AMAC Exclusive
According to her own words, Bettina Love wants nothing less than to “abolish” America as we know it, and to indoctrinate our children with the radical agenda of the Marxist political left. These are the ideas that the Biden administration apparently wants taught to students across the country.
As Fox News recently reported, the Biden Department of Education included a “guide” published by Love’s “Abolitionisting Teach Network” (ATN) in the federal government’s school reopening manual, which instructs school districts across the country how to use new federal funding under Biden’s “American Rescue Plan.”
As the Department of Education document makes clear, that funding is not merely to be spent buying school districts extra gallons of hand sanitizer. The Biden administration intends to use the money to infect our young people with extreme left-wing CRT ideology that undermines the very foundations of our country.
Thanks to the amazing work of Stanley Kurtz, Americans are getting a deeper look at the ideas being pushed by the Biden administration’s hitherto unknown CRT guru, Battina Love.
As Kurtz describes, the Biden-endorsed booklet published by Love’s organization is called a “Guide for Racial Justice & Abolitionist Social and Emotional Learning.”
Among the things the guide asks teachers to do? “[D]isrupt Whiteness and other forms of oppression.” The administration now claims this was an “error”, and that it does not support the aims of ATN. But was it?
As Kurtz points out, Bettina Love is all the rage among “progressive” educators, despite the fact that she is not as famous as better-known CRT prophets such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo. Love’s 2019 book, We Want to Do More Than Survive, provides an illuminating look into her idea of what constitutes “Whiteness.”
As Love describes in her book, her family wasn’t religious, but she attended a Catholic school as a child where she was taught by nuns who adhered to the American ideal of colorblindness—a concept that Love now claims is “anti-black.” Her transformation into an extremist started when she began attending an after-school program run by a leftist college student who decried the thinking of figures like Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, etc. in favor of the more radical thought of Angela Davis, Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers. This is when, in Love’s own self-description, she went from merely “surviving” to “thriving,” per the title of her book.
Love considers much of modern education, including standardized testing, as part of the “educational survival complex.” She argues that it must be totally dismantled and replaced by an “antiracist” alternative that roots out “systemic oppression” and helps transform society. Included in that vision are goals such as the destruction of capitalism and what Love calls “Whiteness.”
As Kurtz highlights, Love believes that “Whiteness” has made the United States a “spirit murderer” of minority children, and she appeals to a tradition of radical politics which she claims is totally separate from the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. Abolishing “Whiteness” means, in her words, overturning the “Eurocentric, elitist, patriarchal and dehumanizing structures of racial capitalism and its liberal underpinnings.”
In its place, Love would educate students in what she claims is a form of civics. But it’s not the kind of civics that teaches young people to pay taxes, vote, volunteer, “and have good character.” She considers these concepts nothing but code for “comply, comply, comply.”
Instead, Love argues that the destiny of “dark folx” depends on how much they “disobey and fight for justice.” This leads her into the advocacy of so-called “action civics”—a form of political indoctrination that does nothing to teach the next generation about our constitutional system, but instead subsidizes opportunities for students to engage in leftist demonstrations, protests, and activism. This sort of civics, according to Love, will help dismantle racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, classism, “mass incarceration,” and immigration enforcement. Thus, the core of “education” for Love is totally transforming the United States of America.
“Abolitionist teaching,” she says, “is…a way of life, a way of seeing the world, and a way of taking action against injustice.”
Just like the other leading CRT figures who praise her work, Love refuses to engage in genuine debate about her ideas. If anyone opposes her agenda, they are working on behalf of “Whiteness,” Love says, which she claims, “is addicted to centering itself, addicted to attention, and making everyone feel guilty for working toward its elimination.”
In other words, she pathologizes those who disagree with her, and dismisses them out of hand as racists. No matter how incoherent her arguments may be, however, they are being endorsed and deployed by the Biden administration, left-wing activists in various states, and Democrats pushing multiple federal bills in Congress designed to nationalize civics education.
The Biden administration can claim that supporting Love’s booklet was an “error” all it wants. But it is clear the only “error” was getting caught. Biden’s attempt to impose a national civics curriculum infused with CRT is directly inspired by the work and ideas of Battina Love and other proponents of this dangerous Marxism. Parents, grandparents, teachers, administrators: beware.
