There is no way to prove this, but see if you agree with me: The average American parent would be glad to see his public high school celebrate Martin Luther King Day with tributes to the Civil Rights movement, lectures on the history of slavery and Jim Crow and discussions of the challenges faced by blacks and other minorities in America today. Actually, it’s not really a guess, because curricula like that are found throughout the nation.
The program that is being imposed on Winnetka, Illinois, by contrast, is a hard-left indoctrination that could have come straight from the pages of Howard Zinn. Held on MLK Day itself in 2016, this year’s seminar day on race, “Understanding Today’s Struggle for Racial Civil Rights,” is scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 28.
The school-wide program will feature a full day of lectures and seminars, and as the title betrays, the slant is built in. As one of the parents who has protested the content noted, civil rights are for everyone, aren’t they?
New Trier High School has scheduled two keynote speakers and dozens of seminars for its 4,000 students to choose from among. One or two are unobjectionable, like “Black Gospel Music: Make a Joyful Noise!” or “Rap With a Social Conscience” . But the rest of the offerings are thoroughly turgid agitprop. Students can attend a session titled “Seeing the Unseen: The Bias All Around You” or learn to “recognize our own implicit biases.” They can attend seminars about “cultural appropriation,” “trans people of color navigating the U.S.,” “race, class, and police interactions,” “systemic racism in housing,” and “21st century voter suppression.”
High school students range in age from 14 to 18, so you might imagine that some care would be taken to avoid speakers whose social media are rife with profanity, racial epithets and sexual content. No. Political radicalism means all is permitted. John the Author, one of the invited speakers, has a song titled “Blackenomics,” which includes the following lyrics: “I don’t wanna be king, but I’m the only one ready for it now/ Cause all these other n——- selling out/ Individualism is all these (obscenity) yelling about.”
One might have hoped that the guests might steer clear of racism and anti-Semitism themselves. Kevin Coval’s poem “Occupation” says this about Israel: “Fascist ones believe in one monotheism, a walled prison/ Israelis sleep through the night.”
So, one might suppose that New Trier parents would be enraged. Yet the pushback has been about as polite, substantive and reasonable as you could possibly wish. On their website (www.parentsofnewtrier.org), they suggest adding other speakers to achieve — wait for it — intellectual diversity. They note that people of the same race do not necessarily think alike. Among the speakers the parents group recommends: Shelby Steele, Jason Riley, John McWhorter and Star Parker.
Despite multiple requests, school officials have refused every appeal from dismayed parents.
New Trier has very few black students, but the father of one wrote this: “This group (the small group of faculty and students who developed the program) does NOT represent the best of black Americans and does not advocate anything that has a track record of making black lives better.”
These “check your privilege” brainwashing sessions have become commonplace at colleges. Parents don’t seem to know or care enough to protest. The New Trier parents group is a sign that resistance to deadening propaganda is alive and well — and polite.
About the Author
