July 14, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Not content to dominate the mainstream press, social media, and corporate America, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has now set its sights on public schools, with custom lesson plans to transmit its view of the world to impressionable captive audiences.
The Federalist highlighted one such lesson plan in detail, currently being used in Wake County, North Carolina. Wake County Public School Systems’ Office of Equity Affairs developed a website full of “racial equality” resources for educators and staff, which calls on teachers to “suppor(t) efforts that oppose racism and oppression” and “directly engag(e) in advocacy work.”
“The importance of addressing race and racism with our students cannot be overstated,” the page declares. “Today, it is impossible to shelter students from the collateral consequences of the well-publicized killings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and the many others before them. And to be sure, students shouldn’t be sequestered from the realities in which they will live, grow, and lead.”
The collection includes links to articles about how teachers can “develop the skills to speak up about prejudice, bias, and stereotypes” and “help their students find the courage to speak up too”; and on helping students “work through recent civil unrest by creating opportunity and space for their students to be heard”; links to resources on talking to children about race; examples of “social movement music”; tips on how teachers can be “allies” in “racial equity,” starting with recognition of one’s own “privilege”; and more.
A section on terminology describes BLM as a movement “emphasizing basic human rights and racial equality for black people and campaigning against various forms of racism,” and invokes “hands up, don’t shoot” as a “rallying cry and gesture that began after the August 9, 2014, shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.” (In fact, the Obama Justice Department’s report on the shooting indicated that Brown didn’t actually say it, and that Officer Darren Wilson was acting in self-defense when he fatally shot Brown.)
A frequently-asked-questions section near the bottom of the page recommends “explicit conversations” about race with children as young as five to “dramatically improve their racial outlook.” In the very next question, however, it claims that professing color-blindness “negates/dismisses people of color and their identities,” in seeming contradiction with Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous call to judge people not “by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
“Splashed across the homepage of the Wake County School System’s website is BLM founder Patrisse Cullors,” Federalist authors Sloan Rachmuth and Katie Jensen added, noting that Cullors is a self-professed “trained Marxist” and anti-Israel activist who as recently as 2018 “boasted about receiving training from Eric Mann, former member of the Weather Underground charged with attempted murder of police officers in Boston back in 1969.”
The authors next highlighted a letter from KIPP Philadelphia Public Schools CEO Jessica Cunningham Akoto endorsing the BLM movement and declaring that “structural racism and persistent inequities exist not only in our education system but also in health care, law enforcement, housing, food distribution, voting rights, and so much more.”
“ALL of our team members must constantly engage in the process of unlearning mindsets and practices rooted in anti-Blackness and learning mindsets and practices rooted in Black liberation,” Akoto declared. “We prioritize robust staff development and training in a shared school vision, curriculum, theory, culturally responsive practices, and instructional leadership.”
Rachmuth and Jensen noted that Black liberation “is a Marxist theological and social movement that emerged in the late 1960s” that declares America and her institutions racist on a fundamental level, by design. “In this view, the entire construct of American culture, symbolically represented by the flag, national anthem, and even Philly’s own Liberty Bell, represents an insult to people of color,” they wrote.
The article also noted that the New York City Department of Education has announced it’s developing BLM-themed materials to dismantle racism, which is “systemic — woven deeply into the fabric of our institutions, our economy, and the systems that make up our shared community.”
Despite prevailing media narratives to the contrary, “black lives matter” is not a general statement of support for black equality, and BLM is not merely concerned with ending police brutality or actual instances of societal racism.
It declares among its official goals “disrupt(ng) the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another”; and fostering “a queer‐affirming network … with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.”
It also officially supports “reproductive justice,” a euphemism for abortion. An estimated 40 percent of all U.S. abortions are sought by black women, meaning that Black Lives Matter supports the annual elimination of more than 344,800 black lives every year.
As for the claims that ignited this latest wave of BLM fervor, the Minnesota killing of George Floyd was instantly and unanimously condemned, and the police officers involved have been charged with murder. As to BLM’s broader claim of “systemic racism” in law enforcement, research actually shows that police are not disproportionately likely to use excessive lethal force against black suspects, but may in fact be less likely due to fear of racism claims.