Teachers in the Springfield, Missouri school district were informed during training that they could be contributing to “white supremacy” by insisting the English language be used or calling the police on black suspects. Materials from the training, provided to Just the News, include a more than 40 slide deck with a goal to train teachers […]
Teachers in the Springfield, Missouri school district were informed during training that they could be contributing to “white supremacy” by insisting the English language be used or calling the police on black suspects.
Materials from the training, provided to Just the News, include a more than 40 slide deck with a goal to train teachers on how to address “systemic racism and xenophobia” in the school district and to understand the difference between oppressors and the oppressed.
According to critics, the deck is part of a larger Critical Race Theory curriculum that parents are increasingly rejecting.
It included an “oppression matrix” that identified privileged social groups capable of oppression as including “white people,” “male assigned at birth,” “gender conforming CIS men and women,” “heterosexuals,” “rich, upper-class people” and “Protestants.”
Victims of oppression, on the other hand, included minorities, gays, transgenders, working class and poor Americans.
The training instructed teachers that systemic racism is characterized by “public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other social norms that, while not practiced consciously, reinforce and perpetuate racial group inequity.”
“It identifies dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with ‘whiteness’ and disadvantages associated with ‘color’ to endure and adapt over time,” one slide read.
The deck listed examples of “covert white supremacy” as “calling the police on black people,” “education funding from property tax,” “English-only initiatives,” “mass incarceration,” the phrase “all lives matter” and “treating kids of color as adults.”
