The shuttering of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices across businesses and schools has been mostly successful. This harmful practice pushes racial essentialism and racial Marxism, making no one a better person. President Donald Trump has been the main driver behind this anti-DEI push, issuing an executive order within his first 100 days demanding a return to meritocracy.

Enter California.

California is one of the deepest blue states in the country. Many of the entrenched radical bureaucrats within have a vested interest in keeping schools a haven for DEI. In April, state lawmakers deliberately defied President Trump’s executive order and chose to continue the requirement for DEI curricula. They refused to sign a certification stating that they would get rid of their DEI programs in schools. In fact, they are doubling down on DEI programs.

In 2021, Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law an edict declaring that some form of DEI is required learning for all California school children. The law stipulates that all schools in the state must teach a course on ethnic studies. This Newsom-stamped diktat, according to journalist Abigail Shrier, “effectively made antisemitism a formal feature of California schooling.” She adds, “The original curriculum, ‘Liberated Ethnic Studies,’ was so outrageously antisemitic, it was officially abandoned.”

At one point, the University of California system considered requiring all incoming students to have completed such a course at their own primary or secondary school as a prerequisite for admission. This was also eventually abandoned.

Here we are in May, four months into the new administration, and California schools are doubling down on their DEI programs.

This has caused considerable friction across the state. On an ironic note, this DEI requirement has become a financial burden on the state’s poorest schools, as the programs cannot be funded by any federal tax dollars.

On a morally repugnant note, these ethnic studies classes promote anti-Semitic and anti-American sentiments in the classroom. America and Israel are particularly villainized for being settler/colonialist in their origins — while leftists ignore the fact that all nations are settler/colonial in nature, even indigenous ones. Ethnic studies teaches arbitrary hatred toward racial groups they don’t like, which 10 years ago would have been a pretty good definition of racism.

The person who originally designed the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales — a professor at San Francisco State University — is a pro-Hamas advocate. Under the guise of bolstering Palestinian “liberation,” she cheered on the protests and pushed the oppressor vs. oppressed narrative when talking about Israel.

These themes are all in the ethnic studies curriculum, and when parents object — particularly Jewish parents — they are met with scorn and utter contempt. One particularly nasty example occurred at a school board meeting in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District. When parents and grandparents stood up to voice their objections, one board member, Gabriel Medina, shook his finger at them. He called them “you people” and proceeded to say, “You only show up to meetings when it’s beneficial for you, so you can tell brown people who they are. … The lies that you spewed here tonight were insane. … If you want to continue to be segregationists like you were … in the past, working against brown kids because you didn’t want to see them in power, I refuse to let that happen.”

The moral blindness of people like Medina is insane. This board member is tearing Jewish people down in order to bolster “brown people” out of a sense that the Jews are oppressors. Jewish American citizens represent 2.4% of the U.S. population. They are a tiny religious and ethnic minority. They just happen to be successful when the playing field is based on individual merit because merit is a cultural value. As a result, Jewish Americans are perceived to be in a position of power — and therefore ostensibly part of the problem. This racial essentialism is exactly what led to some of the worst moments in world history. California thought this sort of education — for children, no less — was worth defying Trump to maintain.

Parents in California: This should be a rallying cry for you. This is not the world you want your kids to live in, where someone’s skin color is the single most defining aspect about them. Run for the school boards. Fight back against this tooth and nail. The next generation of kids depends on it.