Current Events > Books by Black Authors being pulled from school libraries over fear of CRT.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Funkydog posted...

Imagine replying to joe numbers and not being disgusted with yourself.

Literally impossible.

That's incredibly rude, what have I ever done to you?

So for people looking for clarity on what I'm talking about, I'd listen to this question and response at this timestamp:
https://youtu.be/R4pikerUu6o?t=911

Only idiot republicans are for banning books from libraries, but it either naively or willfully obtuse to act like there no "CRT-esque" problem in many schools.

A further example: certain colleges have started re-segregating dorm rooms and graduations. This is not progress. This, IMO, is antithetical to MLK's "will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character" dream.

They are teaching in some schools/colleges explicitly the opposite. And that is what I object to.

A person is not defined by their race, this was not a hot take even in far left circles 5 years ago, it was what any intelligent normal person understood was the healthy way to view individuals.

Anything trying to push us backwards is not "progressive" and is something I oppose.

And just to make it crystal clear to those of you who like to willfully misinterpret me, this does not mean I defend every action taken in the name of "anti-CRT", as demonstrated by my explicit opposition to the censorship discussed in this topic, I care about principles/truth, not political tribalism or reductive narratives.

joe40001 posted...

That's incredibly rude, what have I ever done to you?

Lied about CRT, lied about ivermectin, lied about lying about ivermectin.
Pick one

joe blocked me :(

Guess he's not interested in facts as much as he pretends

I found a cool description of CRT and an explanation for the fear. The site is Brookings.edu

"
Sociologists and other scholars have long noted that racism can exist without racists. However, many Americans are not able to separate their individual identity as an American from the social institutions that govern usthese people perceive themselves as the system. Consequently, they interpret calling social institutions racist as calling them racist personally. It speaks to how normative racial ideology is to American identity that some people just cannot separate the two. There are also people who may recognize Americas racist past but have bought into the false narrative that the U.S. is now an equitable democracy. They are simply unwilling to remove the blind spot obscuring the fact that America is still not great for everyone.
"

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Blocked me early on in the thread as well. Oh well, enjoy your next suspension joe.

CobraGT posted...

I found a cool description of CRT and an explanation for the fear. The site is Brookings.edu

"
Sociologists and other scholars have long noted that racism can exist without racists. However, many Americans are not able to separate their individual identity as an American from the social institutions that govern usthese people perceive themselves as the system. Consequently, they interpret calling social institutions racist as calling them racist personally. It speaks to how normative racial ideology is to American identity that some people just cannot separate the two. There are also people who may recognize Americas racist past but have bought into the false narrative that the U.S. is now an equitable democracy. They are simply unwilling to remove the blind spot obscuring the fact that America is still not great for everyone.
"

That statement isn't horribly far off, but it's blindspots say more about the actual problem than the statement itself.

The flawed nature of the statement you posted kinda captures the problems, rather than say things like America and it's systems contain racism, it says they ARE racist. As if America is defined by nothing but bigotry. We had slavery (as did many other places) but we also had a fight to end it. We had a civil rights movement with countless people of all races fighting for equality. America and American history is so much more than just a story of racism. It's a story with flaws, sure, nobody is arguing otherwise. But things like the factually inaccurate 1619 project would argue America IS racism and nothing more.

A similar slight of hand is done around whiteness, rather than say "some white people have wielded power through racism" they will say things like "all white people are complicit in oppression."

They do a similar thing with blacks and victimhood, and again it's reductive and antithetical to MLK's dream.

With so many people in this country suffering it's stupid to take a large group of them and say "yeah you're suffering isn't real, you are complicit in racism and should feel bad, also you have tremendous privilege."

And it's equally bad to take black people (particularly children) and say "you are not a peer of white kids, you should feel uncomfortable thinking of them as your peer, all whites are oppressor's to you and you will never have a fair shake in life. You are a victim and nobody including yourself can define you otherwise, furthermore because of this it is incumbent on society to have lower expectations for you."

Both these stances are part of the CRT-esque movement and are horrible and counter-productive.

