As schools prep to bring back students following a pandemic hiatus, the Biden administration is recommending they consult a radical activist group that wants educators to “disrupt whiteness and other forms of oppression.”
President Joe Biden’s Education Department included a link to the Abolitionist Teaching Network’s “Guide for Racial Justice & Abolitionist Social and Emotional Learning” in its school-reopening guidance published last week.
The Abolitionist Teaching Network openly promotes Critical Race Theory, which it refers to as diversity and equity training.
Teachers should “build a school culture that engages in healing and advocacy,” the group’s guide reads.
“This requires a commitment to learning from students, families, and educators who disrupt Whiteness and other forms of oppression,”it continues.
Teachers should also remove “all punitive or disciplinary practices that spirit murder black, brown and indigenous children.”
The guide goes on to say education that does not include diversity training “can be a covert form of policing used to punish, criminalize, and control black brown, and indigenous children.”
The Abolitionist Teaching Network encourages teachers to demand “free, anti-racist therapy for white educators and support staff,” and offers a “national database of antiracist school counselors, therapists, and lawyers.”
One of the group’s co-founders, Bettina Love, admitted she wants to send “activists in residence” to “go into schools or communities and do the work of dismantling,” according to Fox News.
“If you don’t recognize that white supremacy is in everything we do, then we got a problem,” she said. “I want us to be feared.”
Another co-founder, Brandelyn Tosolt, said she sees herself as an “educator of white teachers” who need to be de-programmed. She claimed white teachers have “internalized White supremacy and anti-Blackness.”
It is unclear why the Department of Education included the group in its school reopening guidance. However, Fox News did note that Deputy Secretary Cindy Marten, while serving as the superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District, hosted Love at an event.
