As some participants spoke in Chinese, I could make out some key phrases: "'moral courage," "public service," and "Cultural Revolution."
When it came my turn to speak, I told the Chinese-American parents: you can save America. After surviving the Cultural Revolution, they uniquely recognize the dangers to an ideology like critical race theory, the race-based philosophy that dismantles core principles in our society, such as the idea of the American Dream, replacing the idea of equality with the disingenuous notion of "equity," and punishing Asian-American children for their advanced academics.
They cheered their potential role in the country that they love.
And now we see just that kind of moral leadership by another association, CACAGNYโ โ็ด็ดๅๆบๆ, the Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater, based in New York, which published a letter yesterday denouncing critical race theory as "a hateful, divisive, manipulative fraud." A member @queens_parents published the letter on Twitter, and it can be found here online at their website www.cacagny.org.
On Twitter, follow parent advocate Chien Kwok @Chien_Kwok, former CACAGNY president Wai Wah Chin, and others, such as @ycinnewyork, who all reveal great moral leadership standing up the dumbing down of gifted education in New York City. Kwok was one of the first people I contacted when we started organizing at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, against the divisive critical race theory activists who lobbied successfully to removed the merit-based admissions test, in their bid to reduce the number of Asian-American students at the school. We continue to fight them.
I've republished the full letter here so that you can be inspired to stand up with these parents for a simple hope: to challenge the divisive, bigoted and racist ideas of critical race theory and advocate for an America where children are valued for the "content of their character," as Martin Luther King said, not the color of their skin.
February 23, 2021
CACAGNY Denounces Critical Race Theory as Hateful Fraud
Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a hateful, divisive, manipulative fraud.
CRT appears in our workplaces under the cover of โimplicit bias/sensitivityโ โtrainingโ. It infiltrates our schools pretending to be โculturally/ethnically responsiveโ โpedagogyโ, with curricula such as the New York Times' โ1619 Projectโ and Seattle's โethnomathematics. Hate groups, with allies in politics, the press and education, pass CRT off as โanti-racismโ and โdiversity, equity and inclusionโ, but CRT is exactly the opposite. From its very roots, CRT is racist, repressive, discriminatory, and divisive.
What is CRT?
Heavily influenced by such hate promoters as Marx, Lenin, Gramsci, Schmitt, Marcuse, Foucault and Freire, but with โrace struggleโ replacing โclass struggleโ, CRT's main ideological dogmas are:
- You are not a person. You are only your โrace,โ and โby your race alone you will be judgedโ.โ (1)
- Justice is about equal โrightsโ, but โSocialโ Justice, or โequity,โ is about equal โoutcomesโ. Only Socialโ Justice matters; Justice does not. To achieve equal outcomes, โforget equal rightsโ.
- All unequal outcomes by race -- โinequityโ for short -- are the result of racial โoppressionโ.
- All Blacks are oppressed and all Whites are oppressors. This is โsystemicโ:โ never ask โwhether oppression occurred, only โhow it occurred. Everyone and everything White is โcomplicitโ.
- If you are White and won't admit you are racist, you are racist by โimplicit biasโ. To reduce implicit bias, you must self-criticize, confess to โprivilegeโ, apologize to the oppressed race.โ (2)
- Whitenessโ is belief in, among others: โachievementโ, โdelayed gratificationโ, โprogress,โ schedulesโ and โdeadlinesโ, โmeritocracyโ, โrace-blindnessโ, the โwritten wordโ, โfactsโ and โobjectivity (they denyโ lived experience)โ, โlogicโ and โreason (they denyโ empathyโ), โmathematicsโ and science โ(until they are โde-colonized aโnd โhumanizedโ).โ (3)
- CRT suppresses dissent with โcancel cultureโ: publications withdrawn, college admissions rescinded, online presence wiped out, business relationships ended, jobs terminated.โ (4)
CRT: Three Examples
In June 2020, the City of Seattle ran an โanti-racismโ training session for the City's White staff. The session began with instruction that all White people have a โnatural senseโ of racial superiority. The session then required participants to confess their โcomplicityโ in a โsystem of White supremacyโ, โundo their Whiteness,โ โbe less White,โ and โbecome accountable to Blacksโ in their โevery thoughtโ.โ (5)
In August 2017, a 12th grader at a public charter school in Nevada, William Clark, took a civics class that was required for graduation. In this class, students were told to declare their race, gender, etc. The class was then bombarded with material singling out Whites as โracistsโ who โenjoy the privilegesโ of an โoppressive structure.โ Because he was identified as White, William was subsequently harassed by classmates, teachers and administrators. Escalating abuses followed, including bad grades from the class. William and his mother have since taken the case to Court.โ (6)
In January 2021, third-graders in a Cupertino, California elementary school math class were told that they lived in a โdominant cultureโ of โWhiteโ, โcisgenderโ, โeducatedโ โChristiansโ, and this culture was created to โhoardโ โpower.โ The kids were then told to check themselves off on a list of victimization categories -- race, gender, religion, family structure -- to find out which categories made them oppressors,โ and which made them โoppressedโ. A Chinese parent found out about this and organized parents to stop it. It reminded them of Mao's bloody Cultural Revolution. The school later decided that the material was not grade-appropriate, but will still use it for older classes.โ (7)
What CRT Means for Americans of Chinese Descent
Chinese Americans areโ people of colorโ and therefore start from the โoppressed โside of CRT's binary. But as we overcome discrimination and achieve upward mobility, we are now โWhite by adjacencyโ. In New York City, โBlack Lives Matterโ rioters with CRT signs assaulted our rally supporting merit-based education. We have come into CRT's crosshair.