It's performance art, you want to actually help racial divisions, send money/resources to poor neighborhoods, end the war on drugs, focus on effective teaching methods for reading,

Just about anything you do to help the poor will disproportionality help people of color, and if that's actually your goal you should do that.

There seem to be some people who go "ok, this policy to help the poor, will in help white poor people too? Yes? FUCK THAT. Let's spend 100k to get Ihbram X Kendi to give a speech at our teacher's union and call it a day."

I have no clue who "they" are but Brookings.edu do not say that. From what I read previous poster is the one saying it.

joe40001 posted...

There seem to be some people who go "ok, this policy to help the poor, will in help white poor people too? Yes? FUCK THAT. Let's spend 100k to get Ihbram X Kendi to give a speech at our teacher's union and call it a day."

There are more than a dozen states pushing anti-CRT laws full of the censorship you say you're against, but here you are inventing anecdotes to justify placing your focus on CRT instead.

Antifar posted...

There are more than a dozen states pushing anti-CRT laws full of the censorship you say you're against, but here you are inventing anecdotes to justify placing your focus on CRT instead.

It's not invented, it's figurative, it's to illustrate a point. To actually help the poor they'd have to invest more money, but if they can all read white fragility and admit to "complicitness in racism" they don't have to do any real work to help people with their opportunities.

Also "bad thing is bad" is not an argument that "other bad thing is not bad" nor is it an argument that "all negative responses to bad thing are good." So me saying these CRT-esque things are bad is not an argument that other things aren't bad, or that all the negative responses to CRT-esque things are good. I've made this point clear several times.

joe40001 posted...

and again it's reductive and antithetical to MLK's dream.

not gonna read the whole thing but don't you think you're reducing the entre black emancipatory project to one person's ideas? there are others who have contributed to the discourse and have ideas that are pretty different from MLK. people always say "that's not what MLK would have wanted!" like there is a singular authority on the subject, and such people saying that are almost always coming from the same fucking ideological position of "the civil rights era solved all of our problems!"

idk

MedeaLysistrata posted...

not gonna read the whole thing but don't you think you're reducing the entre black emancipatory project to one person's ideas? there are others who have contributed to the discourse and have ideas that are pretty different from MLK. people always say "that's not what MLK would have wanted!" like there is a singular authority on the subject, and such people saying that are almost always coming from the same fucking ideological position of "the civil rights era solved all of our problems!"

idk

He does not know another activist

The absurdly reductive tl;dr of CRT is simply, "Let's look at how this policy may have been racially motivated".

An example would be that nobody cared about opium, until it was perceived to be negatively affecting the productivity of Chinese rail workers. Suddenly, it's a "social crisis" and needed to be banned.

Questionmarktarius posted...

The absurdly reductive tl;dr of CRT is simply, "Let's look at how this policy may have been racially motivated".

An example would be that nobody cared about opium, until it was perceived to be negatively affecting the productivity of Chinese rail workers. Suddenly, it's a "social crisis" and needed to be banned.

I say make CRT mean something useful to you. Being as nobody agrees on what it is it is an opportunity to seize.

Conservatives are racist this proves it

My favorite part about Joe "Used to show up in every topic about someone being caught with CP to defend them" Numbers having me blocked, is that I get to see everyone else mocking how much he sucks without being subjected to the offensive things a life of being a walking joke puts into your brain.

AldousIsDead posted...

Blocked me early on in the thread as well. Oh well, enjoy your next suspension joe.

Ironically, he probably thinks that if he blocks enough people that it'll "immunize" him from being marked and therefore modded.

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That's not a valid response.

Are we really at a point where you can't understand a summary of a situation?

I know I have you tagged as "bad faith", but this is a pretty big low, even for you.

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You engage a lot with somebody you apparently don't care about the opinion of. Furthermore I've had plenty of discussion with other civil and reasonable people, even on CE, so you can't speak for anybody but yourself.

All of your arguments to me are, at best, "I reject your reality and substitute my own.", and that's only ever going to get you so far in a critical thinking discussion about actual reality.

