AMAC Exclusive
Written By: Joshua Charles
The Biden Department of Education has released a new proposed rule, and it confirms our worst fears: they are attempting to impose “woke” insanity on our children’s classrooms. While this new rule would apply to a limited number of programs, that number will increase exponentially if the “Civics Secures Democracy Act” (which we have previously reported on) passes. That legislation, among other things, will provide $1 billion in funding for various state education programs that incorporate “Critical Race Theory.”
The proposed rule explicitly praises Ibram X. Kendi, an “anti-racist” activist and “scholar” who has been at the forefront of the “woke” movement. A brief perusal of Kendi’s Twitter account will show that he interprets absolutely everything in American society through the lens of racism and oppression—in his view, people are merely the outcome of their group identity, which in turn can only be ascribed to surroundings, never to individuals. The proposed rule quotes him saying, “Antiracist ideas argue that racist policies are the cause of racial inequities.” In other words, disparities between different racial groups are always and everywhere the result of “racist policies.” And what have these “racist policies” resulted in? Inequity. The opposite of which is “equity” (hence why you keep hearing that word much more). And what is “equity”? It is equal outcomes between different groups of people. Therefore, in Kendi’s view, until outcomes between African-Americans and white Americans are precisely equal (because otherwise, there would be an “inequity”), then remnants of “racist policies” remain.
Naturally, the “Woke” conveniently ignore the fact that disparities between African-Americans and Asian-Americans are even greater than with white Americans, for this fundamentally disproves the thesis of “Critical Race Theory” that America is intrinsically and inherently built and maintained by white supremacy. But this movement is not about facts and evidence—it is about power, pure and simple. This is what one would expect from a Marxist worldview, which asserts that power is the only thing that truly exists—therefore, it is the only thing worth pursuing. And that is what they seek: the power to remake the world in their own image, to impose their abstraction on the real world, despite the fact that it is impossible to obtain. As African-American scholar and economist Thomas Sowell once observed, “If you can’t get equality among people born of the same parents and raised under the same roof, why in the world would you think you’re going to get it among people who’ve had such different histories and cultures around the world?” What we can’t achieve in our own families, the “Woke,” seeks to achieve across all of society through the power of the state. And they’ve enlisted the Biden Administration to do their bidding.
Naturally, these abstractions are fodder for power-hungry politicians, as they provide them with endless justifications for power-grabbing in pursuit of this never before seen “equity.” The strategy is very simple:
- Propose a never-before-seen, unattainable, yet seemingly laudable abstraction as the goal—“equity,” meaning equal outcomes among groups, the lack of which is always blamed on “racist policies”;
- Since this abstraction never has and never will exist in the real world, the pursuit of it can never come to an end—it will never achieve its ostensible goal; therefore
- The state is endlessly empowered to dismantle what it labels as “racist policies,” and impose what it calls “anti-racist policies” in its place.
Beginning to see why leftist takeovers often end up bloody? By principles such as these, the power of the state can be nothing but endless.
The proposed rule goes on to state that the Department of Educations seeks to “Support the creation of learning environments that validate and reflect the diversity, identities, and experiences of all students.” [Emphasis added] Objective morality and fact play no part in such a rule and apparently no part in this new Orwellian system of education it seeks to bring about.
Under the new Biden rule, the culture war that is tearing apart our society will now become the norm in our classrooms. A common American identity is being dismantled in favor of (supposedly) the validation of all perspectives. Our national motto E Pluribus Unum—”Out of many, one”—will now apparently be E Pluribus plural—”Out of many, many more.”
The proposed rule also specifically cites and praises the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” which claims that the essence of American history is racism and oppression, which means our country must necessarily be “transformed,” as Kendi himself called for after the Chauvin verdicts were announced. But the 1619 Project has been slammed by many eminent historians (including Gordon Wood). “We all want justice, but not at the expense of truth,” Wood wrote. Wood and others have skewered many of the 1619 Project’s most basic claims—and yet it is this same project that the Biden Administration proposed rule praises and encourages to be adopted in school curriculums across the country.
It’s no wonder then that the first item on the first priority of the proposed rule are programs that “take into account systemic marginalization, biases, inequities, and discriminatory policy and practice in American history.” This is, in essence, the roundly refuted 1619 Project that the rule itself praises.
As we saw several nights ago, the President of the United States has openly and unabashedly endorsed the “Woke” idea that America is “systemically racist.”
As scholar and columnist Stanley Kurz recently stated, “We are set for a huge showdown over federal efforts to press leftist action civics and Critical Race Theory on the states.”
We must not lose.