A little over three weeks ago, a test of American resolve was quietly, subtly, tossed like a muffled grenade into a school system in California.  Hayward Unified School District voted to approve what they are calling an “Ethnic Studies Policy.”  What it really means is, that without an all out war against it, mandatory Critical Race Theory (CRT) will be coming to a school near you. In the school district’s own language: 

“This discipline contends with racism, white supremacy culture, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, and nation-within-nation relationships. By centering the stories, experiences, and perspectives of the groups mentioned, Ethnic Studies uses community content and pedagogy to educate students to be socially, politically, environmentally, and economically conscious of their personal connections to local and transnational histories. The policy and efforts to develop an Ethnic Studies framework are informed by and will include Critical Race Theory and the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum.”  

I’ll be honest, I had to look up where the hell Hayward, California was, and I lived in Los Angeles for about a decade.  I guess I didn’t get up to the Oakland area much.  And even if I did, I wouldn’t have known about it’s school district.  But it’s essentially a little patch of grass between Oakland and Fremont.  But the ramifications for this change in policy is potentially devastating for our country.  As a late 80s LA Times headline once stated, As California Goes, So Goes the Nation.  Make no doubt about it, this is a test case for the rest of us.

Even as it is framed as ‘culturally responsive education” it is VERY clear by now that not only does the nation’s largest teacher’s union  support the implementation of Critical Race Theory in our country, so does our president, or at least the puppet’s master does: 

‘He believes, as I believe, as a parent of children, that kids should learn about our history’ — White House press secretary Jen Psaki answers a question about Biden’s stance on critical race theory pic.twitter.com/emOUDjzaTB

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) July 10, 2021

I told my husband he was crazy when he first explained how CRT (aka Critical Race Theory) was infiltrating school systems.  OK – I actually need to back up a second on that.  Like almost every normal American in the country, I had never heard the term Critical Race Theory, much less what it meant.  And my walking Encyclopedia Brown of a husband put forth the idea that CRT was a movement based on Marxism that was focused on dividing Americans into groups of oppressors and victims, as Marxism aimed to divide people into groups of the exploiters and exploited.  THAT’s when I told him he was crazy.

That was roughly three years ago.  I am an avid consumer of all things political.  As an oddball kid, I was fascinated with the process from the time I was six-years old.  I’m sure my bus-driver back then was either bored or amused at my daily diatribes about Carter and Nixon as I sat behind her assailing her with my opinions.  Now I write for Victory Girls as a new way to assail the public with my opinions.  So how I might have missed something as significant as the assault on our education, on our young, with the indoctrination of something as divisive and anti-American as Critical Race Theory… I was skeptical.  I told him that it must be a fringe movement that played no serious role in our schools and certainly would not be taken seriously.  

And then I started to see it everywhere.  You know that thing that happens when you buy a new car that you’ve never owned before? Suddenly you see it at every turn.  You realize there are 3 of them in a row as you park at the store.  It was like that.  Curious and confounded, I started to look up articles on Critical Race Theory.  I started telling my friends about the term, but like me initially, they were dismissive.  Some outright told me I was buying into the hyperbolic nature of all the right-wing news outlets I was delving into, in the Age of Trump.  It was nothing they were interested in hearing about.  It didn’t concern them.

And then Chris Wallace asked a question during the second debate between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden that absolutely INFURIATED me.  Wallace asked the following question:

“This month, you directed Federal agencies to end racial sensitivity training that addresses white privilege or Critical Race Theory.  Why did you decide to do that?

Here, in the midst of a national debate about the future president of our country, Chris Wallace throws out a question 98% of the listening audience has ZERO understanding of.  Hell, even the proponents of CRT claim it is too difficult to explain to the uneducated. And Wallace forms the question deliberately in a way that will make low information voters think that Trump has ended a policy that merely helps us all get along.  What an utter trap.  In no way was this not a deliberate set up.

Critical Race Theory is anything BUT a mere exercise in helping American’s understand our difficult past.  It is not just about understanding slavery from the black perspective or about the perspective of other minority groups as it pertains to how history treated them.  If that was all this was about, there would be virtually no ruckus at all. But from the framework of CRT is much much more than that, from a college syllabus:

“CRT identifies that these power structures are based on white privilege and white supremacy, which perpetuates the marginalization of people of color.”

