Manhattan School: Hey, Let’s Segregate the Kids By Race. Why Not?
A Manhattan junior high school plans to racially separate students while discussing identity and social justice topics next week, The Post has learned.
The Lower Manhattan Community School will conduct the controversial exercises as part of its mission to “undo the legacy of racism and oppression in this country that impacts our school community,” according to an email sent to parents.
Kids in grades seven and eight will opt into one of five categories, Principal Shanna Douglas wrote in the message.
Whites, Asians, and multi-racial students have their own categories, while African-American and Hispanic students are combined into one group, according to her email.
“On November 23rd and 24th, 7th and 8th graders will explore the question ‘How do our racial identities influence our experiences?’ in affinity groups,” Douglas announced. “An affinity group is a group formed around a shared interest.”
The school has also offered an additional group, which appears to be for those uncomfortable with the format.
That cluster will enter with discussion asking “Why are we even talking about racial identity?” according to the message.
I was assured that things like this never happen.
People who oppose the sort of KenDiAngelo Elect “antiracism” have been told that no such thing is happening, and that laws to ban such things that never occur are a terrible anti-speech travesty. Meanwhile, parents are concerned about exactly this: having their children taught that the color of their skin is an essential and important part of who we are. Namely: racial essentialism.
Once upon a time civil rights leaders advocated that people be treated according to the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Today, the Elect teach the opposite.
Once upon a time the power of the state was used to ensure that white and black kids would be taught together in school. Now it is used to ensure that they are taught separately, and sorted by race by Klannish Dumbledores.
Is the the Sorting Hat? pic.twitter.com/cFCr45wx9z
— Ty Tannenbaum (@TyTannenbaum) November 19, 2021
(You know what would be *really* bad, would be if the state passed a law against this sort of thing. I think the real villain here is Chris Rufo. What do you think, David French?)
If my children were still junior high age, I would not allow them to be in a classroom with teachers who thought this was a good idea, much less force them to engage in a racial discussion led by such people. They would not be in the group that feels uncomfortable with the format. They would be in the “fuck you we are not doing this” group.
P.S. My use of the words “Elect” as well as KenDiAngelo are borrowed from John McWhorter, whose book Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America is the assigned reading for this blog.I highly recommend (and have linked) the audio version, which is read by McWhorter himself, in a tone of restrained and sardonically amused outrage. Highly recommended.
How can they put African-American and Hispanic students in the category?
Only because they don’t want Hispanics to be the “bad guys”
Nothing that they will lead the students to say will be real.
And people have far more different backgrounds from each other than you could initially think.
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 11/19/2021 @ 8:53 amin the same category.
They ought to at least stop lying and pretending that any “conversation” will be the students’ own thoughts.
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 11/19/2021 @ 8:54 amI hope they have thought this out – what happens when the kids get thirsty? You can’t have them mingling at the water fountains.
Probably best to have different water fountains for the different groups.
Maybe different bathrooms too.
Hoi Polloi (ade50d) — 11/19/2021 @ 9:06 amI am counting on Nic calling this school and straightening them out.
BuDuh (4a7846) — 11/19/2021 @ 9:18 amhttps://nypost.com/2021/07/09/disingenuous-defenses-of-critical-race-theory/
“…French and his colleagues appear to take a third position: They claim that many of the practices of critical race theory are already illegal under federal civil-rights law and, therefore, new legislation is unnecessary.
This might be true as a matter of pure legal theory, but in reality, thousands of public schools are already engaging in these abusive practices and most parents do not have the resources to file a federal civil-rights lawsuit at every infraction — and the Biden administration has dropped all enforcement against critical race theory in public education, eliminating another avenue of protection.”