One thing I will agree with you with, is that me trying to communicate to you seems pointless.

So go ahead and live in your narrative bubble and don't bother me. I welcome it.

And also just know that anytime you fall back into your habit of drive-by insults, you betray your claim that you don't put any weight to my opinion.

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joe40001 posted...

And also just know that anytime you fall back into your habit of drive-by insults, you betray your claim that you don't put any weight to my opinion.

I literally just said it and you still can't help yourself. You can't handle perspectives that differ from your own, I get it. But I'm going to be honest, these random insults at this point just make you look insecure/petty.

Be honest with yourself, if you see a child crying and saying "Tim is a dumb dumb doo doo head" do you really think "oh, the child crying and throwing insults is clearly the more intelligent person, and I can only assume that their assessment of this 'Tim' is spot on"?

No you don't. So for your own sake maybe keep that in mind before you just keep tripling-down on childish insults. It's not a good look.

joe40001 posted...

Also "bad thing is bad" is not an argument that "other bad thing is not bad" nor is it an argument that "all negative responses to bad thing are good." So me saying these CRT-esque things are bad is not an argument that other things aren't bad, or that all the negative responses to CRT-esque things are good. I've made this point clear several times.

To me, it comes off hollow to rail against something for paragraphs on end (despite being unable to show much if any concrete examples of it in actual practice), and then try at the end to distance yourself from the movement actively working to ban it, at a time when they are making progress in that effort.

The threats of the latter are, in my mind, far more significant than those of teachers overstepping in their efforts to be anti-racist, and it's telling of your priorities, imo, that you've placed your rhetorical focus on explaining why they have a point and we should concede to their lesser demands.

Intro2Logic posted...

To me, it comes off hollow to rail against something for paragraphs on end (despite being unable to show much if any concrete examples of it in actual practice),

It's time consuming to provide detailed sources, I can and have in the past, but I've found if the people aren't open to them in the first place the effort is almost entirely wasted.

and then try at the end to distance yourself from the movement actively working to ban it, at a time when they are making progress in that effort.

Censoring books is not in service of any movement I'm a part of. Just like I'm for police reform, but that doesn't mean I'd support anything done in "police reform's name" such as abolishing the entire police department or something.

Please stop trying to turn it into team sports, it's not. Like I said before, even if X is bad, that doesn't mean anybody who opposes X is somebody whose opinion I am accountable for. Plenty of people can point to the same problem without them being on some kind of team. Furthermore, I don't think most republican politicians actually care about this problem but instead care about how they can leverage it for their own ends. Banning perfectly fine race related books from libraries the conservative equivalent of virtue signaling and I explicitly do not endorse it.

I hate political tribalism because it turns real problems into false binaries. I'm not playing that game. I take issues with specific issues/policies, I don't play this team sport game.

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Remember when that Stonetoss topic stayed up for 2 days and the fuckhead that made it only got a warning?

The math here shouldn't be difficult.

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Dude, I once watched a mod (former now) go to bat for Nazis under the guise of defending free speech. Like literal actual swastika carrying nazis who advocate for genocide. Then, when I called it out I got fucking warned over it. It's why fursonanongrata doesn't post here anymore.

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Dude, fighting against segregation and racial division is the opposite of white nationalist. I'm pushing for equality and solutions that will actually help black lives, you are not.

I am dedicated to policies that help will help marginalized people. I don't consider myself a white supremacist and nothing you can say can convince me otherwise.

ScazarMeltex posted...

Dude, I once watched a mod (former now) go to bat for Nazis under the guise of defending free speech. Like literal actual swastika carrying nazis who advocate for genocide. Then, when I called it out I got fucking warned over it. It's why fursonanongrata doesn't post here anymore.

The ACLU has repeated fought for the right to speak of many such awful groups. The idea behind free speech as an ideal by definition has to apply to even those you disagree with or find to be offensive. If you don't support the right of everybody to speak you don't support free speech as an ideal.

I support free speech, this obviously doesn't mean I defend the perspective all those who would speak.

