By Gregory M. Thayer, MBA
We send our children to school to learn the three-R’s, our history, and more importantly how to interact and socialize with others. They attend school with many people of different backgrounds: looks, color, religion, family situations and we teach them at home how to be respectful and be a good person based on character, to all people. Furthermore, we teach our children how to be good listeners and to treat people how they want to be treated. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said “Black Supremacy is as dangerous as White Supremacy and GOD is not interested merely in the Freedom of Black Men, GOD is interested in the Freedom of the Whole Human Race and in the Creation of a Society where ALL MEN can live together as Brothers.”
Now, we are learning that the Left is pushing a Marxist agenda called “Critical Race Theory” with the adoption of Equity policies in our government schools. The proponents of this teaching will negatively teach our children and grandchildren to hate, be racist, and to judge all people by the color of their skin.
The Civil Rights Acts of 1964, and everything Martin Luther King, Jr taught is destroyed. Equity is not equality, it teaches the lowest level of survival. I’m tired of hearing people say that “schools aren’t teaching CRT.” What do you think “proficiency grading” is? Why do many school Districts around the State have Equity Directors and teacher/parent/students Equity study groups?
When school administrators say that there are no CRT/Equity policies being taught in our schools, they are being very disingenuous to parents, taxpayers and citizens. There are many Equity policies a/k/a CRT teachings happening all around us, creating division, confusing children in our schools and Institutions.
Here are six questions being asked to students in elementary schools across Vermont and America:
1. When did you become aware of your race?
- Did the adults in your life have to address the topic of race?
- Beyond self-education, what is the most important action you can take?
- Talk about the parallels between lynchings and Police brutalities today?
- If you are White, how has your race affected you?
- What relationship do you have with the Police, and how does your race play into that?
Think about those questions being asked by educators. They are both toxic and completely out of line.
Introducing Critical Race Theory/Equity (CRT) to our children is not the right of government schools, that is a parent and guardian responsibility. Not sure when government schools were charged with taking over of our children. The thinking that “it takes a village” is so anti-family and love, that it makes people sick. CRT is reverse racism! Teaching white children that if you are a white person, you are inherently racist. Now, the NEA is force-feeding this “1619 Project”. Which says that America was founded then and that everything was founded on the backs of slavery. Why haven’t the Unions been teaching the truth until now? We have some excellent educators in our public schools that are “going along, to get along” to retirement.” I have some close friends that describe it that way.
On April 7, 2021, the Vermont House Committee on Education conducted a hearing, where a UVM Professor said that as he was looking at his son recently and said “my son is a racist and he doesn’t even know it”. WOW! That is horrible thinking by this highly educated man, and a father.
The CRT/Equity teachings, on their principles, only teaches our children to align with their race or group, and to disrespect and hate all other groups. It teaches our children that all white people are oppressors and every black person is a victim. Any person with basic common-sense knows that is not true. It teaches people to judge, to segregate others, and to erase our rich history. Our own Declaration of Independence is considered racist!
It’s nothing more than a radical ideology of hate and division that is being taught to our students at the expense of history, civics, and The Constitution. CRT/Equity is in direct opposition to the last Sixty years of American liberalism. It is in serious contrast of every liberal policy in America. It is in direct violation of the the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the 14th Amendment, our Constitution, and I’m certain of every State’s Constitution. It is in direct conflict of the teachings of Booker T. Washington, Fredrick Douglas and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and others.
Additionally, it violates the tenets of freedom, free-markets and Capitalism, collectively. In 1953, the U.S. Supreme Court ending segregation in our government schools in Brown vs. Board of Education ruling. The Left wants to tear every one of our great Institutions down from our creation in 4 July 1776 to today. Segregation may have come to an end via the courts, yet CRT is the same animal, wearing a different face. It is modern segregation; any movement that alienates a race, is no better than the movement of the past that did the same.
In order for this teaching to be accepted in our government schools the Declaration of Independence would need to be deleted, CRT/Equity is in violation with that precious document too, because in it the language “We hold these TRUTHS to be Self-Evident, that All MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL, that they are Endowed by their Creator with certain Unalienable Rights, that among them; Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. The proponents of CRT/Equity will destroy it.
The history of Critical Race Theory founded in Frankfurt, Germany in the 1920’s with Critical Theory (CT), based on the teachings of Karl Marx. Forward to the 1980’s to an America at Columbia University NYC where several (Marxist) Professors started to draft up their fight for Black power teaching in post-HS academia. CRT teaching is rampant in most law schools in America.
Millions of students in government schools are being indoctrinated into hating America, and their friends whom have a different level of melanin in their skin. For the good and future of our Nation, American teaching principles must be about learning the three R’s in our classrooms. School age students need to be learning about the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and various laws and Case law. Study the writings in the Federalist papers, Booker T Washington and MLK, Jr. as well as Capitalism and our Free-Market systems. Real American values that stops indoctrinating students about radical ideology that teaches them to hate America.
Our history is not perfect, nor are we as individuals. We learn from our mistakes and in the end we do the right thing. If people violate others we have laws to protect all people.
Critical Race Theory is creating another more malevolent form of racism, and continuing modern segregation. It encourages hatred and violence against White people and embodies criminal behavior as if it were an entitlement. We all must stop the adoption of CRT/Equity in our schools and society!
Critical Race Theory holds these ideas as truth:
- There is no absolute truth—only competing narratives. It sees “lived experiences” as mattering more than facts.
- Individuals are either an oppressor or victim. You are predetermined by immutable characteristics such as race to fall into either category. Culture is defined by groups exercising power over each other.
