Critical race theory (CRT) is one of the biggest and most contentious issues being discussed on both sides of the aisle in Congress and across the country. As Liberty Nation’s Jeff Charles said, CRT “has blossomed into a substantial wedge issue in the United States, especially as it relates to teaching about race in the nation’s classrooms.” As schools work to be more woke, teaching children that white people are racist has apparently become part of the regular curriculum. In Chicago, however, a legal group is pushing back, accusing the district of teaching anti-white racism.
The Southwest Legal Foundation filed a discrimination lawsuit against the Evanston, IL. school district. It claims teachers are segregating students by race while teaching an anti-white syllabus to children as early as kindergarten. The legal group alleges violations of the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and that teachers at Evanston/Skokie School District 65 are “treating individuals differently because of their race.” If further accuses Devon Horton, the superintendent, of telling instructors: “If you’re not antiracist, we can’t have you in front of our students.”
Teaching Children to Hate Each Other?
The lawsuit suggests that District 65 “treats employees and students unequally because of race and fosters a hostile environment.” Two posters, allegedly part of the curriculum for elementary students, were presented as evidence.
Furthermore, the lawsuit states:
“The District’s practices take its faculty and students further from the truth and reconciliation. Instead, the District’s practices divide them into two worlds: the oppressors and the oppressed. They teach them that their whole identity comes from the color of their skin. They teach them to hate each other. They teach them not only how to be racist, but that they should be racist. And the District does this by treating people differently because of their race.”
Some of the alleged activities are very disturbing to CRT critics. Students participating in activities have to be in “affinity groups” of others with the same skin color, for example. Additionally, “privilege walks” are group exercises where teachers stand in a line separate from each other in response to the prompt, “[b]ecause of my race or color.”
Stacy Deemar, a plaintiff in the suit, has been a drama teacher in the district since 2002. On June 17, 2019, she filed a complaint with the United States Department of Education Office of Civil Rights (OCR) claiming the district was “hosting racial affinity groups for staff, forcing teachers and students to undergo frequent race-based programming, and maintaining general policies and practices that classified individuals based on race.” According to the document, the OCR determined that the district was indeed violating Title VI regulations; “However, just days after President Biden was inaugurated, OCR suspended the letter of finding against District 65.”
The district manages 18 public schools with more than 8,000 pre-kindergarten through eighth grade students and is governed by seven locally-elected school board members. Because it receives federal funding, it is subject to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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