I truly don't understand the perspective of people who need to censor opinions they find challenging, particularly in cases like mine when those opinions are "racial division = bad", "racial essentialism = bad", "racial segregation = bad", "end the war on drugs = good", "education reform to help underperforming students do better = good".

If you really want to understand, I recommend you listen to this conversation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvikt3Ynsss

Joe supports so much free speech that he even supports people peddling disinformation and lies that are tangibly harming the world.

Joe I dont agree with those who have declared you an alt right white nationalist. Maybe you are, but I dont think the positions youve put forth necessitate that. At least in this topic.

That being said, I think its highly detrimental to your case to use figurative examples to explain why youre opposed to something that you purport to be happening in schools. It would be better for you to provide actual examples. So, what are some things occurring in schools (K-12) to which you are opposed?

AloneIBreak posted...

Joe I dont agree with those who have declared you an alt right white nationalist.

I don't either but he's definitely a liar.

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This is the point I've trying to politely word throughout this topic. The people doing stuff like banning books and altering curriculums couldn't have gotten to the positions to do so without people (many of whom might consider themselves moderates!) taking them at face value and hyping up their claims that CRT is a threat in need of dealing with. Glenn Youngkin didn't become governor on the backs of avowed racists.

AloneIBreak posted...

So, what are some things occurring in schools (K-12) to which you are opposed?

From the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/27/us/new-york-private-schools-racism.html

Several years back Grace Church School, an elite private school in Manhattan, embraced an antiracist mission and sought to have students and teachers wrestle with whiteness, racial privilege and bias.

Teachers and students were periodically separated into groups by race, gender and ethnicity. In February 2021, Paul Rossi, a math teacher, and what the school called his white-identifying group, met with a white consultant, who displayed a slide that named supposed characteristics of white supremacy. These included individualism, worship of the written word and objectivity.

Mr. Rossi said he felt a twist in his stomach. Objectivity? he told the consultant, according to a transcript. Human attributes are being reduced to racial traits.

As you look at this list, the consultant asked, are you having white feelings?

What, Mr. Rossi asked, makes a feeling white?

Some of the high school students then echoed his objections. Im so exhausted with being reduced to my race, a girl said. The first step of antiracism is to racialize every single dimension of my identity. Another girl added: Fighting indoctrination with indoctrination can be dangerous.

This modest revolt proved fateful. A school official reprimanded Mr. Rossi, accusing him of creating a neurological imbalance in students, according to a recording of the conversation. A few days later the head of school wrote a statement and directed teachers to read it aloud in classes.

When someone breaches our professional norms, the statement read in part, the response includes a warning in their permanent file that a further incident of unprofessional conduct could result in dismissal.

This is another dispatch from Americas cultural conflicts over schools, this time from a rarefied bubble. Elite private schools from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., from Boston to Columbus, Ohio, have embraced a mission to end racism by challenging white privilege. A sizable group of parents and teachers say the schools have taken it too far and enforced suffocating and destructive groupthink on students.

This is nowhere more true than in New York Citys tony forest of private schools.

Stirred by the surge of activism around racism, Black alumni have shared tales of isolation, insensitivity and racism during school days.

And many private school administrators have tried to reimagine their schools as antiracist institutions, which means, loosely, a school that is actively opposed to any manifestation of racism.

This conflict plays out amid the high peaks of American economic inequality. Tuition at many of New Yorks private schools hovers between $53,000 and $58,000, the most expensive tab in the nation. Many heads of school make between $580,000 to more than $1.1 million.

At a time when some public schools are battling over whether to even teach aspects of American history, private school administrators portray uprooting racial bias as morally urgent and demanding of reiteration. Some steps are practical: They have added Black, Latino and Asian authors, and expanded course offerings to better encompass America and the world in its complications.

Other steps are much more personal. The interim head of the Dalton School, Ellen Stein, who is white, spoke five years ago of writing a racial biography of herself to better understand biases and to communicate with other races. The Brearley School declared itself an antiracist school with mandatory antiracism training for parents, faculty and trustees and affirmed the importance of meeting regularly in groups that bring together people who share a common race or gender.

