Mark Charalambous
“Existential threat” is a much
overused term. But what is about to be unleashed on the nation’s schoolchildren
is the real deal.
No, I’m not talking about authoritarian
vaccine and mask mandates. I’m talking about the cultural epidemic of “wokeism”
currently sweeping the country, infecting every single institution in our
nation, from the arts to the military.
As a result of the BLM/Antifa
riots of last year, most schools have been working furiously over the summer
assembling “anti-racism” programs for their teachers and staff under the
auspices of recently minted Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) regimes.
The “equity” in Diversity,
Equity and Inclusion supersedes the tired notion of “equality.” Just a couple
of letters, but a whole world of a difference. We all agreed a long time ago
that everyone should be treated equally. Equality under the law is one of the
cornerstones of Western democracy. Equality recognizes that everyone should
play by the same rules. It strives for a laudable goal: meritocracy.
DEI looks at results and sees glaring
racial disparities. It holds that these disparities must be due to systemic racism. It mandates that the outcomes must be equal. This is a very
different kettle of fish than demanding equality of access.
Built upon Critical Race Theory (CRT), these teaching
paradigms are being implemented in every nook and cranny of the educational
system. All departments from the humanities and social sciences through to
mathematics and the physical sciences, are being purged of their racist
foundations and “de-colonized.”
“Whiteness,” “white privilege,
and “white fragility” are some of the operational thought contagions of CRT. “Whiteness”
is both the physical racial characteristic that those of the “melanin deficient”
community exhibit, as well as a cultural construct that exists apart from the
people unfortunate to be afflicted with it from birth. These are some of its toxic
qualities: self-reliance, emphasis on scientific method, nuclear family,
quantitative emphasis, hard work being the key to success, work before play,
respect for authority, majority rules, be polite, etc.
These dreadful behaviors and beliefs
are now topics of academic inquiry, as if this was actually some kind of
legitimate field of study. Don’t look now, but your child’s teachers have been
trained in this racist cultural demagoguery. Many parents discovered it by
accident last year during school lockdowns when they happened to look in on
their kid’s Zoom class. They are outraged that their children are coming home
from school being told that they are oppressors if they are White, and victims
of systemic racism if they are Black or Brown. What a message for the latter:
if you failed a math test, it’s not your fault! You are systemically oppressed
by a racist math pedagogy.
What is happening in our schools
is incredibly divisive. It is the reason why many parents are raising holy hell
at school board meetings across the country, and rightfully so.
Two names that are frequently
associated with the DEI/CRT movement are Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi. The
former is the author of a book that is guaranteed to have been on every
teacher’s mandated summer reading list, “White Fragility.” In a recent
interview, DiAngelo described the moment of epiphany when she discovered her “whiteness”:
“I… It was a very
abstract sense. I honestly believe I was 34 years old. I was college educated.
I was a parent… umm… and someone handed me Peggy McIntosh’s article (a
Wellesley College academic). And I read
through that list and I had an out-of-body experience. I could tell you where I
was sitting.
“I… I’m not ever going
to forget that moment where all of a sudden I was like, “Oh my God... I’m
white!” And I felt so loudly white that I remember being hesitant to go
outside. I don’t want to go outside, because everybody could see that I was
white.”
That is how someone might describe receiving a cancer test
result. “Whiteness”… a disease.
If, as with Robin DiAngelo, this hatred is self-directed,
does that somehow excuse it? Exactly what twisted psychological need—or mental
illness—can explain this self-othering?
Ibram X Kendi might be called the Louis Farrakhan of
academia. This Boston University professor was celebrated as one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential
People in 2020, and is, like DiAngelo, a campus darling raking in tons
of money doing the college guest speaker circuit. He proposes the creation of a
Department of Anti-Racism to be promulgated by an “anti-racist amendment” to
the Constitution. This soviet style, Central Committee-like agency would be
“comprised of formally trained experts on racism and no political appointees,”
and needless to say would operate impervious to any electoral oversight. These commissars
would be responsible for “preclearing all local, state and federal public
policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity,” further, to “monitor
those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity
surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas…
empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and
public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.”
Whatever happened to taking
people at face-value? What about judging people by the content of their
character and not the color of their skin? Of what value is the vaunted wisdom
accrued from academic credentials and innumerous professional development credits
if our teachers succumb so easily to such pseudo-scientific racist drivel?
It is so sad to reflect on the
pivotal role that public education once played in preparing youth for
participation in the civics of the Great American Experiment while providing
the passport to prosperity for all Americans (especially immigrants)—and to now
bear witness to this perversion of its purpose. To wit: the deconstruction of
our history and culture and the disembowelment of all societal norms, traditions
and values.
Our schools have lost their
“mandate from heaven.” A great swathe of normal Americans are reaching these
same conclusions and voting with their feet, rejecting their schools and teacher-union
“family values,” stripping them of their power to corrupt their children, and
moving away from Democrat-controlled states and urban centers where these
poisonous policies have found fertile breeding ground.
###
