Critical race theory

A high school in Illinois is offering math classes segregated by race, according to course listings for the 2023-24 school year found on the school's website. There are at least five course offerings at Evanston Township High School that are only open to either black or "Latinx" students. A course description for an Algebra 2 class, for example, states that "this code for the course is restricted to students who identify as Latinx, all genders." An Advanced Placement Calculus class is similarly "restricted to students who identify as Black, all genders." There is a separate AP Calculus course for "Latinx" students, as well.

It’s an article of faith on the left that misinformation and conspiracy theories originate almost exclusively from the right. But consider the media’s coverage of the latest controversy over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (or any that preceded it). Florida recently rejected a planned Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies curriculum that DeSantis argued would indoctrinate children. The curriculum includes works from proponents of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the abolition of prisons and police. There are units on Black Queer studies, the case for reparations, “Black feminist literary thought,” BLM, intersectionality, and other pet progressive causes. “In the state of Florida, our education standards required students to study Black history,” DeSantis explained.

Check the liberal reaction to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s January decision to block a new Advanced Placement course on African-American studies in the state’s high schools and you would think the Sunshine State was reinstituting Jim Crow. The Washington Post’s Karen Attiah — always one to jump at the chance to spew rhetorical fireworks when it comes to all things race — accused DeSantis of normalizing “anti-blackness” and “making institutional anti-blackness lawful again.” CNN’s John Blake asserted that DeSantis's move “echoes similar decisions made by fascist dictators,” including Vladimir Putin.

Peter Salovey must be fretting. The longtime president of Yale University has done everything in his power to pander to the forces of woke identity politics. He changed the name of Calhoun College at Yale because students didn’t like that it was named after John C. Calhoun, a supporter of slavery in the early nineteenth century. Salovey covered over or ripped out artwork across the university that a specially appointed committee deemed insensitive or offensive. He shoveled tens of millions of dollars into “diversity” initiatives in an effort to appease student crybullies. But Salovey has one insuperable handicap. He is white. In the great racial sweepstakes of the day, that is (if I may so put it) an insuperable black mark. Harvard understands this.

Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin is not backing down in the face of left-wing criticism of his new policy on parental rights in schools. During a Sunday interview on CNN's State of the Union, Youngkin rejected the push from teachers' unions and Democratic activists to supplant families as the most important arbiter of a child's upbringing. "[P]arents have a fundamental right to be engaged in their children’s lives,” Youngkin said. “And, oh, by the way, children have a right to have parents engaged in their life. And we needed to fix a wrong…children don’t belong to the state. They belong to families.

Another school year has begun. It's another year that I’m grateful to have left public education. From the outside, it doesn’t make much sense for me to have left. I had a good reputation in my district among staff, students, and administration. The pay at public schools is markedly better. And being a private school teacher makes you something of an outcast among teacher colleagues — never quite “one of us.” I did not leave because of the standard accusation — that I couldn’t “handle it.” In many ways, my private school jobs have been far more difficult than my public school one.