Kindergarten students at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx are taught to identify their skin color by mixing paint colors. The lower school chief in an email last year instructed parents to avoid talk of colorblindness and acknowledge racial differences.

Private school leaders, along with diversity consultants, say these approaches reflect current research about confronting racism and stamping out privilege.

Theres always the same resistance Oh my God, youre going too far, said Martha Haakmat, a Black diversity consultant who serves on the board of Brearley. We just want to teach kids about the systems that create inequity in society and empower them rather than reinforcing systems of oppression.

Studies show that very young children, she said, are aware of skin color. Better to address it Yes, that woman has Black skin. What do you think of that? than to let children view white skin as the baseline.

More broadly, Ms. Haakmat said, private schools need to sidestep white old boy networks in hiring and integrate antiracism into the curriculum: If you teach statistics, why not touch on economic and racial inequality? Or use biology classes to teach of eugenics and how race has framed the way we think of humans? That, she said, is thoughtful antiracism.

Critics, a mixed lot of parents and teachers, argue that aspects of the new curriculums edge toward recreating the racially segregated spaces of an earlier age. They say the insistent emphasis on skin color and race is reductive and some teenagers learn to adopt the language of antiracism and wield it against peers.

The nerves of some parents were not soothed when more than 100 teachers and staff members applauded Daltons antiracism curriculum and proposed two dozen steps to extend it, including calling on the school to abolish any advanced course in which Black students performed worse than students who are not Black.

A group of Dalton parents wrote their own letter to the school this year: We have spoken with dozens of families of all colors and backgrounds who are in shock and looking for an alternative school.

This upswell of parental anger, fed also by discontent with Daltons decision to teach only online last fall, led the head of school, Jim Best, who is white, to leave on July 1. Daltons diversity chief resigned under fire in February.

Bion Bartning, who notes that his heritage is a mix of Jewish, Mexican and Yaqui tribe, pulled his children out of Riverdale and created a foundation to argue against this sort of antiracist education. The insistence on teaching race consciousness is a fundamental shift into a sort of tribalism, he said.

No head of school agreed to an interview. Those at Dalton, Riverdale and Grace Church answered some questions by email. Several dozen faculty members declined interviews; in the end six spoke only on the condition of anonymity, for fear of upsetting employers. A dozen parents at five schools agreed to interviews, only one on the record.

For parents to speak out, said a white mother of private school children, was laden with risk. People and companies are petrified of being labeled racists, she said. If you work at an elite Wall Street firm and speak out, a top partner will tell you to shut up.

Another parent framed the primal class stakes: Wealthy parents plot and compete to get a child into a private school secure in the knowledge that education married to social connections will ease the way into an elite college and a gilded career. A letter or call from the counselor at a top private school can work wonders with college admissions offices.

Why risk all that?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/0/3/AALimsAAC0FD.jpg

joe40001 posted...

I'm pushing for equality and solutions that will actually help black lives, you are not.

Joe "I'm trying to help black people, but don't want their history taught in schools" Numbers

No thanks. We don't need your help.

I'm not a white nationalist, I just incessantly repeat white nationalist rhetoric!

(part 2 of 3)

Responding to Painful Stories
The stories make for disturbing reading. In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, Black private school alumni formed Instagram accounts: @blackattrinity, @blackatdalton, @blackatbrearley, @blackatandover and @blackatsidwellfriends.

The posts are anonymous and difficult to fact-check. But the ache and hurt are inescapable. A Black student recalled a white peer who told him Dalton wasnt made for people like you anyway. A Black graduate of Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School recalled wealthy white classmates who complained Black students only got into certain colleges because of their race. A Black Brearley graduate wrote of being conditioned to believe white skin, straight hair, a skinny body and money was the only way I could be right in this world.

Stories come laden with complication. Students wrote of favorite teachers and treasured experiences. And there were traces of class anger. A Black working-class parent at Trinity School wrote that wealthy Black families dominated the Black affinity group and excluded her child.