Education is the main area where CRT attacked us. CRT, naturally, demands automatic preferences for Blacks in admissions to selective institutions and programs. That is unacceptable to us: such racial preferences come at the expense of our children, at the expense of academic standards, and at the expense of basic fairness.
For top colleges, CRT uses the ruse of โmultiple-criteriaโ โholistic admissionsโ, which allows Harvard to reject Asians with better academic and extra-curricular credentials than those of admitted applicants. Despite never having met the applicants, Harvard admissions officers somehow conclude that Asian applicants โlack integrity and courageโ -- directly contradicting evaluations from interviewers who met the applicants, and from teachers who've known the applicants for months if not years. If smearing Asians this way isn't โhate speech,โ then what is? Call it โdiversity, equity and inclusionโ.
For top high schools and grade schools, CRT uses the scheme of โlotteriesโ to lower admission standards. Just lowering admission cutoffs isn't enough; when cutoffs were lowered, โtoo many Asiansโ still passed the cutoffs and had to be admitted. Lotteries does the trick: with the luck of the draw, lotteries let lower-qualified Blacks skip over better-qualified Asians. Lotteries have been proposed or are used against Americans of Asian descent in Boston, San Francisco, Northern Virginia, and here in New York City, all under the banner of โSocial Justice โandโ equityโ.
One way or another, CRT wants to get rid of โtoo many Asiansโ in good schools. Asians are over-represented.โ CRT is today's Chinese Exclusion Act. CRT is the real โhate crimeโ against Asians.
Some of CRT's โhate speechesโ against Asians are obvious: โtoo many Asiansโ and โStuyvesant doesn't look like the Cityโ need no explanation. They can also be subtle. For example: โStuyvesant is not diverse.โ Since when is it not diverse for a school to have dozens of languages spoken at home, all major world faiths practiced, most cultural experiences inherited, from ancient civilization-building to rise and fall of empires, to slavery, colonization, revolution, and diaspora? Even if CRT dismisses all this and reduces everything to just โlooksโ -- do โall Asians look alikeโ to them?
Another trend that should concern us is CRT's coming collision with immigrants. Black militancy was always receptive to the view that immigrants steal jobs and resources from Blacks, but the bigger irritant is โimmigrant valuesโ. Arriving with little more than their human capital, immigrants are grateful to be here, work hard and educate their children hard, and believe in the American dream under the Constitutional guarantee of โequal rightsโ. Most infuriating for CRT is that immigrants, including Blacks from West Africa and the Caribbean, are making real progress. When CRT eventually clashes with immigrants, we will find CRT's racism and hate against us ratcheted up another notch.
We Have to Start Fighting Back!
We need to recognize CRT through its fraudulent packaging, call it out, โresistโ. Parents need to watch for CRT in schools, talk to each other, and organize, like the Cupertino Chinese parents.
Regardless, parents need to speak with their kids to โanti-indoctrinateโ (or โun-doctrinateโ) them at home. This needs to start early, because CRT indoctrination also starts early. Don't trust schools and teachers blindly.
On the political front, President Trump issued an executive order to ban CRT indoctrination at the Federal level. President Biden rescinded that order upon taking office, so our best hopes now rest with the states, several of which have proposals to ban CRT indoctrination. New York legislators don't lean that way, so we must โvoteโ to elect state legislators who represent our views on CRT!
On the legal front, several CRT lawsuits have been filed, relating to freedom of speech, compelled speech, and hostile work environment. Parents should keep abreast of these cases and seek counsel when appropriate -- the brave people filing these lawsuits are regular folks just like us!
CACAGNYโ โ็ด็ดๅๆบๆ
Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater New York PO Box 130024
New York, New York 10013
www.cacagny.org
Footnotes:
- When race โintersectsโ with other victimization categories, e.g. gender, raceโ โis always primary.
- Public โstruggle sessionsโ in schools and offices are sometimes called โcourageous conversations.โ
- This list proves beyond any doubt CRT's shocking bigotry and utter condescension against Blacks.
- When cancel culture is paired with โracial hyper-sensitivityโ, outcomes can be farcical. That's what got a popular business communications professor suspended over the โChinese filler ้ฃๅ, ้ฃๅ.
- Black staff weren't invited to anti-racism training because โit is impossible for Blacks to be racistโ.
- Also in Court is Dave Flynn, coach at a Massachusetts school. He was fired after he complained to the school about similar โBlack Lives Matterโ CRT material in his daughter's 7th grade class.
- When the Berkeley, California School District used similar CRT material on older grades, they had to suspend it because anti-White bullying got out of control.
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