Ties between Critical Race Theory and President Joe Biden’s Department of Education are much closer than you’d think. Russ Vought, head of Center for Renewing America, filed a Freedom of Information Act to get records between the DoE and a teacher’s organization called the Abolitionist Teaching Network. Vought even threatened to sue the Department if they don’t hand the records over. When asked about what he thought the records would reveal, Vought had a clear image.
“I think what it’s going to reveal is that Biden administration officials are intimately involved with Critical Race Theory, that they are tracking with many of the influential people in the Critical Race Theory community,” Vought said.
He referred to the DoE’s previous “error” linking an Abolitionist Teaching Network resource in a guide that shows schools how to spend American Rescue Plan money and reopen safely. The “error” was in a guide sent to 13,000 different schools about investing $200 billion worth of federal funding.
The Abolitionist Teaching Network is described as a pro-Critical Race Theory organization, with co-founder Bettina Love being connected to the deputy secretary of education Cindy Marten. Vought emphasized that it was a red flag to find connections between pro-CRT groups and the Biden Administration.
The Biden Administration has struggled to maintain a position regarding Critical Race Theory in the classroom. White House press secretary Jen Psaki emphasized that Biden is supportive of a curriculum that teaches about “systemic racism that is still impacting society today.” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, on the other hand, has posted about distancing the department from CRT-related grant requirements.
It was also recently pointed out by Federal Appeals Judge James Ho that implementing Critical Race Theory would violate Civil Rights laws as a result of racial discrimination. He even compared Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, where children are not seen by the color of their skin, and compares it to the work of Ibram Kendi’s “How to Be An Anti-Racist,” which deems anything between racial groups as inequality.
“There’s a big difference between prohibiting racial discrimination and endorsing disparate impact theory. … It’s the difference between securing equality of opportunity regardless of race and guaranteeing equality of outcome based on race. It’s the difference between color blindness and critical race theory,” Judge James Ho said.
Judge Ho went on to say that looking at racial imbalance is “patently unconstitutional” and would require legal evidence of racial discrimination. He compared it along the principles of “innocent until proven guilty. He said citizens should be “understandably skeptical” when government officials try to talk about race consciousness.
Some have hinted that Judge Ho is a likely Supreme Court nominee when Republicans regain the White House and that he is constitutionally correct when talking about the civil rights anti-discrimination laws in place. Cornell law professor William Jacobson adds that it’s only a matter of time before court systems are forced to “confront racism in the name of so-called antiracism.”
School boards have also faced backlash from parents fighting Critical Race Theory including Iranian immigrant Anita Edgarian who is a mother of three. She said she has witnessed her motherland being ravaged by communism and that there are parallel ideas between the ideas of Communism and what was being taught under the “guise of diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
Edgarian even tried to express her concerns about Critical Race Theory to retiring superintendent Jim Scanlon at the West Chester school district board meeting. When she asked school board president Chris McCune if teachers were being taught Critical Race Theory, he said “Anita you’re out of time.” When she refused to leave the podium, he walked over, took the microphone, and told her to leave.
She is hardly the first parent to voice concerns over Critical Race Theory and certainly not the last. School district meetings have continued to go viral, with one pro-CRT official saying “Let them die!” about concerned parents.
Parents want answers on why something so divisive and unconstitutional would be taught in the classrooms but that’s exactly why it’s being pushed in the first place. Liberals want everything divisive and unconstitutional and it’s easier to indoctrinate children than adults. With more digging, people are seeing how terrible CRT really is. Even judges are pushing back.