These kinds of stories, taken together with shifts in the culture around racism, persuaded private school leaders to double down on antiracist education. Such efforts extend back more than four decades.

As schools got used to diversity they realized it enriched education for all students, said Ms. Haakmat, the consultant. But these schools were still way white.

New Yorks private schools declined to provide the demographic breakdowns that are required of public schools. Riverdale and Trinity officials say about 40 percent of students identify as of color, a quite broad definition; Grace officials say 33 percent of students hail from diverse backgrounds; Dalton said only that it had a strong commitment to being intentionally diverse. Riverdales head of school, Dominic Randolph, said a precise count was complicated by the number of families identifying as multiracial.

Numbers compiled by the Guild of Independent Schools of New York City showed that the percentage of students in elite private schools who identified as Black or Latino remained static since 2013, hovering at a combined 12 percent; Black and Latino residents constitute more than 50 percent of the citys population.

Lisa Johnson is a graduate of a private school in Atlanta and heads Private School Village, a Los Angeles-based organization for Black families. They love to pitch you on diversity, she said. Then your child is one of two Blacks in a class and you think, Huh, how do they define diversity without crystal-clear data?

Chlo Valdary, a Black diversity consultant who diverges from her peers and is critical of aspects of antiracist education, noted that heated rhetoric rarely challenged the status quo. Antiracism sidesteps income inequality and doesnt actually threaten the elite at all, she said.

Several teachers spoke of a performance-like quality to heated rhetoric on antiracism and pointed by way of example to Dalton, which throws an annual diversity conference that attracts trustees, parents and donors from 30 private schools. The conference this May carried intrigue, with Daltons head of school, Mr. Best, speaking of his confusion at being pushed out, saying, No one here, including me, has the full story.

Mr. Best introduced the keynote speaker, Rodney Glasgow, a Black diversity consultant who leads a private Quaker school in Maryland. Mr. Glasgow, a popular speaker on the private school circuit, promptly laid waste to that world, describing it as laden with insidious whiteness and built to replicate the plantation mentality.

Mr. Glasgow ended with a flourish, comparing those Dalton parents who pushed out Mr. Best to what he described as the white supremacists who invaded the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Dalton featured his speech prominently on its website until questions arose. It has since been removed.

Is this the segregation someone brought up?

https://nyunews.com/opinion/2020/08/31/nyu-black-student-housing/

Sometimes if I want to make a point and checking what I think I know doesn't bear out, I don't post it. Does that happen to anyone else here?

(part 3 of 3)
The Grace School Mission
Paul Rossi and Grace Church Schools journey into antiracist education offers a window into its complexities. Mr. Rossi, 52, changed careers in his early 40s, and found at Grace an Episcopal school with liberal values a place he adored. He taught math and classes on existentialism and Stoic philosophy. Records show he received strong annual evaluations and was described as a natural teacher.

Slowly change came. The head of school, George P. Davison, who is white and has steered Grace for many years, pinpointed the moment his school embraced an antiracist mission.

Grace began using the language of antiracism in 2015 as part of our efforts to foster a sense of belonging, he wrote in response to The New York Times. It means believing that racism is real, that opposing it requires active engagement and that our community and curriculum are enriched when we arent blind to races influence.

Grace, he wrote, incorporated the language of critical race theory but did not rest upon that foundation. He emphasized that the school avoided using shame around race.

Mr. Rossi, along with two teachers who described themselves as progressives and asked for anonymity, was skeptical. The teachers acknowledged that quite a few colleagues appeared to support the new curriculum and they spoke of sustained pressure to demonstrate acceptance of the language of antiracism.

Last year, the @blackatgrace Instagram account anonymously accused a female administrator of once placing derogatory information in a Black students file. A teacher circulated a petition demanding her firing.

Another teacher grew worried; he had not known of the petition and feared the absence of his signature would be taken as a sign of his insensitivity. I thought to myself: Weve entered a culture of denunciation, Mr. Rossi said. We dont just denounce but if we dont do it fast enough, we could be denounced.

Pressure to join affinity groups went beyond highly encouraged, teachers said. A Latino couple asked a teacher to stop pressuring their daughter, who did not want to join the Latino one.

