Our country cannot pursue racial unity and inclusion through promoting disunity and exclusion. Yet the same people who decry America’s alleged systemic racism are enacting policies and practices reminiscent of the worst days of racial segregation.
In one recent case Judicial Watch uncovered 111 pages of records showing that in the quest for “diversity, equity and inclusion,” Wellesley Public Schools in Massachusetts established five “affinity spaces” that divide students and staff based primarily on race. The school district’s “Equity Strategic Plan 2020-2025” includes a “District Equity by Design” scheme which seeks to “amplify student voices” by providing “opportunities for affinity spaces for students with shared identity.” Likewise, “Diversity Staffing” includes providing resources for “affinity spaces for specialized populations within the wider Faculty/Staff (ie. ALANA [Asian, Latino, African, and Native American], Admin Leaders of Color, LGBTQ+, White Educators for Antiracism, etc.).”
It should be apparent that establishing these types of bureaucratic frameworks puts the “systemic” in “systemic racism.” There has been a legal war against similar structures established by white racists of “shared identity” for seven decades. Yet the ideologically-driven educators at Wellesley rationalize that the purpose of these groups is not to stoke divisions but to “continuously examine systems of privilege and bias, and work collectively to disrupt and dismantle inequity in all its forms.” Except, of course, this really obvious form.
Perhaps a student would like to escape this toxic emphasis on identity and simply focus on intellectual development. But no, increasingly topics inspired by critical race theory are worming their way into the main curriculum. At Wellesley Schools “Equity Literacy” is now a required part of the program. Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Charmie R. Curry noted in an email to colleagues that two required courses – “Understanding Equity and Inequity” and “Learning to Be a Threat to Inequity” — focus on “helping us to build/sharpen our structural ideological lenses” and are “are essential to our ability to address inequities in our community.” Whether math has been declared racist has yet to be determined.
