Texas parents push back against racial awareness curriculum after students say N-word
"Indoctrination of children is over."
A group of parents in an affluent Texas community is fighting the school district’s efforts to incorporate cultural awareness into the curriculum.
At the Carroll Independent School District board meeting on Monday, members heard comments and complaints from the public regarding the proposed Cultural Competence Action Plan (CCAP). Per CNN, the plan was formed in response to a 2018 viral video of a group of teenage students chanting the N-word at a private party in Southlake, Texas. The CCAP aims to address racism in the district — but parents are pushing back against it.
Read More: Marc Lamont Hill shuts down GOP’s Vernon Jones on critical race theory
The plan was slated to be presented for adoption last August but it was postponed. According to a draft, the CCAP requires diversity training for the staff and anti-bullying programs that encourage “cultural awareness”. Conservatives in the mostly white community of Southlake have rejected the school diversity plan, calling it indoctrination of far-left ideology. Progressives, meanwhile, consider the plan a major step towards making all children in the quickly diversifying school district feel safe.
The city’s elections were held over the weekend, and candidates who opposed the CCAP all won about 70% of the vote. They were endorsed by the Southlake Families PAC, a political action committee that calls the Carroll Cultural Competence Action Plan, “some of the most extreme liberal positions in the history of Texas public education.” The group believes the plan will “indoctrinate children according to extremely liberal beliefs.”
While the PAC acknowledges that racism is a problem, they don’t believe CCAP is the solution, noting on their website: “We affirm that real racism remains an issue across the globe, and while rare in Southlake, we stand against it. We deny the current CCAP is a solution to any racist issues and, in fact, creates more racism, not less.”
“Seventy percent of our community disagreed with critical race theory,” one person stated at the meeting on Monday. “Seventy percent deny there is systemic racism at Carroll ISD.”
“Indoctrination of children is over,” said another.
Read More: Bill banning critical race theory in public schools becomes law
The plan does not mention critical race theory, which is a concept that explains the way white supremacy and America’s history of inequality and racism continue to have an impact on modern-day society, theGRIO reported. Kimberle Crenshaw, a law professor at UCLA and Columbia, told CNN last year, it was “an approach to grappling with a history of White supremacy that rejects the belief that what’s in the past is in the past and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it.”
Following the election over the weekend, the Southlake Families PAC wrote on Twitter, “Critical Race Theory ain’t coming here. This is what happens when good people stand up and say, not in my town, not on my watch.”
Days later in a follow-up tweet the group wrote: “CRT is a theoretical framework which views society as dominated by white supremacy and categorizes people as ‘privileged’ or ‘oppressed’ based on their skin color. It also teaches kids to hate America. Ask yourself who in their right mind would want this taught in public schools?”
As previously reported, according to Education Week, other states — including The 1619 Project helmer Nikole Hannah-Jones’ native state of Iowa, as well as Louisiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and West Virginia — have drafted bills that would ban the teaching of what they deem “divisive” or “racist and sexist” concepts.
Lawmakers in Tennessee have also moved to ban critical race theory instruction in their public schools. The state’s House Education Administration Committee voted 12-3 to prohibit teaching elements of the theory.
*Additional reporting from Biba Adams
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