- America is systemically racist and must be dismantled. It sees America as having been founded on the system of capitalism, which is racist, and therefore must be disrupted.
Proponents want to tear down America and destroy our Constitution and Free-Market systems, and bring about a racist, hate, and it pit’s people of race, ethnicity, religion against one another. We are a God loving country with great heights of respect for each other and people of differences and other Nations. We believe in “live and let live!”
Will you step up, stand up and stand firm and join millions of grass-root Americans in taking a stand against Critical Race Theory/Equity? I leave you with this…
“CRT has become the academic body of work that underpins identity politics, an ongoing effort to re-imagine the United States as a Nation not of individuals and local communities, united under common purpose, but as one driven by groups based on sex, race, national origin or gender – each with specific claims on victimization. Identity politics has become the new paradigm under which many Americans now operate. Victimization is what commands attention, respect, and entitlements, seen as compensatory justice.” – Jonathan Butcher & Mike Gonzalez Heritage Foundation. Washington, DC.
Gregory M. Thayer, MBA of Rutland is Founder of Vermonters for Vermont Initiative.
Categories: Commentary
C.R.T. is C.R.A.P.
100% crap. That there may exist systemic racism may be fact- but the systemic racism was designed in the mid-1960’s by the democrat party. Laws were passed, programs invented and trillions spent to give minorities “a leg up”. the net result is the current plight of “BIPOC” people.
We’ve tried the democrats way for almost 60 years, would not that be empirical evidence that their way just doesn’t work? Or, are we to be told more programs and money need to be spent- “we” just didn’t try hard enough.
Perhaps these School Board members and teachers had ought to read a bit of Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams take on the situation. That’s two extremely smart men who happen to be black and have first hand experience with what they write-
Frank – the programs you speak of were used by more white Americans than minorities – so you seem to be condemning them all. We certainly have NOT “tried the democrats way for almost 60 years”. I seem to remember 8 years of Ronald Reagan’s “trickle down” economics that morphed into 40 years of stagnant wages for working people, and incredible growth of wealth for the top 5%…….
Going to poison our children and turn them against their parents and country if you don’t believe this your mind has already been poisoned
Will cripple America? Dawn breaks fifty years too late!
The notion that “Critical Race Theory” is being taught in elementary schools is total bullpucky. This is just another attempt to divide people and break down the freedom and unity that are the birthright of Vermonters and that draw us Flatlanders to this brave little state. For shame!
No, Linda, unfortunately, it is not “bullpucky”. While the theory itself is not being taught to young children, the actions and implications are. Think of it as “age appropriate”. Kindergarteners cannot write essays on their white privilege… but they can be directed in an art class to mix paint to represent other races and then talk about how they may feel differently to those skin tones and how they have “bias”. Yes, this happened in a VT public school, in a kindergarten class. Now, ask yourself if you think 5 year olds need to be directed in this. Most 5 year olds don’t think about race- for them, their peers come in all shapes and sizes and they play with the peers they like, not based on physical characteristics. We should focus on ensuring there is no discrimination based on physical characteristic, not directing kids to see physical characteristics as a “privilege” or a reason for “victim hood”.
Dear EC – I agree with Linda that “critical Race Theory” is not taught in elementary schools, and you yourself seem to agree when you say that “the theory itself is not being taught to young children”. In this discussion and in the commentary by Mr.Thayer , “CRT” is not even clearly defined in any way that I can see….no one would even know it’s legal theory discussed in graduate law school classes, not the vaguely alluded-to fearsome democracy-crushing, capitalism-destroying monolith scaring the bejesus out of all us good salt-of-the-earth folks here in Vermont. I agree with you that most 5 year-olds don’t think about race – but that doesn’t mean they aren’t affected by the cultural cues all around them… Just read once again about the famous “doll test” that played a small part in the Brown vs. Board of Education case & notice how your heart goes out to the very young kids who were so tuned in to the cultural view surrounding them that they clearly felt they were “inferior”.
https://www.naacpldf.org/ldf-celebrates-60th-anniversary-brown-v-board-education/significance-doll-test/
As a very wonderful letter-writer in the St. Albans Messenger said : “After recently learning about (certain events of our history), I was not ashamed of being white, I was ashamed of not knowing…..”
There are so many amazing books and discussions going on at this time in our history – let’s be open to learning all of our amazing history, not looking away from it. “As a nation, how can we know where we are going if we don’t know where we have been ?” Ty Seidule from his book, “Robert E.Lee and Me”. ( I highly recommend reading it !)
Actually, it is “bull plucky.” Complete and utter bull plucky in fact. Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a critical part of American history, something I learned as a young lad, because American culture, life, politics, and society is built off of it and it is how the plantation masters and then the factory masters and now the oligarchs divide us against each other.
“They are both toxic and completely out of line.” <–This right here is the crux of your problem. Talking about race is not toxic. Talking about police brutality is not toxic. Completely out of line? Clearly not. You know what's toxic? Racist fearmongers who refuse to face their own complicity in systemic racism, who will fill their own mouths with excrement to prevent admitting that racism is a real issue in this country, and that they are part of the problem by their straw man attacks on the oh so scary idea of CRT. Why are you afraid to discuss racism? I grew up in Vermont, the place is FULL of racism and bigotry. Why are you afraid to admit it? Why are you afraid? WHY ARE YOU AFRAID?
EC thank you for bringing that example to the table – deep dive Linda – the rabbit hole awaits you! When you realize what is being taught in many many schools across the nation and then go deeper as to the content – deeper again to find the intent – now mix that in with the character of those who have been recruited and trained for this pile of rubbish I dare say you might possibly wake up a mother lion.