Our school board website says they have a meeting today. It turns out that is just a “work session,” and the real meeting, which will allow public comment, is Thursday, June 24, 6:00 PM.
Only ten people will be allowed to speak, so it’s likely
that I won’t get a chance. But I want to be ready, so I’m preparing today what
I would like to say.
The meeting only allows two minutes per public comment, which is at most 500 words. That’s a fraction of what I have in this preparation speech below; I’ll need to write an abridged version in case I need it on Thursday. But maybe what I say here will help someone else who has a chance to speak—or someone elsewhere in their own school district, which I hope is a movement that's spreading.
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| screenshot from Cy-Fair ISD Board Work Session Monday, June 21, 2021 |
______________________
Public Comments Directed to the
Cy-Fair Independent School District
Board of Trustees
A month or so ago I became aware of a magazine sent out to
teachers in Cy-Fair ISD, called Teaching Tolerance. This was the Spring 2021
edition. On the cover it reads,
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| cover of the spring 2021 issue of Teaching Tolerance |
White supremacy affects every element of the U.S. education system. Find out how students, educators and other stakeholders resist it daily.
When this was sent out, it wasn’t illegal. But with the
passage of HB 3979 and Governor Abbott’s signature, this publication is full of propaganda that
is against the law in the Texas education system as of this coming school year.
Today I want a promise from you that this publication—and anything
like unto it—will no longer be made available to teachers in our district.
Beyond that, I’d like to say that, even without the law,
these materials should never have been part of teaching materials in Cy-Fair
ISD. It is all based on a lie.
White supremacy exists—but it is a tiny fringe of society,
unacceptable among civilized people. Most of us have never met a person who
believes this philosophy, because they are so rare.
But there’s a movement that has worked to do a bait-and-switch
with the definition. Instead of this unacceptable fringe, they enlarge the
category of white supremacy to include any culture in which people with white
skin are or have been the majority. That means anything from a European
heritage, or what we call Western civilization.
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| p. 48 of spring 2021 issue of Teaching Tolerance |
They believe our founding fathers should be canceled—and their
writings, including the US Constitution. They fail to note that it is the founding
doctrine that all human beings are created equal—revolutionary at a time when
every society on earth was stratified into nobility and lower classes based
only on the accident of their birth—that belief in equality before the law led to
freedom everywhere on earth. Every country that has a representative democracy
today—in place of a monarchy or tyrannical government—inherited the idea from
the United States Constitution.
This is the philosophy that led to the elimination of slavery—not
only in this country, but in places like Brazil and Cuba, and everywhere that
followed the US in the elimination of slavery.
The American idea that all people are created equal did not
lead to slavery. It led to its demise.
If the country were endemically racist, it would have
maintained racism, not fought a Civil War to eliminate it. Obviously. Later, it
would have kept Jim Crow laws, not eliminated them nationwide.
It was Christianity that led Britain to be the first nation
to eliminate slavery. But Critical Race Theorists want to cancel Christianity—despite
the New Testament teachings by Paul, concerning a slave named Onesimus, who had
become a Christian. Paul told the slave master, Philemon,
also a Christian, that, while they could do nothing about the law of that time
and place, he was required to treat his servant as a fellow brother in Christ. Racially,
by the way, this master and slave were likely the same color; back in that day,
enslavement was done to those nearby enough to enslave, regardless of color. It
was the consideration of one person as inferior to another that was at issue—but Christ invited all to come unto him: Jew and Greek, bond and free, male and female (Galatians
3:28).
This command to accept all as brothers is what the CRT pushers claim is
white supremacy and should be eliminated.
And replaced with what? Hatred of whites? Supremacy of their
preferred race over whites and other less preferred races? And we're supposed to just be nice and go along with this?
The new law contains a great many things that should be included
in social studies teaching in Texas—including covering difficult topics such as
slavery and civil rights. But it emphasizes accurate history with original
source documents.
There’s a relatively small section of the law regarding what shall not be taught. It fits on a single page. I’ve printed it out for you.
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| the anti-CRT section of HB 3979 |
It includes, for example, that you shall not teach that:
one race or sex is
inherently superior to another race or sex;
or that,
with respect to
their relationship to American values, slavery and racism are anything other
than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to, the authentic
founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality.
The law doesn’t use the term Critical Race Theory. The only named
item is that you shall not teach the 1619 Project, which we know to be
provably false and racist propaganda.
The problem we’ve seen in the past—concerning things like
Common Core, for example—is that names and terms are fungible. Don’t want CRT?
We’ll just call it something else.
So I’ve printed out for you a list of 87 terms that are interchangeable with or used in Critical Race Theory. These include terms like:
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| CRT terminology, source: Center for Renewing America |
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Equitable or Equity
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Educational justice
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Cultural relevance
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Critical self-reflection
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Land acknowledgment
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Spirit murder
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Whiteness
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White social capital
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Restorative justice
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Racial healing
These myriad terms are the ones already in use to obscure
the CRT ideology. I’m sure they will invent more.
By way of information, your Resolution Condemning Racism, which you all signed last September, says that you “resolve to engage an outside entity to conduct an equity audit that will lead us to develop an equity policy/policies.” Now that we know that equity, as opposed to equality, is a CRT term, it looks like you’re taking our taxpayer dollars to get some CRT organization to impose Critical Race Theory on our school district. Now that you know any such action is illegal, we’d like an update on that resolution.
Critical Race Theory is a reworking of Marxist critical
theory. Originally, Marxism divided people and encouraged hatred based on economic
and social class. That doesn’t work in America, where class mobility is typical.
Instead, Marxists now divide and encourage hatred based on race. Their
intention is to overthrow our constitutional republic, our free market, and our
civilizational structures such as families and churches, in order to create
enough chaos that they can step in and impose their tyrannical controlled
social order onto us.
We’re not falling for it.
What we as the parents and taxpayers in Cy-Fair ISD want is
a good education for our children. That absolutely does not include
indoctrinating them in Marxist-based critical theory in any form.
We don’t want them to be taught to hate one another based on
skin color. We don’t want them to be taught to feel guilty and hate themselves
because of their skin color. We don’t want them to be taught to hate their
country, or to misconstrue our founding, which has led to more freedom and
opportunity for all races and ethnicities than any other governmental system in
history.
We don’t want our children to be taught to consider skin
color above character when they interact with one another, and when they
consider the writings and thoughts of brilliant minds who have gone before.
We want them to be taught the truth.
And we’re asking for your promise today that you will abide
by the law and preclude the teaching of any of this racist propaganda.
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