Grace administrators agreed to demands to seek more diverse faculty; it is largely white.

With the election of Donald J. Trump, teachers said, permissible disagreement narrowed markedly. Mr. Rossi recalled some students in his The Art of Persuasion class hankered for contrarian readings outside what he called the Grace political bubble. So last autumn he proposed a work by Glenn Loury, a well-known economist at Brown University and a Black man with conservative leanings.

An administrator, Hugo Mahabir, whose family has roots in Trinidad, blocked that. He wrote in an email to Mr. Rossi that Mr. Lourys argument delivered to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics faculty rings hollow, and that to give students a Black conservative view on race might confuse and/or enflame students. Mr. Mahabir did not respond to requests for comment.

The transcript of the February session with Mr. Rossis white affinity group revealed a tense, probing discussion, with teachers and students found on either side of various questions. Toward the end, the dean of student life, Ilana Laurence, offered thanks: As uncomfortable as Mr. Rossi may have made many people here, I firmly believe that our conversation would not ever have been nearly as rich and thought-provoking.

This drew support from the consultant, Emily Schorr Lesnick, who ran the affinity session. At a faculty meeting a few days later, she noted that Mr. Rossi and fellow teachers modeled an intelligent discussion.

I have been in lots of spaces with adults, with students around antiracist work, she said, where white people are kind of just saying things and going through the motions and this was not that space, and I am so so grateful. Ms. Schorr Lesnick, who is white, did not respond to a request for an interview.

That air of congratulation dissipated. Soon Mr. Rossi talked with Mr. Davison, the school head, about the dim shape of his future. He secretly recorded that conversation.

It offered a surprise. The fact is that Im agreeing with you that there has been a demonization, Mr. Davison told the teacher. I also have grave doubts about some of the doctrinaire stuff that gets spouted at us in the name of antiracist.

Mr. Davison said he was worried students were made to feel shame because of race. Were demonizing white people for being born, he said, adding later, Were using language that makes them feel less than, for nothing that they are personally responsible.

Mr. Rossi wrote of his case on the Substack site of the writer Bari Weiss, a former Times Opinion editor. In an email to Mr. Rossi, Mr. Davison claimed he was misquoted. The teacher later released recorded excerpts from that conversation, after which Grace claimed that the quotes lacked context.

Mr. Rossi was denounced at Grace and in private school circles. He rejoined that he was trapped, accused of racial insensitivity and in danger of losing his job.

This drama occurred against a backdrop of tension at the school. Months earlier, nine Black students demanded that classes be called off in the wake of Mr. Floyds death. They said peers were voicing their white opinions about how Black and brown people should protest.

The Grace Gazette, the school newspaper, surveyed 111 students and staff this spring of all backgrounds about free speech.

By a margin of about 48 percent to 43 percent, respondents said they were uncomfortable expressing dissenting opinions. And 35 percent said they had practiced wokeness to protect their reputations. There is no viewpoint diversity on race, a student wrote, because everyone is expected to view things the same way.

An Uncertain Future
The pushback against antiracism education has taken on aspects of an ideological uprising. In Boston, a new group, Parents United, has entered the fight with New Englands private schools. Mr. Bartning, the former Riverdale parent, established the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, with a large board that includes the academic and writer Steven Pinker; the human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali; the former Fox newscaster Megyn Kelly; and Mr. Loury, the economist at Brown. Mr. Rossi works with this foundation.

Grace Church School appointed a task force to re-examine its antiracist teachings.

But the schools seem unlikely to change their approach to educating students on race. And opponents face daunting challenges. Powerful trustees say they support the schools, and administrators sound steeled for the argument. Tom Taylor, the head of Riverdales Upper School, who is white, recently published an academic article on race and private schools. He, too, is a product of such schools.

Private schools perpetuate whiteness, he wrote, and must pursue an antiracist, decolonizing and culturally affirming agenda, with no obligation to educate those who resist. Private schools who find parents unwilling to accept moves toward a culturally responsible school are free to draw a line, he wrote.

