School districts across the country have adopted Marxist critical race theory, but few have done so to the degree of Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) in the Washington, D.C, suburbs of northern Virginia. LCPS adopted curriculum from the far-Left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and removed Dr. Seuss books from its library shelves in the name of combatting racism. LCPS recently instituted a plan to combat “systemic racism” that includes training for teachers.
Lilit Vanetsyan, an educator and a reporter with Right Side Broadcasting Network, tore into LCPS for its endorsement of Marxist critical race theory, which teaches that hidden racism permeates American society and which encourages students to deconstruct the world around them to find hidden racism. This ideology fueled the violent Black Lives Matter and antifa riots last summer.
“Hi, I’m a teacher speaking on behalf of every fed-up teacher in this nation,” Vanetsyan said at a school board meeting. “This school district is [more radical than] almost every single school district in the nation that continues to force teachers through mandatory training where we are told to examine our whiteness, white privilege, white supremacy, micro aggressions, upon every other thing that is absolutely stupid and racist.”
“Now, this same school district wants to threaten to fire teachers who do not agree with the critical race theory,” Vanetsyan added. “You are the face of privilege. You do not speak for us if you do not work with us.”
“If you keep up this racist insanity, you will have successfully stripped us of every single ounce of love of teaching,” the educator declared. “Keep this up, and you will lose all of your teachers at the same rate that you have been losing these incredible families.”
Asian American Group Eviscerates Critical Race Theory: ‘A Hateful, Divisive, Manipulative Fraud’
While many schools support lessons on “whiteness” in the name of cultural sensitivity and tolerance, Marxist critical race theory arguably promotes racism and division.
“Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a hateful, divisive, manipulative fraud,” the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York (CACAGNY) declared in a statement. “One way or another, CRT wants to get rid of too many Asians in good schools. Asians are over-represented. CRT is today’s Chinese Exclusion Act. CRT is the real hate crime against Asians” (emphasis original).
Critical race theory teaches that any racial disparities must ipso facto be proof of some hidden racial bias or discrimination, regardless of civil rights laws explicitly forbidding such discrimination. Since Americans of Asian ancestry are overrepresented in colleges, universities, and certain high-income professions, CRT effectively teaches that American society is structurally biased in favor of Asians.
“CRT appears in our workplaces under the cover of implicit bias/sensitivity training. It infiltrates our schools pretending to be culturally/ethnically responsive pedagogy, with curricula such as the New York Times’ 1619 Project and Seattle’s ethnomathematics,” CACAGNY argued. “From its very roots, CRT is racist, repressive, discriminatory, and divisive.”
Even the Smithsonian published a horrifying Marxist lesson on “whiteness” that “deconstructed” various aspects of American and Western culture, including capitalism, science, the nuclear family, and Christianity, as nefarious relics of white supremacy. The lesson also claimed that a work ethic, delayed gratification, being polite, and getting to meetings on time are aspects of the “whiteness” culture that must be deconstructed and rejected.
The SPLC, from which LCPS adopted curriculum, routinely brands mainstream conservative and Christian nonprofits “hate groups,” placing them on a “hate map” with the Ku Klux Klan. In February, the SPLC revamped its “Teaching Tolerance” program aimed at kids’ education. The new program, “Learning for Justice,” aims to “reimagine and reclaim our education system so that it is inclusive and just,” and offers “an urgent call to action: We must learn, grow and wield power together.”
The SPLC’s Horrifying Plan for Your Children’s Schools
As of February 2018, the SPLC claimed to have over 100 campus chapters at colleges and universities, while the Teaching Tolerance program boasted that over 500,000 educators nationwide use its materials. Teaching Tolerance has pushed transgenderism for kids as young as preschool. It has encouraged teachers to teach kids about “microaggressions” in first grade.
The SPLC framework that LCPS adopted presents “key concepts” for K-5 students, including this one: “Slavery shaped the fundamental beliefs of Americans about race and whiteness, and white supremacy was both a product and legacy of slavery.”
Marxist critical race theory inspired much of the destruction of the Black Lives Matter and antifa riots over the summer. While protesters rightly expressed outrage at the treatment of George Floyd, many of the protests devolved into looting, vandalism, and arson in which lawless thugs — acting in the name of fighting racism — destroyed black lives, black livelihoods, and black monuments.
Parents are right to condemn the influence of the SPLC and Marxist critical theory in Loudoun County Public Schools, and Vanetsyan’s remarks are extremely important. Her speech should encourage more teachers to speak out against this radical and divisive ideology.
Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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