The Patriot Post® · Racists Masquerading as Educators

Mark Federman, principal of East Side Community High School in New York City, is a man on a rather dubious mission. In a burst of “wokeness,” Federman sent white parents of students in grades 6-12 a handout asking them to “reflect” on their “whiteness.” It was accompanied by a color-coordinated graph of “8 White Identities,” ranging from a red zone on the left titled “White Supremacist” to a green zone on the far right labeled “White Abolitionist.”

This screed was authored by Barnor Hesse, a Northwestern University professor of African American studies, political science, and sociology. Hesse also teaches a course called “Unsettling Whiteness,” and the professor makes it clear the content of one’s character takes a distant back seat to the color of one’s skin — if it matters at all. “There is a regime of whiteness, and there are action-oriented white identities,” he insists in a statement above the graph. “People who identify with whiteness are one of these. It’s about time we build an ethnography of whiteness, since white people have been the ones writing about and governing Others.”

The graph, developed by the Slow Factory Foundation, a group that bills itself as “anti-racist” and “climate-positive,” contains the following descriptions:

1. White Supremacist: Clearly marked white society that preserves name and values white superiority
2. White Voyeurism: Wouldn’t challenge a white supremacist; desires non-whiteness because it’s interesting, pleasurable; seeks to control the consumption and appropriation of non-whiteness; fascination with culture (ex: consuming Black culture without the burden of Blackness)
3. White Privilege: May critique supremacy, but a deep investment in question of fairness/equality under the normalization of white and the white rule; sworn goal of “diversity”
4. White Benefit: Sympathetic to a set of issues but only privately; won’t speak/act in solidarity because benefitting through whiteness in public (some POC in this category as well)
5. White Confessional: Some exposure of whiteness takes place, but as a way of being accountable to POC after; seek validation from POC
6. White Critical: Take on board critiques of whiteness and invest in exposing/marking white regime; refuses to be complicit with regime; whiteness speaking back to whiteness
7. White Traitor: Actively refuses complicity; names what’s going on; intention is to subvert white authority and tell the truth at whatever cost; need them to dismantle institutions
8. White Abolitionist: Changing institutions, dismantling whiteness, and not allowing whiteness to reassert itself

A New York City Department of Education official told the New York Post that it was parents who initially shared the material with school staff, and that Federman then sent it to every parent “as part of a series of materials meant for reflection” and as “food for thought.”

A Department of Education (DOE) official doubled down on this absurd assessment. “Anti-racism and the celebration of diversity is at the core of our work on behalf of the young people of New York City, and the East Side Community School’s students, parents and staff partner together to advance equity in their community,” the official insisted. “The document in question was shared with the school by parents as a part of ongoing anti-racist work in the school community and is one of many resources the schools utilizes.”

The official also illuminated the blowback precipitated by the handout. “Our staff are now being targeted with vile racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic slurs and degrading language from people outside of their school,” the official added, “and nothing justifies the abuse directed at our educators.”

None of this vile nonsense should surprise anyone. NYC Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza has made it clear that a major part of his “education” agenda is aimed at eliminating a “white-supremacy culture” among school administrators. Toward that end, Carranza held “white supremacy culture training” sessions that included the disparagement of concepts such as “individualism,” “objectivity,” and “worship of the written word.” The basis of this program is “Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups,” authored by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun. It lists more than a dozen hallmarks of “white-supremacy culture” school administrators are expected to avoid.

Christopher Rufo, who did a masterful job exposing the federal government’s equally corrosive training sessions on white privilege and Critical Race Theory — to the point where former President Donald Trump issued an executive order to end them — was the person who exposed this effort as well. He offered up a succinct take on what’s going on: “This is the new language of public education.”

Actually, this is the language of racist indoctrination and the attempted intimidation of anyone who dares to defy a progressive ideology increasingly exposed as bankrupt.

A concerned NYC parent summed up this orchestrated descent into de facto apartheid. “I grew up partly in New York on the Upper West Side and when I was young, you’d see all these kids playing in the yard at recess — black, white, Hispanic, Asian, whatever — and they all got along great,” he writes. “Now you have the schools teaching white kids they should feel guilty and that black kids should resent them.”

How bad has it gotten? The author of the op-ed wished to remain anonymous — because he was afraid school principals and teachers might retaliate against his children if he went public.

Thus, genuine diversity, as in the ability to challenge contemptible race-baiting drivel, remains beyond the boundaries of “acceptable” discourse. Instead, Americans are faced with a Cancel Culture where one’s choices are silent acquiescence or personal ruination.

All of this is by design. While Americans are force-fed lectures about race, the most divisive and corrosive aspect of American society — as in an elitist class intent on imposing a de facto oligarchy on a constitutional republic — remains purposefully obscured. “The most elite in America are the most likely to damn the privilege of those who lack it,” historian Victor Davis Hanson explains.

What else is being obscured? A black-white educational achievement gap that spans more than half a century. And what is Chancellor Carranza doing about that? Implementing a grading policy more attuned to social justice than academic achievement and eliminating tests for the city’s elite schools because they don’t produce the “proper” racial outcomes — as in not enough blacks and too many Asians.

Thankfully, there’s a light at the end of this repugnant tunnel. Last Friday on Fox News’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Rufo reminded America that his Stop Critical Race Theory coalition will continue filing lawsuits against racist programs being implemented in America’s classrooms and elsewhere. The coalition asserts such efforts violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” Their aim is to get a case in front of the Supreme Court.

It’s what happens when one tries to eliminate racism — with racism.