by Tammy Lancour
Friday night in St. Albans City Hall Auditorium, Prof. Aaron Kindsvatter led a group of speakers opposing Critical Race Theory at a “Vermonters for Vermont” Initiative.
The evening opened with reciting our nation’s Pledge of Allegiance and a festive signing of God Bless America, and former legislator Linda Kirker shared her poem: “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave!’
Kindsvatter, a tenured professor, teaches the next generation of psychotherapists and high school guidance counselors in the Graduate School of Counseling. He is very concerned with the CRT teachings to younger minds and the language that UVM is looking to adopt the definition of racism and anti-racism from Boston University Professor Ibram X. Kendi, PhD.
As presented in the UVM Magazine Quillette https://quillette.com/2021/05/07/keep-social-justice-indoctrination-out-of-the-therapists-office/, Professor Kindsvatter said that Kendi’s new definitions of race and racism would, if adopted, change America forever.
“CRT is so very effective and so very perniciou.,” Kindsvatter said. “It fundamentally gives those upon whom it is inflicted a choice between temporary status as a good person who is “doing the work,” work which is purposely never clearly defined so as to make it indefinite, and being understood as some unhuman composite: a fragile white, a self-hating person of color, a white supremacist, or a multiracial white. CRT gives a person a choice between being valued as a human, or being dismissed as a problem, and that is no choice at all.”
“It is not the role of either teachers, mental health professionals or other stakeholders to have their ideological needs gratified in the classroom or in the therapy room. This is at the foundation of every ethic that informs the helping professions, and it should be at the foundation of every curriculum decision that is made within the schools.“It is not the role of either teachers, mental health professionals or other stakeholders to have their ideological needs gratified in the classroom or in the therapy room,” Kindsvatter said. He added, “This is at the foundation of every ethic that informs the helping professions, and it should be at the foundation of every curriculum decision that is made within the schools.”
“Vermonters for Vermont” Initiative founder Gregory Thayer told the audience that “CRT is not about race, it’s about Marxism and tearing our American history, culture, our statutes and systems, and its about destroying our American freedom and liberty.” Thayer started his organization in December 2018 to have a voice in the discussion and to educate all Vermonters because of what he has witnessed first hand what is going on around him. Thayer said, “CRT violates our Constitution, the 14th Amendments, the Bill of Rights, the 1964 Civil Right Act. It also violates everything that Dr. Martin Luther King fought for and taught us as well as Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington.”
Thayer posed six questions that are being asked of students in classrooms here and around the country: 1.) When did you become aware of your race? 2.) Did the adults in your life have to address the topic of race? 3.) Beyond self-education, what is the most important action you can take? 4.) Talk about the parallels between lynchings and Police brutalities today? 5.) If you are White, how has your race affected you? 6.) What relationship do you have with the Police, and how does your race play into that?
Click here for video of the St. Albans Townhall Informational on North West Access TV.