Linda Rawlings is, among other things, the Eanes Senior Advisor for the District’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiative. Here are five reasons that make you wonder about that District employment decision.
1. Part of the Alleged Problem. Rawlings was principal of Westlake High School for six years (2006-2012). If the climate at the high school is as racist as DEI consultant Mark Gooden alleges and she never noticed, then she is the least qualified person to lead the District in DEI matters. If things are as bad as Gooden says they are, then she led the administration that allowed the bad climate to happen. If Gooden is right, her overwhelming incompetence should disqualify her from ever advising or opining about the state of Race and Racism™ in Eanes. There’s a direct line from her failure to the alleged need to pay a DEI consultant.
In an August 23, 2021, Austin American-Statesman article, Rawlings even admits her failure:
“[The Eanes DEI initiative] really did come up from kids speaking out,” she said. “It was hard to listen to. I was principal at Westlake when some of the kids, who are in the alumni group that was sharing, were students. That was on my watch. To hear the kids express what their experience was, it was concerning. And I think people heard that and thought, ‘That’s not OK; that’s not what we want.’”
Frankly, if Rawlings truly believes that a racist climate exists in Eanes and it’s been this way for years, how can she claim to be qualified to address the issue? How is she not mortified by her failure?
2. Initiated the Eanes CRT Movement. The Eanes School Board denies that they’re injecting Critical Race Theory into the District, but when you look at their actions over the last 2 years, it’s clear they’re ignorant or they’re lying. And Linda Rawlings has been a key figure in implementing CRT. In early 2020, when Covid was blowing up and the nation was on fire after the death of George Floyd, Rawlings was a lead voice in wanting the District to DO SOMETHING!!! She is responsible for spearheading the initiative for applied CRT. In the DEI Community Webinar (May 13, 2021), she makes statements that indicate either (a) she is completely clueless and does not understand CRT or (b) she understands it but is willing to lie to the community about the District’s initiative.
3. Failed to Research Implicit Bias. In 2020, Rawlings contacted Gooden and asked him to talk to the District about implicit bias. Did she do any research at all about the pseudo-science of implicit bias? Or was it just a phrase she was familiar because it floats out there in the DEI ether? Perhaps she’d kind of heard about it, so she thought it would be super awesome for Gooden to come in and talk about it. She must be unaware of how flimsy the research is around implicit bias. And she must not have done any due diligence about the discredited concept before reaching out to Gooden.
4. Encouraged Consultant Mission Creep. To any objective observer, Rawlings let the District be taken advantage of by Gooden. Originally, he was just going to be hired to do a little work around the flimsy concept of implicit bias. But before you know it, the scope of his contract ballooned to a year-long consulting gig that allowed him to slither into every corner of the District, costing the District $140,000. And, of course, the District rehired him for 2021-22. Rawlings happily encouraged this mission creep.
5. Approved Racist Resource Recommendations. The District DEI webpage is under her purview. Everything on that webpage has her imprimatur, including the racist Resource recommendations. (After repeated parent complaints, the list has finally been removed, but it was posted for over a year.) She should be held accountable for approving that list, which included a recommendation to a website that talks about the racist concept of whiteness [as] an ideology that reinforces power at the expense of others and strengthens systems of oppression.
The fact that Linda Rawlings was hired as and continues to be the District’s Senior Advisor for all things DEI is just one more indication of the School Board’s unmitigated incompetence.