The parents of Farmington Hills, Michigan (a suburb 25 miles outside of downtown Detroit), were none too pleased to discover recently that their school board was forcing students to take a “21-Day Equity Challenge” as part of the district’s “diversity, equity, and inclusion” curriculum.
Parents brought their concerns to a public school board meeting last week, but the school board members were not responsive to their objections.
“At some point, we have to say enough is enough and stop the indoctrination and actually let kids learn the things they are meant to learn,” one unidentified protester said at the meeting.
The school board has since removed the 21-Day Equity Challenge curriculum from its website, but school board members said they would continue using the program.
The 21-Day Challenge was designed by a nonprofit organization called the Privilege Institute, which is dedicated to “disrupting the systemic structure of white supremacy, white privilege and other forms of oppression.”
For each day of the challenge, students are asked to read an essay such as Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “The Case for Reparations” or Kwame Anthony Appiah’s “I’m Jewish and Don’t Identify as White. Why Must I Check That Box?”
They can also watch videos such as critical race theory founder Kimberle Crenshaw’s TED Talk on “the urgency of intersectionality” or Blue Seat Studios’s “defund the police” video that explains “the racist origins of U.S. policing, and paints a vision for what shifting resources from police budgets to housing, food, and other basic life needs can look like.”
The number 21 is chosen because that supposedly is the number of days needed for the human brain to turn an action into a habit. “Creating effective social justice habits, particularly those dealing with issues of power, privilege, supremacy and leadership is like any lifestyle change. Setting our intentions and adjusting what we spend our time doing is essential,” the Privilege Institute’s explanation of the 21-Day Challenge reads. “It’s all about building new habits.”
Yes, this is actually being taught in schools. So don’t let anyone tell you that critical race theory isn’t in classrooms or that it is only being used as a way to debate certain topics. That’s just plain false. Activists are using critical race theory in classrooms not just to teach your child to judge everyone by the color of their skin, but also to do so without thinking — to do so by habit.
If that isn’t brainwashing, we don’t know what is.
