Parents in Loudoun County, Virginia, aren’t the only ones watching nervously as schools become infected with the divisive ideas of critical race theory.
Fortunately, these parents aren’t taking it lying down. The rest of the nation should take note.
Last month, angry Loudoun parents launched a petition to recall several members of the school board whom they deem responsible for injecting CRT into the county’s school curriculum. As one mother in Loudoun County put it, “[Critical race theory] is racist, it is abusive, it discriminates against one’s color.”
She’s right.
CRT is an ideology based in Marxism that views every individual, every institution, and every policy through the lens of racism. The ideology demands that past inequities against one group be righted by present inequities against the other. It categorizes every individual into a bin of either being “oppressed” or being the “oppressor.”
Loudoun County has spent nearly half a million dollars on CRT training. While the school board is insisting it doesn’t teach CRT, the content of its training is in line with core tenets of the ideology. Since 2018, the consulting firm Equity Collaborative has received $422,500 from Loudoun County, according to reporting by the Washington Free Beacon. Among other things, “New teachers engage in mandatory training in ‘Equity and Culturally Responsive Instruction,'” as a part of Loudoun County’s “Comprehensive Equity Plan.” While there is certainly nothing wrong with the plan’s stated purpose to condemn “white supremacy … and other racially motivated acts of violence,” the plan’s focus on “equity” should raise eyebrows.
Equity, a core tenet of CRT, holds that every disparate outcome is evidence of discrimination. This necessitates the “dismantling” of the system that allows for disparate outcomes. Of course, disparate outcomes can occur for a number of reasons, reasons that may or may not include race-based discrimination. But to Loudoun County’s school board, unequal outcomes are reason enough to claim discrimination.
In all this craziness, it’s encouraging to see that parents are standing up. In one viral video, a black mother quoted Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech and said, “CRT is not an honest dialogue. It is a tactic used by Hitler and the Ku Klux Klan … to dumb down my ancestors so we could not think for ourselves.”
Another parent blasted the school district for its double standard in banning books by Dr. Seuss and works like Huckleberry Finn while assigning books that depicted graphic sexual violence. The parent said, “They have books that are supposed to be teaching equity, but what they are really teaching … [is] very sexually explicit stuff … stuff the kids shouldn’t be reading.”
As these policies are coming to light, proponents of CRT in the county are sinking to new lows to “silence the opposition,” to use their own words. A Facebook group of both current and former teachers in Loudoun County encouraged members to “gather information” on parents and teachers who expressed concern at CRT being taught in public schools. “Infiltrate … shut down their websites … expose these people publicly,” one post read. During an April 8 meeting, a teacher accused the coalition of parents of racism.
Just as the teaching of CRT is indicative of a larger national trend toward this ideology, parent reactions are representative of widespread backlash. Right now, more than half a dozen states have passed legislation banning CRT indoctrination in public schools. The fight we are seeing in Loudoun is just as important, if not more so.
Education should be oriented toward bettering the minds and hearts of the children in the classroom. Parents play a vital role in ensuring that goal. Although it is not yet clear which side will prevail, the fervor with which parents have fought CRT in Loudoun is both encouraging and a good example for others to follow.
Sarah H. Weaver is a graduate student studying Politics at Hillsdale College and a Young Voices Contributor. Read more of her work at her website: sarah-weaver.net, and follow her on Twitter @SarahHopeWeaver.
