At the “Learning about DIE-J” [Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Justice] forum in Exeter last week, just after the audience was warned that the police were standing by for anyone shouting for sanity, the Tsunami’s propaganda wave suddenly struck.
It mercilessly swept away innocent naïve minds and the trust and respect of woke-weary attendees alike. The wave itself was bloated with debris that included the standard Critical Race Theory (CRT) euphemisms, unfounded allegations of “missing history,” references to the evidence-free CRT concepts such as “systemic racism”, the need for DEIJ to “make everybody whole” and to enhance “our collective joy as humans.”
Not to be undone, unscientific assertions of the value of racial modeling and race essential narratives were offered to magically enhance learning. In the wave’s aftermath of permanent damage to the community’s trust, some unambiguous truths and an array of untruths littered the intellectual landscape.
We want to thank Mike Breen for this Op-Ed. If you have an Op-Ed or LTE
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To begin, with due respect to the Superintendent, no one with an IQ above room temperature believes that the epistemology of Exeter’s DIE-J philosophy originated at a “grassroots level” in local elementary school. The terms “Diversity… Inclusion…Equity…and Justice” have been propagandized pillars of CRT Marxist and radical post-modern literature for decades as is the notion of oppressors and the oppressed inferred in the DIE-J’s mission statement.
Because the Superintendent is an educated man, everyone knows that he knows that these concepts are not grassroots in origin or unique to Exeter. Likewise, the Superintendent has undoubtedly heard of the 1776 project despite his claim to the contrary. Laughably, minutes after asserting that DIE-J’s efforts are apolitical, the Superintendent commented:
It was very easy for me and our team to recognize the progressive nature of this particular region of the state.
Not one of the eight participants on the stage could think of a race or gender-oriented complaint or incident that drove the implementation of this expensive and elaborate solution in search of a problem. Nobody on stage has given a thought to how progress in DIE-J’s ambiguous objectives could ever be evaluated.
DIE-J advocates admitted that not one lawyer had been consulted before they explored student’s “intersectionalities of Identities.” Therefore, the DEIJ advocates are blissfully unaware of the probable HIPAA legislation violations inherent in their investigations into physical, mental or emotional disabilities of students. The Superintendent said he may now “mull this over.”
Although prudent to ensure each student has internet service before assigning internet assignments, the Superintendent extended this notion to justify his knowing things such as, how many parents were in a student’s home, their race, if they “were affluent,” and “how much they work.” Clearly DIE-J’s needs to identify categories of students and their families eclipses any sense of expected marital or income privacy from the assumed limitless authority of the local school board.
Remarkably, the ninth-grade teacher on stage sees herself as qualified to help students determine their “identities” without a concern relative to her expertise to explore these sensitive issues. It’s understandable. Who would expect this ninth-grade teacher to be aware of the potential emotional harm to students whom she labels as “marginalized,” or the social contagion effect of promoting gender confusion.
How would she know the harmful effects of communicating to students that they are “marginalized” or “oppressed?” With due respect to all ninth-grade teachers everywhere, one’s passion for assisting students psychologically is a poor substitute for the genuine competencies in doing so. Is it too much to point out that teachers wanting to talk with students about these private matters without parents’ presence, should consider obtaining their child psychologist education and certifications first?
We know that this ninth-grade teacher is planning on completing this work first-hand because no one on stage representing the Exeter’s DIE-J effort had ever considered consulting with a single developmental or educational psychologist before initiating these investigations into children’s “identities.”
Because there is no science suggesting a nexus between determining “identities” and academic achievement, one wonders about the school district’s need to determine this private information about “identities” and families. The answer lies at the foundation of the Critical Race Theory (CRT) racist belief system itself.
The radical post-modern Marxist who coined the term CRT sees the “intersectionalities” of “identities” [chiefly race and gender] as key in determining the levels of “oppression” one is subjected to by inherently racist Whites within the invisible and evidence-free mechanism of “systemic racism.” [See K. Crenshaw Demarginalizing the Intersections of Race and Sex (1989), alongside writings of Ibram X. Kendi, Robin Diangelo, et al.]
Its unclear from their comments thus far, but it seemed that as applied here, once “identities” are determined a teacher can ascertain a process to assist the student in acquiring “equity” with others “privileged” in not having the same “Identity.”
The core CRT WOKE-oriented text for teachers used nationwide speaks to this issue. Glenn Singleton’s Courageous Conversations about Race; A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools theorizes that the academic achievement gap (quickly erroneously relabeled as the racial achievement gap) exists because implicitly or explicitly racist teachers are “maintaining” this gap within school systems that are “systemically racist” due to their foundation in “White supremacy” that is maintained to preserve “White privilege.” Pretending to detach only some of these heavily interconnected CRT concepts from their core racist beliefs is akin to finding the best ideas overlooked thus far in Mein Kampf.
Viewers are left curious about the comments of DIE-J assistant director Kevin Pajaro-Marinez. In the five months he has resided in this area, what evidence can he share that Exeter needs to be a “transformative community.”
What is a “transformative community?”
What does he think Exeter is transforming from and, based on his five months experience, what does it need to transform too? With respect to his “bicycle given to a student without legs” metaphor; this DIE-J effort is not about bicycles nor amputees.
