Critical Race Theory is all the rage in public education today. Most parents have not done extensive research to be able to identify CRT and may not know the psychological damage it is having on some children.
This radical agenda is infiltrating the classroom and can be identified through buzzwords like; diversity, equity, inclusion or justice. Worthwhile causes for sure, but when you peel back the layers, sometimes the propaganda is far worse than you could have imagined.
An email was sent out to the SAU21 families in February by Interim Superintendent Caroline Arakelain. Within this email, she included links to a resource page for families on “diversity.” There is a long list of resources that parents can access, but it is included as a reference by the “Equity Committee” to make steady progress towards goals around anti-racism and equity in policy, community, training, and curriculum.
Prior to researching CRT in the classroom, this might have sounded like worthwhile goals. After researching CRT, there are red flags in that statement (anti-racism and equity) that should concern parents. Clicking on the link they provided confirmed there is a big problem that needs to be addressed.
If you click on the link in the email, it will take you to a podcast with Dr. Jennifer Harvey who wrote the book, “Raising White Kids with Jennifer Harvey.” I suppose she felt the need to explain how you raise your white kids differently from how black and brown parents raise their children.
She begins by explaining why she subscribes to a radical religious worldview and goes on to explain how you should raise your white children. She further explains how she rejected the conservative side of Christianity and instead, opted for the more progressive side.
What she opted for was Liberation Theology (think Marxism) which is considered heretical to mainstream Christianity. She also explains how she takes this into the classroom in an effort to explain how her students can do the same. This sounds more like a focus on changing your child’s religious values versus improving race relations.
In the podcast she talks about how she claimed Christianity for herself in a radically different way, and explains that to her students who are struggling with their own religious beliefs. For those who attend college, what exactly are you paying for? For those k-12, is this what parents send their kids to school to learn? I suspect most parents would say NO.
Many Critical Race Theory apologists draw their arguments from their theological beliefs. Their values may conflict with the values of parents whose children have been raised to be kind and judge people on the content of their character. This calls into question, what the purpose of CRT is as it relates to what is going on in your 10-year old’s in the classroom?
She mentions that people began asking her how to raise their white children for racial justice; after they have been told they are superior because that’s the message that white children have been receiving. Harvey asks, “how do you tell a young child that their ancestors suck?”
She assumes that all white people who live in America were descendants of slaves. Many white Americans are descendants of immigrants, some are descendants of white ancestors who were never slave owners. Some white Americans may be descendants of white Christian abolitionists who fought to end slavery.
She is stereotyping all white people in that statement and may seem hypocritical because the people peddling CRT are constantly calling for the end to stereotyping of black and brown people. Maybe the message would be better received if her message wasn’t dripping with stereotyping and prejudice?
Harvey said she decided to do some research on white racial development and drew upon her own experience as a mother raising her own children to be anti-racist. She admits that we’ve never raised a generation of anti-racist white kids. This means that this new psychological warfare on children and one big psychological experiment on your kids.
Those who work, and have been educated in the field in child psychology may be cringing right now knowing that this experiment doesn’t follow any kind of ethical guidelines, is conducted by individuals who have no background in the field of child psychology, and do not have the tools to conduct any kind of experiments on children. She even admits that the insights in her book may be completely wrong. Good luck parents! More psychological experimentation on your children when they go off to school!
So why is she focused on changing the values in white children to what many parents would consider radical and in direct opposition to their values of kindness and compassion?
As you listen, you can hear the political bias she brings to the discussion. Is this really about improving race relations or is this more about a political ideology in the hands of a community organizer/activist? For instance, she mentions that if we are greedy and destroy the plant, we are all going to die. The dire desperation appears to be driving her in her activism. Her activism is now centered on children minus any valid research into child development.
Harvey says as good white people, if she raised her kids to be generic good human beings, racism is so embedded in the structures that we live in, in the air we breathe, and in every aspect of our lives, we cannot see black and brown people as human beings. We don’t even see their shared humanity. We literally don’t experience it because whiteness is so consuming, and we don’t even realize that we don’t see it.
In other words, you do not have the capacity to see black and brown people as human beings, you lack the humanity as a white person. Do you see the stereotyping and prejudice in her statements? How does she know what is in the heart of every white person, and their children?
She says she wrote a book on how to raise white children but she doesn’t know anything about child development and mentions that’s not what her scholarship was about. She’s not an expert about anything in terms of child development, she has a degree in education.
She talks about white folks buying into another version of being human. By being racialized as white people, and by breathing in whiteness every day along with white supremacy, it’s an entire embodied formation. It’s in your bodies, it’s in your hearts, it’s in your emotions. In other words, you are immersed in your own supremacy but you may not know it.
She mentions that she spent 5 years wallowing in white guilt but never mentions what she did as a white person to feel guilty.
