Shining A Spotlight On Critical Race Theory In New York High Schools

April 19, 2021/ Francis Menton

Last summer a woman named Bari Weiss had a very public separation from the New York Times, where she had been briefly employed as a high-ranking opinion writer and editor. Weiss describes her political identity as “centrist.” Clearly, that’s not where Pravda is today; and in her writings she had a way of not going along with the radical wokist groupthink that has taken hold there these days. Around the beginning of 2021, Weiss launched her own newsletter at the Substack site.

In her letter of resignation from the Times, Weiss described the treatment that she received as a non-conforming thinker in those precincts:

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

Since getting started at Substack, Weiss has quickly developed a specialty in exposing the extraordinary penetration into academia of the toxic neo-racist ideology that goes by the Orwellian name of “antiracism.” Indeed, in one of her first pieces at her new site, on January 22, after first revealing that she had voted for Biden, she asked a series of question to the new President, focusing specifically on how he would deal with Critical Race Theory:

Will neo-racism be normalized? . . . Critical Race Theory is a threat to the most basic foundations of American life, including, but not limited to, equality under the law. It asks us to define ourselves by our immutable characteristics. It pits us against one another in an endless power struggle. It rejects Enlightenment tools of reason and scientific discovery as tainted. And it undermines our common humanity. . . . Do we still believe in Dr. King’s dream, in which we are all judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin? Or do enough of us now believe in a kind of collective guilt, that skin color determines our place in a new caste system?

It’s one more example of a seemingly smart person getting taken in by Biden’s smarmy and fake act of “decency,” even as he gives away everything to the crazy left. Anyway, Weiss is quickly getting an education from the real world. Over the ensuing weeks, she has had one piece after another dealing with the issues of neo-racism in academia. On February 5 she published a roundup of school craziness, mostly from California (including a San Francisco school commissioner on video saying that “merit is racist”); on February 9 she published the story of Smith College whistleblower Jodi Shaw; and on March 9, it was a report on attending an organizational meeting of dissident parents at the super-selective Harvard-Westlake prep school in Los Angeles.

But things really took off in the past week, as Weiss has dived into the world of elite Manhattan prep schools. On April 13 Weiss published an essay by a a guy named Paul Rossi, who is a faculty member at the Grace Church School, in Greenwich Village of all places. This is getting very close to home for me, not only because the school is in my neighborhood, but because my son-in-law went there! (Not that my own kids went to anyplace better.) Rossi’s piece is titled “I Refuse to Stand By While My Students Are Indoctrinated.” Then, just a few days later on April 16, Weiss published a letter written by one Andrew Gutmann, who is a parent of a kid at the Brearley School. That one is an all-girls school on the Upper East Side. Weiss’s piece on Brearley has the title “You Have To Read This Letter.” Gutmann sent his letter to the entire Brearley community, including all the parents.

Rossi and Gutmann really let fly on the incredible takeover that CRT has executed at their respective schools. The rot has been spreading for quite some time, but it seems that the final coup d’état has really been within the last year. It is likely that you have already seen either the Rossi essay or the Gutmann letter, or both. But I will include some of the more important excerpts, with emphasis on the overt racism that these schools are now demanding that kids and their families subscribe to. From Rossi:

My school, like so many others, induces students via shame and sophistry to identify primarily with their race before their individual identities are fully formed. Students are pressured to conform their opinions to those broadly associated with their race and gender and to minimize or dismiss individual experiences that don’t match those assumptions. The morally compromised status of “oppressor” is assigned to one group of students based on their immutable characteristics. In the meantime, dependency, resentment and moral superiority are cultivated in students considered “oppressed.” All of this is done in the name of “equity,” but it is the opposite of fair. In reality, all of this reinforces the worst impulses we have as human beings: our tendency toward tribalism and sectarianism that a truly liberal education is meant to transcend. . . .

A recent faculty email chain received enthusiastic support for recommending that we “‘officially’ flag students” who appear “resistant” to the “culture we are trying to establish.”  When I questioned what form this resistance takes, examples presented by a colleague included “persisting with a colorblind ideology,” “suggesting that we treat everyone with respect,” “a belief in meritocracy,” and “just silence.”

Gutmann minces even fewer words:

It cannot be stated strongly enough that Brearley’s obsession with race must stop. It should be abundantly clear to any thinking parent that Brearley has completely lost its way. . . . I object to the idea that Blacks are unable to succeed in this country without aid from government or from whites. Brearley, by adopting critical race theory, is advocating the abhorrent viewpoint that Blacks should forever be regarded as helpless victims, and are incapable of success regardless of their skills, talents, or hard work. What Brearley is teaching our children is precisely the true and correct definition of racism.

In his letter, Gutmann declares that he is withdrawing his daughter from Brearley at the end of this school year. So it looks like he has decided not to stay and fight. Good question where he plans to send his kid next year. Meanwhile, Rossi’s options as a faculty member at Grace are not so easy. At first, it appeared that Grace was going to let Rossi continue as a faculty member. Then on Friday (April 16) the New York Post reported that a member of the Grace community had “threatened” Rossi, whereupon the head of the school immediately barred Rossi from showing up in person to teach his classes. Today, the Post adds that Rossi has now been barred entirely from teaching at the school for the rest of the year because “several students were uncomfortable with his presence and asked to be removed from his class.”

Today, Rossi posted on Twitter a response that he wrote to the “head of school” at Grace (George Davison). The response reveals that Davison has admitted in private to Rossi that he is right, but Davison lacks courage to do anything about the disaster:

[Y]ou admitted to me that Grace Church is, in fact, “demonizing white people for being born,” and that the school is making white students “feel less than, for nothing that they are personally responsible for.” While I cannot know for certain, I suspect that the reason you have not shared these concerns with the broader Grace community is because you know exactly what happens to people who do — it is what is happening to me right now.

My internet searches have not come up with a single word about the Rossi/Grace story or the Gutmann/Brearley story appearing in the New York Times, or for that matter in our other left-wing general circulation paper, the Daily News. The New York Post has covered both the Rossi and Gutmann stories, as has the Daily Mail of the UK. Really, New York Times, this is embarrassing for you.

Meanwhile, there can be no doubt about where the Biden Administration is coming down on imposing Critical Race Theory throughout American schools. Stanley Kurtz reports today in the National Review:

Biden’s Department of Education has just released the text of a proposed new rule establishing priorities for grants in American History and Civics Education programs. That rule gives priority to grant “projects that incorporate racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives.” The rule goes on to cite and praise the New York Times’ “landmark” 1619 Project, as well as the work of Critical Race Theorist Kendi, as leading examples of the sort of ideas the Biden administration wants to spread.

Here’s what I can’t understand: How can somebody like Bari Weiss — who is so clearly intelligent, and who cares deeply about education of America’s youth, and who can see so clearly that “antiracism” and Critical Race theory are just Orwellian terms for toxic neo-racist indoctrination — be so naive as to think that a Democratic administration under Joe Biden will be subject to any kind of rational appeal on this subject? Bari, the hour is late. You need to get onto the right team.

As to the likes of Gutmann and Rossi, both report that they are receiving many communications of support. There is clearly a sufficient number of rational parents at these schools to put together one new school that rejects all of the CRT and “antiracism” claptrap. Time to get to work.