I received an email yesterday from my daughter’s school system that her school will be undergoing an antiracist audit. As a result, both my daughter and I are asked to complete an antiracist survey.
The school system’s email is revealing.
A thread. 🧵 1/
The goal of the survey is “to better understand how racism affects teaching, learning, and parent engagement.”
It’s not “whether” racism affects those areas, but “how”. As you’ll see they’ve already determined that racism caused any and all disparities. 2/
A list of groups who helped shape the antiracism survey is provided. The list includes groups representing people of African, Asian, Latino, Jewish, Chinese, Black, Brown, and minority backgrounds. The message — these groups suffer racism, those omitted inflict it. 3/
White advocacy groups, if such even exist or are allowed in modern America, were not allowed input even though white students are already a minority in this school system. 4/
We’re told the schools must be audited because racial disparities in reading levels and discipline rates exist. Those same disparities exist in all schools, though. That universalism suggests racism isn’t to blame or the most antiracist schools would see different results. 5/
We’re also told that the antiracism audit must happen now because of “several recent racist incidents in our schools”.
When you follow the provided link, however, you find those “racist incidents in our schools” aren’t quite as presented. 6/
The first of the “racist incidents in our schools” was a black police officer yelling at a black child nowhere near a school. 7/
The second racist incident never even occurred. It’s speculation of what may happen to Asian students when remote learning ends due to Covid related anti-Asian sentiment. Students have returned to school and there have been no reports of anti-Asian incidents. 8/
The third racist incident involved spectators yelling “racist and sexist” remarks at a high school game. Neither the spectators nor the remarks were identified, but the matter was resolved by the schools coming together in “restorative circles” to “work through the harm”. 9/
In the final incident “white pride” was spray painted in a school. The perpetrator was caught on video, but the video was not released. It may be a hoax or it may be backlash against all races being encouraged to express pride while whites are vilified if they do. 10/
This school system recently saw a black student shoot another black student in school. If a black cop scolding a black child outside school is in-school racism then why isn’t a black student shooting? Do they want to memory-hole who did the school system’s only shooting? 11/
In another recent incident in this school system a large student attacked the 61 year old school security guard and head stomped him into unconsciousness. Unlike the spray paint incident, parents didn’t receive a school system email about this attempted murder. Wonder why? 12/
The school focuses on racism and not “other forms of hate” (like attempted murder) because, by their reasoning, disparities exist, disparities are due to racism, and racism must be eradicated to help the “marginalized groups” — who are actually the prioritized groups. 13/
MCPS hopes to teach racism “through a lens that accurately reflects the experience of all communities”. As noted earlier, one group, whites, were excluded from shaping the survey. MCPS actions show they don’t want to reflect “all communities” when teaching about racism. 14/
According to MCPS being antiracist means understanding how prioritizing the dominant culture leads to racism. But if every school system now prioritizes every race over whites isn’t that prioritization of non-whites the new dominant culture which is leading to a new racism? 15/
“Disrupting” is a common word throughout the MCPS. That word strongly suggests activism, not education. 16/
Even though the antiracist measures presume racism is the only explanation for outcome differences and whites are excluded from input, don’t worry, MCPS assures us this is definitely not Critical Race Theory. 17/
And in case you don’t believe that the MCPS antiracism measures aren’t CRT be double assured that “antiracism is not code for anti-white.” 18/
MCPS will conduct the antiracism survey, but not wait for the results. They’ll form a committee to implement the changes they somehow already know must be made. It’s almost as if the survey is an excuse to rationalize school changes administrators plan to make regardless. 19/
What if parents don’t want their kids to take part in this antiracism survey?
Simple, parents just have to opt their kids out by February 25th.
Parents weren’t notified of the survey until March 3rd. 20/
What if parents want to see the antiracism survey their kids will be forced to take?
Sorry, that won’t be happening. 21/
In summary, the MCPS views all outcome disparities as racism, treats them as more serious than attempted murder in the school system, and prioritizes input from nonwhite groups over whites who are viewed as the dominant culture which must be disrupted or eliminated. Antiracism.
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