She then talks about how whiteness itself is a problematic construction. Diversity is leaps and bounds better than color blindness. Was that a direct stab at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream? It sure sounds like it. Whites cannot authentically connect. How do we reconcile the inherent problems with whiteness with the need for our white kids to develop some sort of positive racial identity as white kids? This is what the host asks of Harvey as if she’s some sort of expert on this, even though she admits she is not.
Harvey mentions how she was racialized as white. She doesn’t want those involved in diversity training to feel like they are ok to be white. She doesn’t want white kids (and mentions her daughter in this scenario) to be wallowing around in white guilt, but it’s ok if she’s feeling white guilt once in a while. Just don’t get stuck there.
This is how children begin to feel self-hatred and shame. I suppose we should all hope that little kids manage to not get stuck in their self-hatred! In SAU16, one 9-year old asked her mother if slavery was her fault. This is why parents are starting to describe CRT/Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice as psychological warfare.
Harvey goes on to explain how a healthy white identity for children is an identity that is able to acknowledge (as a work in progress) the really horrible things that white people have done, and still do. Also recognize that white people can make choices in how we use our whiteness, and what we do with it. So even if our ancestors did X, Y, and Z, we can do something different with our whiteness. This doesn’t redeem our whiteness or make it positive, but we can choose to be a different kind of white person.
More subtle blaming of children for what they never did. Again, this is more dangerous experimental psychology in the hands of teachers who have no formal training in child psychology. Any teacher who goes along with this kind of psychological abuse should never be allowed around children again.
She does say that this isn’t about white guilt or self-hatred and does finally say that it’s about becoming a better person.
But with all of the rhetoric spewed, young children are walking away with guilt and self-hatred. As a parental rights advocate, I’m seeing that in New Hampshire and parents are reporting this across the country.
She says that whites are so far from her utopia that they can never be redeemed. Racism is considered a moving walkway and you are on it whether you like it or not. She does mention teaching kids how to address racism when they see it, and if they don’t know how to address it, find someone who does. Some of her message has merit, talking to your children about racism may involve having the courage to speak up against it when you see it happening.
So why address all of this with young children?
She talks about the numerous studies that kids internalize messages about racial differences by the ages of 3 and 4. Toddlers negatively affix characteristics to darker skin people and falsely attach notions of superiority to light skin people. By the age of 5 children can tell that those differences have something to do with social status in the world. She says that children also know they aren’t supposed to talk about that with adults.
She mentioned that her kids haven’t always been developmentally ready to tackle some of the topics, like when Michael Brown was killed. But she doesn’t mention when your children are subjected to the propaganda in a classroom they are stuck there. Sometimes a subject is better covered when a child is older.
Harvey brought a time when she took her kids to a rally in Iowa over the death of Michael Brown. They asked if they were safe around the police officers.
In her world, if you are born white you are an inherent racist and white supremacist. It is only through training, and education can you start to become a better person but never truly escape it. You must subscribe to the CRT world view and in this case, she subscribes to liberation theology.
She does mention pushing back against racism. That seems practical and logical. Abolitionists pushed back against slavery through their Christian beliefs. They also appealed to Christians to support the end to slavery. There is merit in this goal and can be done by teaching children how to be courageous. Teachers can assign books at an early age that shows the main character having courage.
Finally, she mentions her own personal journey. It makes you wonder if her own character was so flawed in a racist way that she now sees all white people in the same way. Is she projecting her own racist beliefs onto all white people regardless of how they were raised or how their conscience and heart were formed?
This seems to be a pattern among some of the CRT activists. It looks more like they have had a re-awakening about their own character flaws, and then they go on to assume that all white people have the same characteristic flaws.
It seems that individuals who find their own character flaws within themselves should certainly look for ways to become a better person. If she possessed racist views, it makes sense that she does some self-reflection. But should she project that onto every white person as she and other CRT activists do? Their belief is yes. You are inherently racist as a white person and began that journey as a toddler. They must now re-educate you and your children in an effort to turn you away from your white supremacy.
This worldview is wrapped up in stereotyping and prejudice, something they say they are trying to get rid of when it comes to judging black and brown people. How is it ok to assign racism and supremacy to all whites without knowing the heart of each individual? That in itself is a prejudiced worldview.
If this is the goal of SAU21, parents need to know about it and determine if this is what they want for their school district. The email they sent to parents in SAU21 reflects directly on the school administrators and school board who are serving in this district.
Fortunately, New Hampshire legislators just passed an anti-discrimination law that forbids discrimination like this from being pushed on teachers through training or in the classroom on your child. We have civil rights and equal protection under the law. These kinds of divisive concepts translate into psychological warfare on children by individuals who do not have the education or training to know when they are damaging children.
SAU21 administrators and school board members need to address this immediately.
