The New York Post reports, An elite Manhattan school is teaching white students as young as 6 that they’re born racist and should feel guilty benefiting from “white privilege,” while heaping praise and cupcakes on their black peers.
Wow. Just wow.
This is what happens when you let educators and public officials define racism incorrectly. Racism does not mean white people hating or abusing black people. Yes, that’s an ugly example of racism. But it’s not the definition of racism.
The definition of racism is when you elevate race to be the most important factor. By this definition, the teachers encouraging white kids to hate themselves for their race is every bit as racist as teaching black kids (or Hispanic kids, or Asian kids) to hate themselves for their race.
Administrators at the Bank Street School for Children on the Upper West Side claim it’s a novel approach to fighting discrimination, and that several other private New York schools are doing it, but even liberal parents aren’t buying it.
Interesting position for liberal, leftist, Obama- and Hillary-supporting parents on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, isn’t it? On the one hand, they want to elevate race as the most important factor when supporting affirmative action and quota laws or lawsuits, and the like. But when this very same sort of thinking gets turned on their own children, it’s a real wake up call. Suddenly they don’t like it when race — in this case, their child’s whiteness — is raised as a weakness. The progressive, so-called “liberal” leftism has come back to bite them where it hurts.
They [the leftist parents] complain the K-8 school of 430 kids is separating whites in classes where they’re made to feel awful about their “whiteness,” and all the “kids of color” in other rooms where they’re taught to feel proud about their race and are rewarded with treats and other privileges.
Is there anything worse than teaching a child to believe that one’s race is an accomplishment, for which rewards are deserved? Whether it’s the black kid being punished for being black, or the black kid being rewarded for being black … isn’t it the same sick, twisted, irrational and inaccurate message either way?
“Ever since Ferguson, the school has been increasing anti-white propaganda in its curriculum,” said a parent who requested anonymity because he has children currently enrolled in the school.
Bank Street has created a “dedicated space” in the school for “kids of color,” where they’re “embraced” by minority instructors and encouraged to “voice their feelings” and “share experiences about being a kid of color,” according to school presentation slides obtained by The Post.
Meanwhile, white kids are herded into separate classrooms and taught to raise their “awareness of the prevalence of Whiteness and privilege,” challenge “notions of colorblindness (and) assumptions of ‘normal,’ ‘good,’ and ‘American’” and “understand and own European ancestry and see the tie to privilege.”
The only alternative to racism? Individualism. The individual self-made soul, or character, is all that ever deserves cherishing or scorn. We have to get past the collective identity mentality of the progressive left, just as we got past the collective identity mentality of the Jim Crow South and all other forms of racism.
Somehow, I don’t see Obama- and Hillary-supporting progressive leftists on the Upper West Side of Manhattan ever accepting individualism. It clashes with their mentality of socialism, group identity and government-sanctioned victimization. They deserve what they’re getting. Sadly, their children must suffer along with them.
Follow Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael Hurd” (Rehoboth Beach DE). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on Twitter at @MichaelJHurd1
Check out Dr. Hurd’s latest Newsmax Insider column here!