The language employed, the vision statement, and comments of advocates make it clear that this is about core CRT race and gender essentialist and anti-intellectual beliefs like those taught to SAU 16 teachers before the passage of HB2. We know these racist concepts were taught due to the admission by the Superintendent.
He asserted he needed to change teacher professional development as a result of the passage of HB2–the legislation which now prohibits teaching these racist irrational concepts as truth. The Superintendent made no mention of the need to retrain teachers who he subjected to CRT “learning circles” in the recent past.
The DIE-J director’s definition of “Equity” and “Equality” is nonsensical on its face. He asserts that
“Equality means everyone gets the same thing, and equity means we are giving access to everyone so everyone can reach the same level as everyone else.”
I do not think the director understands that if physical or any other circumstance prevents equal protection under the law, such as “equal access,” these “barriers” that are “marginalizing” students are illegal. All Exeter needs to do is obey the law as enforced by multiple layers of state and federal enforcement agencies. Tossing out the basic principles of equality theory in which our country is based may just be a bit of an overreach.
The other seven individuals on the stage were also confused about the inherent tensions between the Marxist championed value of “equity” and the Enlightenment Era Theory of “equality” in which the United States and representative democracies are based. On one hand one would claim that they wanted the children to grow, each realizing their best learning abilities. Yet the group also asserted that equality-of-outcomes or “equity” was the core of DIE-J.
No one seemed to appreciate the reality that distinct individual levels of effort and natural abilities will result in inequitable outcomes in any group, aside from the distinct “identity labels” affixed by educators or efforts to make everyone’s outcomes “equitable.”
After the repeated fawning over the DIE-J director by DIE-J advocates on stage, we learned in the Delphi method question posed by the audience at the end of the program that the DIE director also works for Black Lives Matter (BLM). [He, and everyone else, forgot to mention this in his introduction.]
You may recall BLM.
These self-described “trained Marxists” who seek the destruction of the nuclear family and the United States via violent revolution supported the “mostly peaceful” arsons, riots, hundreds of police injuries, 1 billion dollars in damage, and two dozen or so related murders in the summer of 2020. Sadly, BLM racist hateful public chants calling for the random murder of police were also repeatedly realized.
Despite using the identical CRT language and concepts endorsed by BLM in facilitating unrelenting violence, using his raised left and right arms, the director assured the audience that his BLM work [his left arm] is distinct from this DIE work [demonstrated in his raised right arm] in Exeter.
He asserted, with a straight face, that his work in DIE in Exeter consisted of creating space for everyone so that we “understand and not hurt each other.” The fact that this assertion is the polar opposite of the violent beliefs and efforts of BLM, metaphorically embraced in his right arm, it all just hung in the air like lies of this magnitude tend to do.
The failings of Exeter’s DIE philosophy, are multifaceted.
(1) Their presentation was disingenuous. If the DIEJ advocates genuinely respected this discipline, they would describe it in precise operational terms, not a loose compilation of euphemisms, half-truths, and propaganda.
(2) DIEJ advocates seem eager to implement their stereotypical and unscientific solutions for individuals based upon their own preconceived notions about race, gender, disabilities, socioeconomic status, or intersectionalities of same. This is standard boilerplate CRT methodology.
(3) Rather than treat students as individuals with individual rights and freedoms, they want to treat individuals whose need for “equity” is determined by their assignment to a group, based upon their “identities.” This is the anti-theses of values of the Enlightenment Era’s equality theory in which the United States was founded. [Parenthetically, DIEJ advocates see their role as educating future “global citizens,” not American citizens.]
(4) They seem unaware of the emotional trauma, tensions, and resentments inherent in teaching some students that they are victims of oppression while others are oppressors—inferences found in their vision statement as well as their advocate’s views carefully articulated in the forum to stay within the new law.
(5) They assume psychological counseling competencies that they do not possess and a role in society that lacks credibility or legitimacy; all driven by nonscientific anti-intellectual CRT essentials; and
(6) Much of their planned investigations into “identities” are legally questionable and violate norms of privacy among American students and families.
With respect to the DIEJ efforts at Exeter, the opportunity cost of this science-free effort is significant. Educators do not have to “do the inner work” to understand and implement CRT principles while struggling to label them something else.
The public would rather they teach students based upon proven pedological standards, not racist beliefs or fantasies that “intersections” of race, gender and other variables that supposedly cause disparities in grades or their current belief of “systemic racism” in schools. Teachers need to provide extra help to those in need regardless of the race and gender labels they seek to impose.
Likewise, educators need to promote those who should be in advanced placement classes regardless of the race and gender labels they seek to impose. Educators need to understand that groups of individuals, each with distinct levels of effort and natural skills will not score “equitably” as the CRT belief system assumes. Educators need to stop acting in accordance with the CRT belief in “systemic racism.” It is disconnected from science and history and is racist in nature.
Educators need to obey the law relative to discrimination based upon race and gender. Educators should not encourage gender confusion or racial animus among children. Educators should respect students’ and their family’s privacy. Educators need to be educators, not child psychologists or social workers. Educators need to first understand their role in society, and then, please, do their job.
