by Michael Bielawski
Aaron Kindsvatter, a former professor in the College of Education and Social Services at the University of Vermont, currently in private practice, is helping to organize local chapters in Vermont for FAIR which is the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, a nationwide organization.
He suggested that left-wing groups are pushing “race essentailism” in America’s education systems, which is similar in themes to Critical Race Theory.
“I think FAIR is about to put some adults in the room when these conversations [about race and social justice] come up, people can remain calm and be secure in their views and address the issues of actual racism that remain,” Kindsvatter said in a phone interview with VDC on Thursday morning.
He said part of their goal is to “challenge race essentialists’ ideas and put the idea of ethical color-blindness or race transcendentalism out there and say look this too, please consider this if you are feeling like you have to make a choice between extreme left ideas that are race essentialists and extreme right ideas that would disregard that race or sexual orientation is not an important thing to understand.”
Kindsvatter first made headlines in Vermont for a YouTube video in which he questioned the promotion of critical race theory by his university, a system of beliefs that argues whites are oppressors and non-whites are victims. He’s spoken at public events across the state over recent years.
“You would not believe what the future teachers are being taught in their college education,” he said to a crowd at a church in Underhill during 2021.
He said that the organization FAIR is appearing throughout Vermont in new chapters, and he is helping to work on a formal website and meetings for the group to advance.
He said that what’s happening in education across the nation these days is the new educators coming out of college and into the schools are already indoctrinated in the belief systems of CRT.
“All the teachers graduate from colleges of education which are blatantly indoctrinating higher education students who are going to become teachers,” he said. “So the teachers that are flooding into the schools have been subjected to indoctrination.”
He said what makes confronting these people and their ideas sometimes challenging is they present themselves at a moral high ground working for justice and doing what’s right.
“So we’ve got these toxic ideas out there but they’ve somehow become fashionable,” Kindsvatter said. “And what’s really difficult about them is that they tend to come cloaked with the veneer of justice and harm reduction and so they are very hard to refute. The moment one begins to question those ideas one is accused of causing harm.”
He explained that he is largely trying to imitate the work of an African American man who would confront Klan members and advocate for them to give up their misguided ways.
“What’s really a shame about this is that racism and homophobia is actually something that the vast majority of people could actually come together around, and there’s guy by the name of Daryl Davis, he’s a FAIR advisor and he has shown us how. He’s a black man who has befriended dozens of Klu Klux Klan members and they have quit the Klan and given him their hoods.”
He said the reason for Davis’s success was because these racists were “desperate and lonely” and Davis was able to approach them with compassion.
“I would say that what FAIR is attempting to do is emulate the work of Daryl Davis,” he said.
He said what’s on the agenda next for FAIR is to get a formal website up and running for Vermont. There’s a national website that can be seen here. Plus they will soon announce meetings so that members can get together and have constructive conversations and plan to take more actions from there.
The author is a reporter for Vermont Daily Chronicle