A parental rights group filed two complaints on Monday, alleging civil rights violations for “racial discrimination” at an Oakland, California, high school district and a Boston, Massachusetts, K-12 school district.
One alleged violation involves white employees being apparently excluded from consideration for a paid role at Acalanes Union High School District in Oakland. Another involves the creation of employee affinity groups segregated by race at Boston Public Schools.
Parents Defending Education requested the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigate the alleged Title VII violations and “act swiftly to remedy unlawful policies and practices, and order appropriate relief.”
“If a district’s racially-segregated teacher support programs would earn a stamp of approval from the KKK, something has gone terribly wrong,” PDE President Nicole Neily said in a statement shared with the Washington Examiner. “And the fact that no administrators in the district seem to have opposed this programming raises additional red flags.”
“It’s not rocket science,” she added. “Including or excluding public school staff from opportunities on the basis of skin color is wrong.”
Boston Public Schools
According to documents from PDE’s complaint, BPS has a “White School Leaders Affinity Group” in which white employees go through a series of “antiracist” trainings rooted in Critical Race Theory.
The school district’s “best practices” for affinity groups document encourages employees to form groups or “caucuses” based on “self-identification.” It explicitly states that the groups are not for people who want to learn about another ethnicity but for those who “share a common identity.”
Despite the language of this document, a spokesperson for BPS told the Washington Examiner that anyone of any race is technically allowed to join and argued that race-based affinity groups “do not violate Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act as membership in them is voluntary and anyone is able to participate.”
The documents show lesson plans and training geared toward white employees on how they can “hold themselves and their white community accountable for addressing and attacking the very system that needs to be destroyed in order for black people to stay alive and well.”
Robin DiAngelo, one of the most famous proponents of Critical Race Theory, is listed as an “activator” in one training, which encourages white employees to become “white co-conspirators.”
In order to become a white co-conspirator, one must “deliberately acknowledge that people of color are criminalized for dismantling white supremacy” and “choose to take on the consequences of participating in a criminalized act, and we choose to support and center people of color in the reproductive justice movement.”
Another training denies the existence of racism against white people, claiming that instances of prejudice against white people do not count because such behaviors “are not connected to a larger system of oppression.” It claims there are no examples of “reverse racism.”
The trainings encourage white people to confront their “privilege” and inherent racial biases.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Boston Public Schools for comment.
Acalanes Union High School District
In Oakland, AUHSD is apparently offering additional programming for minority employees that are not offered to all employees in the district.
Parents Defending Education highlighted an email inviting “POC staff” to the “first coming together in 2023” as an example of additional programming not offered to all employees.
The email specifically says “we have avoided inviting people that are not of color” because “there remains feelings of uneasiness and mistrust and we need this to be a safe space for our people of color.”
PDE also pointed to a union contract titled “Contractual Agreement between Acalanes Education Association and Acalanes Union High School District,” which describes paid positions for people to serve on the “Diversity Chair Committee.”
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The parental rights group complained to the EEOC that the district “appears to be intentionally discriminating against its employees because of their race by making race a barrier to opportunity.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to Acalanes Union High School District for comment.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