And
“The status quo puts an extreme burden on individual families, while shielding public school from democratic oversight and accountability. This position, presented as a principled third way, is an illusion: It might make for a compelling law-review article, but in practice, it will move the country further down the path of racial abuse in the classroom, affording parents no recourse except for the abstract satisfaction that, in the mind of some intellectuals, these practices are already illegal.”
steveg (e81d76) — 11/19/2021 @ 9:24 am@4 “we’re not teaching duck”
we might be teaching something that walks like a duck and quacks like a duck but it’s still not duck
so, quit saying we’re teaching duck
JF (e1156d) — 11/19/2021 @ 9:28 amLOL
BuDuh (4a7846) — 11/19/2021 @ 9:33 am“[Principal Shannon Douglas] added that the school — which is 44 percent Asian, 29 percent white, 15 percent Hispanic, and 8 percent black — had failed to adequately address race issues in the past.” (By Asian, I think they mean East Asian — mostly Chinese, perhaps — rather than South Asian.)
Specifically?
If I have properly decoded the education bureaucratese, the school is a small, selective public school, but this year will be selecting students by a weighted lottery? (Correct me on that description, if I am wrong, Sammy.)
(LMC web site. Judging by the photographs, boys are a clear minority there.)
Jim Miller (edcec1) — 11/19/2021 @ 10:10 amOne other small point. The 6th graders are not included in this “celebration”.
Jim Miller (edcec1) — 11/19/2021 @ 10:13 amWhat is this shared interest? Other than being oppressed (aka not being white) or being an oppressor (aka being white or white adjacent)? Where are the Jewish kids supposed to go?
How do these people not realize this is just the plain old fashioned racism we’ve been trying to put an end to?
frosty (f27e97) — 11/19/2021 @ 10:16 amOur esteemed host wrote:
And I’m sure that you believed them, right?
When I got to Mt Sterling Elementary School, in March of my 3rd grade year, the school system was legally segregated. She school system, knowing that integration had to come, came up with a three grades at a time integration plan, to start when I was in the 6th grade, but, unexpectedly! the black school burned to the ground that summer, so integration had to happen all at once.
Yeah, I was a kid, but I don’t recall nearly as many problems with integration in the 1960s as we’re seeing these days.
The libertarian, but not Libertarian, Dana (338514) — 11/19/2021 @ 10:36 amThis another of those things schools are not doing!
“How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?”
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 11/19/2021 @ 10:37 am$KEvin M: All I know is what’s in the New York Post article.
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 11/19/2021 @ 10:38 amWhat happens if a white kid “opts” into the black group? Is that some kind of blackface? And one has to wonder which groups will attempt supremacy.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 11/19/2021 @ 10:40 amOnce upon a time civil rights leaders advocated that people be treated according to the content of their character and not the color of their skin
How dare you use those words. Only black people may use them!
Think I’m kidding?
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 11/19/2021 @ 10:43 amRittenhouse walks.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 11/19/2021 @ 10:43 amI would be impressed by the kids if they all opted for the WTF group.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 11/19/2021 @ 10:46 amThe good thing about this is it should accelerate people seeing the problem with teaching based on racial identity.
DRJ (03cb91) — 11/19/2021 @ 11:23 am“On November 23rd and 24th, 7th and 8th graders will explore the question ‘How do our racial identities influence our experiences?’ in affinity groups,” Douglas announced. “An affinity group is a group formed around a shared interest.”
I don’t know how it goes in Manhattan, but out here in the twee sections of Los Angeles County students get all of Thanksgiving week off from school, because otherwise the school administrators know that there would be about a 50% absenteeism rate as so many families travel for the holiday. Perhaps holding these stupid race discussions on Tuesday and Wednesday is a tacit acknowledgement that attendance is going to be light anyway. You’d best believe I would be removing my children from school that day if I were a parent of a kid at this school.
JVW (ee64e4) — 11/19/2021 @ 12:07 pmI hope they have thought this out – what happens when the kids get thirsty? You can’t have them mingling at the water fountains.
Okay, that is funny. Kudos, Hoi Polloi.
norcal (b9a35f) — 11/19/2021 @ 2:33 pmI wonder why the “CRT isn’t a thing” commenters never show up in the “examples of CRT” threads?
frosty (f27e97) — 11/19/2021 @ 5:59 pm@BuDuh@4 The one of the problems with tribalism is that it leads people to think that because a person does not agree with someone about one thing that they don’t agree about anything and/or they reflexively disagree with a person they perceive as not in their tribe.
This isn’t CRT, but it seems dumb and unnecessary.
Nic (896fdf) — 11/19/2021 @ 5:59 pm