Wokeness isn’t leaving education anytime soon. With pernicious so-called anti-racism becoming increasingly prevalent, students and parents need to learn how to fight back.
Weeks after George Floyd’s death, my school, Cornell University, released a list of “Anti-Racism Resources.” University president Martha Pollack even invited all students, faculty, and staff to read racial con man Ibram X. Kendi’s book How to Be an Antiracist.
Last July, Pollack also charged the Faculty Senate with the task of creating an anti-racism center and educational requirements for students and faculty. Some faculty senators rejected calls for mandatory faculty training, introducing a competing resolution. Though that measure passed, the Faculty Senate overwhelmingly voted to create an academic requirement for students.
It goes without saying that the Faculty Senate easily passed a resolution to create the “Center for Racial Justice and Equitable Futures.”
But the push to pay off and otherwise feed the woke anti-racist gods does not stop at the university gates. Last summer, a group of my high school’s alumni sent an open letter to the superintendent of the Three Village Central School District, demanding that she take active anti-racist measures. The district relented, creating the “Anti-racism and Social Justice Task Force,” which seeks to provide opportunities to “learn about power and privilege.” The district has also assembled resources, including books such as White Fragility and Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out.
Caught in the tidal wave of toxic wokeness, many parents and students might feel overwhelmed. They fear being doxxed and labeled “racists.” They do not understand the terms thrown at them by the Left, such as “equity,” “anti-racism,” and “privilege.” They most likely feel isolated, something the recent pandemic surely made worse.
Parents need to fight, but they must also be equipped. The conservative Manhattan Institute recently released a guide for parents called “Woke Schooling: A Toolkit for Concerned Parents.” It introduces parents to “critical pedagogy,” or “the host of concepts, terms, practices, and theories that have lately taken hold in many public and private schools.”
Importantly, the report gives parents an explanation of the “complicated, often confusing, language” that activists use to promote their extremist ideology in schools. To an unsuspecting outsider, “anti-racism” might sound like a good thing — after all, all reasonable people oppose racism. But the report clarifies that, in education, “anti-racism” means “the mandatory embrace of critical race theory, culturally responsive teaching, and restorative justice practices” — all things that reasonable people must reject.
The toolkit also emphasizes the importance of organizing parents against critical race theory initiatives. Parents can’t fight CRT alone.
As a concerned alumnus, I scheduled a call with my school superintendent during the open-letter push to discuss an alternative to anti-racist education.
During the brief phone call, I tried to make the best case possible for a civil rights-centered alternative. I recalled reading and discussing Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail in my 11th-grade English class. As an alternative to the virtue signaling of critical race theory, I proposed community service opportunities.
My superintendent thanked me for my suggestions at the end of the call. But, despite my effort, my voice was drowned out by the chorus of signatories crying out for “equity.”
Organizing is important. The recent school board victories by anti-CRT candidates in Southlake, Texas, and the mobilization of Loudon County citizens show that parents and students working in groups are far more effective than scattered, disparate voices.
Parents ought to attend school board meetings and voice their opposition to critical race theory. The Virginia mother who survived Mao’s Cultural Revolution, for example, delivered powerful testimony. Parents can seek help from organizations such as the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism and Parents Defending Education, among others, to mount successful campaigns against mandatory woke education.
Wokeness isn’t going to disappear from our schools and universities so long as the activist mob remains the loudest and largest voice. To defeat them, parents must organize, campaign, and make their voices heard for the sake of our children and country.