An even richer description from a Tennessee newspaper article sums it up neatly:

“Condensed to basics, author Ibram Kendi and other CRT proponents propose past oppression must be avenged by present oppression against the descendants of past oppressors. CRT teaches that even in the absence of present oppression, descendants of past oppression victims remain permanent victims. Additionally, CRT tenants hold that those whose ancestors were past oppressors must become and remain permanently oppressed.”

This highly theoretical tripe, which evolved from Marxist thought, was at first merely a thought exercise by overly affected legal scholars.  And yes, initially, it was just an analytical critique within the bounds University-Level debate.  I hate the concept, but I firmly believe that college is the place for odd theories to be examined.  Taught in a neutral way, for analysis and critical thinking exercise, I’m not going to challenge it.  But children at the K-12 level are completely ill equipped to understand the nuance (if there is any in CRT).  

Let’s face it, we can’t complain that our children are getting some of the poorest education in our history AND state they are fully prepared to understand something as complex as CRT.  Half our kids can’t read.  More than half can’t do math.  But let’s let them sort out a vast conspiracy of the WHITE MAN as oppressor and the marginalized BIPOC intersectionality of women and homosexuals.  Yeah, they got this!

I will never forget coming into school my first day back after Christmas break in the 5th grade.  A very beloved teacher had moved with her husband and we had a new one sitting at the front of the room.  Her very first words to the class: “I’m Ms. Berry.  I’m black and you’re just gonna have to deal with it.”  Like WTF??  What sane person in the world thinks this is an acceptable introduction to children?

But this is the very same type of lesson plan our largest teacher’s union, this county in California, and clearly our White House would prefer.  “Hey there white kids, you are white and your ancestors were white and you are to blame for everything bad that happened to everyone else, EVER.  DEAL WITH IT!  And oh, guess what… there is nothing ever ever ever that you can ever do to fix it, deny it, or atone for it.”

And according to mainstream media, even in the face of this mandatory policy now instilled in California, there are many within the mainstream media who are quite adamant that this ISN’T being taught in our grade schools:

https://twitter.com/JoyAnnReid/status/1406073254452858884?s=20

As I started to evangelize on this message, I realized that I would actually have to read the damn books if I wanted to have any credibility.  I couldn’t just read the snippets and sound-bites.  Just in the forward section of Critical Race Theory, an Introduction, was the most mind-blowing understanding of how racist this construct was:

“None of my professors talked about race or ethnicity; it was apparently irrelevant to the law. None of my professors in the first year talked about feminism or the concerns of women, either. These concerns were also, apparently, irrelevant. Nowhere, in fact, did the cases and materials we read address concerns of group inequality, sexual difference, or cultural identity. There was only one Law, a law that in its universal majesty applied to everyone without regard to race, color, gender, or creed.”

All I could think was “isn’t that what the Law SHOULD do???”

But no, CRT proponents seriously believe we need to parcel everyone out into little sub groups and attach a oppressor/victim status to each of them.  Which child is going to be better off for this kind of thinking?  It’s child abuse on either side!  The purpose of CRT learning is to inflict equity.  It is NOT about equality of opportunity.  This video is a perfect example of how CRT will be used to teach school-age children:

So we must fight with a burning passion against this mindset, this infiltration within our schools.  We’ve lost the war in one small county in California, but it’s headed to a county nearby without a doubt.  And this matters whether you have children or not.  These students will be our future leaders.  They will affect/infect our politics for generations if we do not stop this. And school boards may or may NOT be the answer.  I have learned this the hard way. 

You must find out what system within your state affects curricula.  In my outrage, I have decided to run for a school board position within my relatively conservative county.  I wanted to be pro-active.  I have started meeting with  all the right people.  They asked why my interest in running now.  I told them about my anti-CRT passion and they kindly informed me that in Texas, the school board has nothing to do with what is or isn’t taught in schools.  There is a whole other entity for that, The Texas Board of Education.  

So as we watch all the parents railing at the school boards, and in some counties, like Louden, VA, it seems appropriate, but do your research.  Make sure you know who the fight is really with.  But fight we must, or not only will we lose our children, we will lose our country.

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Featured image: “critical race theory” by kaezenovka licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, cropped and modified