Whiteness'

Once upon a time, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial and said that he looked forward to the day when people would be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin. When he said that, we were a long way from that ideal. Now, almost 55 years later, we’re probably even further away from it than we were then.

That’s largely because of the number of people trying to push racial identity as being something people should be constantly aware of. One of the latest examples is an expensive private school in St. Louis for kids from kindergarten through eighth grade. From The College Fix:

Thanks to the “Witnessing Whiteness” program, the $17,500 per year College School actually starts the racial consciousness in pre-kindergarten, with teachers pointing out to students, for example, how “few specific shades [of crayons], ranging from beige to brown” can be used as “the skin colors of figures in their drawings.”

According to The St. Louis American, the program is part of the “school’s approach to addressing race at every educational level.” For teachers and staff, they get to participate in discussions designed to get them to “rethink” how they view race.

The approach is based on the book by Shelly Tochluk described on Amazon.com as “invit[ing] readers to consider what it means to be white, describes and critiques strategies used to avoid race issues, and identifies the detrimental effect of avoiding race on cross-race collaborations.”

Here’s the problem that I don’t think anyone in favor of this is thinking about. If we continue to teach kids about “whiteness” and make it an issue, some of them are going to take that teaching in a completely different direction than intended. If you want someone to consider what it means to be white, that consideration may yield an individual who embraces white-identity ideology or similar white-supremacist nonsense.

You cannot tell people to consider their skin color at all times, then act surprised that people are doing just that. You can’t control what that consideration yields, after all. People have minds of their own, and unless you have complete control over the indoctrination process–something impossible in this day and age–those minds will reach their own conclusions.

Of course, the fact that people are paying $17,500 for this kind of racist indoctrination–and even if it’s not teaching white supremacy, it’s still racist, let me assure you–for their kids is even more mind-boggling. However, if that’s what parents want to waste their money on, so be it. The market provides what people will pay for.