Activists believe systems of oppression stand in the way of true racial equity and must be dismantled. Recruiting the next generation into the cause starts on campus.
As several states move to ban toxic critical race theory from indoctrinating students, the state of Washington is leaning in.
The race-obsessed framework isn’t relegated to schools in Seattle, where you’d expect a victim-centered ideology like critical race theory to flourish. Thanks to the state’s Democrat-controlled legislature, a trio of bills just signed into law mandates critical race theory training for all public school teachers. Another even requires training for medical students, teaching them it’s as essential to be social justice activists as it is to treat patients.
At Seattle Public Schools, they’ve even developed a “Racial Equity Team,” a group of far-left educators seeking that schools make all of their decisions through a racialized “equity” lens. To effectively carry out this mission, they say, staff need training. Highline Public Schools, a majority-minority district south of Seattle, has mandated similar training for years, even holding an annual race symposium where staff express their displeasure with being “privileged” and white.
“I felt like yesterday I realized that I’m white and that I have all the advantages of being part of that group,” one white staffer says. “Privileges that I don’t really think I fully understood until yesterday. I was reading ‘White Fragility,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh, OK.’ I think I’m taking that next step in my journey to understanding what’s happening, what equity is about, what racial equity is about, what anti-racism is about, and what racism is about.”
During hours-long sessions, staff learn race is a social construct that has “been adapted to meet the needs of white supremacy culture.” If you get defensive at being labeled a racist, facilitators say it’s an example of white supremacy in action.
Just north of Seattle, administrators in the Edmonds School District force staff to sit through hours of critical race theory training on equity and institutionalizing racism. The most recent focus was on so-called microaggressions.
