King Turning Over In His Grave

If you’re a public school teacher and you’re white, you’re probably a tool of institutional racism and you need to be re-educated. Don’t fret though. The Obama Administration is issuing guidelines that will help you become more conscious of your “whiteness.”

Last week, Attorney General Eric Holder cautioned school districts about their “overly zealous disciplinary policies” that, according to an AP story: “lead to a school to prison pipeline that discriminates against minority students.” The guidelines “[tell] schools that they must adhere to the principle of fairness and equity in student discipline or face strong action if they don’t.”

Actually though, they’re telling schools they must do just the opposite of [adhering] to the principle of fairness and equity. They’re telling schools to judge students by the color of their skin and not the content of their character. Martin Luther King would be appalled.

Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have been intimidating schools, I mean “gathering data” for a while now and they claim that: “Although black students made up 15 percent of students in the data collection, they made up more than a third of students suspended once, 44 percent of those suspended more than once and more than a third of students expelled.” Neither Holder nor Duncan offer any data evidencing that racial discrimination is what causes the disparity. They assume no one will ask, I guess. To them, the numbers are enough. If blacks are disciplined more, it must be because of racism, not because of their behavior.

Around the country, the school districts being intimidated, I mean, “studied,” have tried kissing up to Holder and Duncan by spending millions re-training teachers to root out their unconscious “institutional racism” and make them conscious of their “white privilege.” According to Williamette Week “Portland Public Schools has [sic] spent millions to help stop racial profiling of students in discipline cases. [but] The problem is getting worse.” Principal Verenice Gutierrez of Harvey Scott K-8 School in Portland said the very mention of eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches could be racist, because minority students may not eat them.

I’m not making this up.

Nathan Harnden, writing in “The College Fix,” describes the extensive trainings, staff meetings, classroom observations and other workshops teachers must deal with to change their teaching methods when dealing with minority students. He quotes the “Portland Tribune”: “[T]he first day of the school year for staff, for example, the first item of business for teachers at Scott School was to have a Courageous Conversation - to examine a news article and discuss the ‘white privilege’ it conveys.”

All this comes from a company called “Pacific Education Group,” or “PEG” owned and operated by Glenn Singleton who has become rich by charging school districts huge fees. Like President Obama, Singleton is a disciple of Derrick Bell’s “Critical Race Theory” which purports that something called “systemic racism” permeates white culture. Virtually all us white people are consciously or unconsciously racist, so Singleton, Obama, Holder, and Bell are determined to cure us of it. PEG sends its trainers coast to coast on the taxpayer dime to do so.

Bell: "I live to harass white folks."

I first wrote about “white privilege” seven years ago. My wife received indoctrination while working at Tri-County Mental Health in Bridgton in the 1990s. At least one, and probably several of the student teachers assigned to my classroom was assigned Peggy Macintosh’s 1988 essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by the University of Southern Maine as are thousands, perhaps millions of other college students around the country. The 15th Annual White Privilege Conference will be March 26-29 in Madison, Wisconsin. Many, if not most, will attend at taxpayer expense.

In his first major speech after being confirmed as US Attorney General in 2009, Eric Holder said America was a “nation of cowards” when it comes to talking about race. This writer would suggest that Mr. Holder is obsessed with it. He threatens “strong action” against schools that suspend black students or turn them over to law enforcement more often then students of any other color. He wants schools to treat disruptive young black males as victims of racism at the hands of teachers insufficiently conscious of their “whiteness.” Black students need “restorative justice” delivered through “courageous conversations” (whatever the heck those are) rather than discipline.

Our race-obsessed Attorney General wants more power over public schools. He wants to reinforce the idea that all black people are victims and ramp up white guilt because that’s what put the Obama Administration, and him, in power. It got Obama reelected and insulates Obama from criticism for destroying our economy, our health-care system, our foreign policy, for spying on the press, and for using the IRS to harass his political enemies. 

Looks like I retired none too soon from my long career in the public schools. There’s no way I would sit through a training session on “white privilege” quietly.