Grand Haven Area Public Schools adopted a “Pledge for Racial Equity” during the August 2020 board meeting. Although this pledge sounds good it is actually a play-on-words that advocates dangerous Critical Race Theory (CRT) ideas. Even school board members who signed and adopted the pledge may not fully understand the implications. They probably believed this document was reducing racism. Unfortunately, documents like this have been adopted by schools across the country and they actually result in teaching students and teachers to be racist.
According to the pledge it is assumed that everyone has implicit bias. Implicit bias means you assume EVERYONE IS RACIST. Once it is determined that everyone with white skin is racist, the only remedy is to focus on skin color and work to eliminate racism. What happens is instead of focusing on skills and personality everything revolves around race. In an effort to reduce racism, racism is actually taught.
Equity is another key word in the “Pledge for Racial Equity”. What is the difference between Equity and Equality? Equity refers to equal outcomes, while equality refers to equal opportunity as in our Constitution. Equality is what made this country great. Equity if allowed to permeate, will destroy it.
Equity is the goal of all communist countries. Quoting Carl Marx, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” When everyone receives a participation ribbon, that is equity of outcomes. Is it wrong for one person to win a blue ribbon? What if that person trained every day for two months before a running race? Does that person deserve a different reward for winning? Why would anyone work hard to achieve when everyone is rewarded the same?
When everyone in a class can do multiplication, that is equity of outcomes. If there is one child that can’t understand math beyond multiplication, should the entire class be held back? That is equity. Should we stop math education when the lowest achiever in the class has met his/her fullest potential?
Our children need to stop being taught racism for history and politically correct language for government and civics.
Our children should be taught the Constitution. They should be able to name the five fundamental freedoms guaranteed to every citizen by the Bill of Rights.
Can you? - speech, religion, assembly, press, bear arms.
Instead our children are learning to define the term Cis Gender.– it refers to a man, who was born a man, who believes he is a man, and is attracted to women or it refers to a woman, who was born a woman, who believes she is a woman, and is attracted to men. Do we really need a term for this?
This is what our children are learning!
Grand Haven has done a good job exposing children to a variety of skills, but we must not let this be taken away by the current trends in education. I would never want to see someone at a disadvantage because of their race, but we shouldn’t focus on race at all. Our personalities, skills and interests are what defines us. Not our race!
There is a big difference between equity and equality. There is a big difference between not being raciest and teaching racism through the guise of diversity and inclusion. Kids should be given lots of opportunities. They should be challenged in class. Equity of outcomes must be stopped. Teaching racism must be stopped. Elements of CRT are being taught at GHAPS and it will take our community speaking up together to stop the schools from teaching these harmful ideas.