Mr. Rossi, the Grace schoolteacher, will watch from the outside. Grace Church School offered him a contract if he participated in restorative practices for the supposed harm done to students of color. Grace officials did not explain what that would entail.

Soon after, Mr. Rossi and the school parted ways. Its no longer the school I loved, he said.

And there are a zillion stories like these, if you want @AloneIBreak I can try to get together more. This is just one article covering the different angles of the issue.

A: "CRT is a gigantic nationwide problem and we need to stop it at all costs for the sake of our children and out country!"

B: "A few random examples is not an epidemic"

A: "Ah but you're admitting that CRT is a problem! Ban books! Save the children! We're actually ending racism and protecting the blacks!"

Nothing bolded in part 2, the one about racism being alive and well. It looks like you're really focusing on the quotes that show that white people are uncomfortable talking about race. Do you think you can take their viewpoints at face value? It doesn't look like you're as uncritical of people sharing their experiences of racism. For example, earlier, you thought calling institutions "racist" was inherently disqualifying when it could be phrased as "having racism."

Couple more examples from this NYT article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/critical-race-theory.html

In Virginia itself, the Department of Educations website has a page devoted to Anti-racism in Education, and at the end of a long list of Terms and Definitions it reads, Drawing from critical race theory, the term white supremacy also refers to a political or socio-economic system where white people enjoy structural advantage and rights that other racial and ethnic groups do not, both at a collective and an individual level.

In the 2022 draft revision of the California Department of Educations Mathematics Framework, the chapter on Teaching for Equity and Engagement includes this language: Empowering students with mathematics also includes removing the high stakes of errors and sending the message that learning is always unfinished and that it is safe to take mathematical risks. This mind-set creates the conditions for students to develop a sense of ownership over their mathematical thinking and their right to belong to the discipline of mathematics a truly artful way of saying that diverse kids should not be saddled with the onerous task of having to get the actual answers.

In February, the Oregon Department of Education sent an update to math educators that linked to a document titled A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction/Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction. It contains a section on Deconstructing Racism in Mathematics Instruction positing that white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom can show up in a variety of ways, including when Preconceived expectations are steeped in the dominant culture, Superficial curriculum changes are offered in place of culturally relevant pedagogy and practice and Students are required to show their work in standardized, prescribed ways.

The article author goes on to make a point I've been repeatedly trying to make in this topic:

To be sure, voices on the political right, including Youngkin, must do better when it comes to specifying what they oppose. They, and we, would be better off if they explained that they oppose philosophies influenced by critical race theory, rather than claiming C.R.T. itself is being taught. Bills intended to ban the teaching of C.R.T.-lite shouldnt be worded as if the intent was to ban the teaching of anything about race at all. And if thats what any of these bills do mean, they should spell it out in clear language in order to expose that intent to debate one within which I would be vociferously opposed, I should note. The horror of slavery, the hypocrisy of Jim Crow, the terror of lynching, the devastating loss of life and property in Tulsa and in other massacres no student should get through, roughly, middle school ignorant of these things, and anyone who thinks that is politics needs to join the rest of us in the 21st century.

But the insistence that parents opposed to what is being called critical race theory are rising against a mere fantasy and simply enjoying a coded way of fostering denial about race is facile. It is an attempt to wrest a woke object lesson from the nuanced realities of life as it is actually lived, in which the notion of a white backlash against racial progress may appeal as narrative, or as analysis of an electoral upset, but rarely tracks with on-the-ground reality.

Also, nothing more cringy than snowflakes crying about how "you can't say anything that goes against the hivemind these days" while they continue to be extremely loud, get representation on the most popular platforms in the country, and are supported fully by the agenda of one of the two major political parties.

But people on the Internet say wacky things and Hollywood pretends to be woke, so that proves nothing is harder in this country than having a "dissenting opinion on race"

I'd argue that anti-wokeness is even more mainstream than the cultural ills they feel they are fighting. Conservatism is neither an outsider belief, nor will it ever be viewed as punk/rebellious. It's in the name.