Let’s be generous and suppose that the members of the Eanes School Board weren’t keeping an eye on the contents of the District’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) webpage. Let’s suppose they didn’t notice the contents of the Eanes Resources page. I know that’s hard to accept because the website is the most public and authoritative source for figuring out what’s happening in Eanes on the DEI front. Anyone who wants to know the District’s official position about DEI would check the District DEI webpage—so you’d think the Eanes School-Board members would be checking it, too.
Ok, so maybe School-Board members weren’t originally watching the Resources page. But the moment last year that the Resources page became controversial, we can assume that the School-Board members reviewed it. (If the website was controversial and they didn’t review it, well, that adds a whole other failure-of-fiduciary-duty wrinkle.)
The very entry of the very first tab contained this content: “Whiteness. Socially and politically constructed, whiteness is not simply referring to skin color but is an ideology that reinforces power at the expense of others and strengthens systems of oppression.”
Do you hear how ugly that is?
Whiteness is an ideology.
Whiteness reinforces power at the expense of others.
Whiteness strengthens systems of oppression.
If you use these ideas with white students, you are teaching them that they are guilty of badness just by virtue of the color of their skin. If you use these ideas with non-white students, you are teaching them that they are powerless victims of some invisible oppressive system of whiteness. Garbage. Absolute racist garbage.
This is the most perfect and concise expression of the divisive and toxic message at the heart of Critical Race Theory. Who could possibly believe that this ideology could make race relations better? It’s straight-up racism.
Since racism in any form has no place in Eanes ISD, then why in the name of all things Chaparral was this message recommended by the District?
If I were an Eanes School-Board member and I found this link on an officially sanctioned list of resources on a website that has my imprimatur stamped on it, then I would break my ankle getting to the phone as fast as I could to call whoever made this list:
Get this racist trash off the EISD website. I will not have my name associated with it. Period.
Is that what the School-Board members did? Did they demand this racist resource (and all the others) be removed from the District website?
No, they did not. Instead, they spent a year defending and ignoring it. They spent a year demonizing the parents who wanted it removed. They spent a year acting holier-than-thou and feigning ignorance. And with the deepest hypocrisy and irony, they spent a year patting themselves on the back for their virtuous commitment to increasing inclusivity and belonging.
They spent a year endorsing a blatant message of racism.