Despite growing opposition to critical race theory (CRT) and a growing number of states passing laws to ban it from classrooms, education and teachers’ unions are vowing to teach the controversial subject matter anyway. But one outspoken Florida mom says it’s time to “fight fire with fire.”
“I think parents have realized you have to fight fire with fire,” Quisha King told the Epoch Times. “You have to be as strong, as forceful, and as unrelenting as they are.”
King is the Florida mother who gained notoriety when she blasted the Duval County school board with strong opposition to CRT. In response to the National Education Association’s threat to go after those who dared oppose CRT, King said “bring it on.”
In an effort to help citizens fight back against the behemoth education system, Tea Party Patriots Action (TPPA) is now distributing a 46-page booklet (pdf) teaching parents and students how to get organized in their effort to fight back.
As described on its website, “the United We Stand toolkit is part of TPPA’s campaign to encourage people to attend their local school board meetings to oppose CRT, and to urge a full return to in-classroom instruction.”
“I think it’s good to help parents understand how to recognize (CRT) and how to detect it because they don’t really understand how it’s being worked into the system,” King said. “It’s a great, handy guide so they’re armed with something.”
“I think we need more things like that,” she added, saying she has also tried to help parents by creating informative videos.
“We encourage every parent and concerned citizen who cares about the future of our country to attend their local school board meeting, learn what is going on locally, and ensure schools are fully open,” TPPA Honorary Chairman Jenny Beth Martin said in a statement regarding their new anti-CRT campaign. “Teachers should be teaching reading, writing, arithmetic, and history without indoctrination.”
“I think there’s a sense of urgency with this because kids are in school for 12 years or 13 years if you include kindergarten,” Martin explained to The Epoch Times. “I don’t think it’s fair to wait just for the elections. We’ve got to understand what’s happening and work to unwind it at a policy level as well.”
“Obviously the first thing is to start going to school board meetings,” Vero Beach, Florida, activist Susan Mehiel told The Epoch Times. “The second thing is to start electing school board members who are true to their word.”
According to Mehiel, people need to start electing “non-teaching people on those boards,” rather than repeatedly pulling from the same barrel of rotten apples. She also suggests people establish a good relationship with their local representatives.
In June, Mehiel organized the “Save our Students” town hall meeting in Vero Beach to rally community members to speak out against proposed lesson materials that pushed critical race theory in K-5 English Language curriculum.
“If parents really want to make a difference,” Mehiel advised, “they have to have numbers and they have to have clout at the state level.”
“At Moms for Liberty, we believe that it is essential for every citizen to unite together to help parents reclaim their rights in America’s public-school classrooms,” Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms For Liberty told The Epoch Times. “We applaud the work of organizations that give citizens resources and a roadmap for engagement with all levels of government.”
Mixed Messages
While President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Randi Weingarten said in a press conference that “critical race theory is not taught in elementary schools or high schools,” over 5,000 people recently signed a pledge at the Zinn Education Project vowing to teach the contentious subject matter regardless of any law banning it.
Weingarten went on to say “culture warriors are labeling any discussion of race, racism or discrimination as CRT to try to make it toxic. They are bullying teachers and trying to stop us from teaching students accurate history.”
As The Epoch Times previously reported, not only has the National Education Association (NEA) adopted a resolution to make the implementation of CRT in “K-12 and higher education” a priority, it vowed to use all resources at their disposal to go after those who are “attacking educators doing anti-racist work.”
CRT By Any Other Name is Still CRT
According to Mehiel, the progressive movement is good at “staying on track, never dropping that end-game goal and they’re good at learning from their mistakes.”
“They’re really good at deception,” Mehiel added. “They’re really good at redefining words and creating terminology that sounds glorious.”
According to Martin, CRT is like a shell game, they keep moving it around and calling it different things to keep everyone confused.
“They can debate about what words are being used to describe what they are teaching,” Martin explained. “But when the goal is to divide people by the color of their skin, putting people into groups and stereotyping and prejudging, when you’re teaching that you must take from one group of people and give to another to ensure equal outcome, that’s what CRT does and that’s what they are teaching.”
According to Mehiel, “CRT is now two things.”
When conflicting and faulty data began causing people to reject their carefully crafted narrative about “Global Warming,” progressives quickly switched to the more ambiguous term of “Climate Change.” Now that they are losing control of the critical race theory narrative, the words represented by the “CRT” acronym are now surreptitiously being replaced by a phrase used back in 2019 with little notice—“Culturally Responsive Teaching.” However, because the “CRT” moniker itself is too controversial, advocates are already starting the metamorphosis to CRL—“Culturally Responsive Learning.”
Social and emotional learning (SEL)—described as “the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals”—is another “glorious” label CRT advocates are floating.
However, those who are paying attention to the shell game say CRT by another name is still CRT.
“As we beat back CRT in every school board meeting around the country, SEL and CRT were already subtly and not so subtly embedded in every aspect of education,” Mehiel explained. “Emboldened by their own rhetoric and BLM appeasers, they thought they could cram CRT down everyone’s throat without a whimper.”
The ‘Beginning of the End’
While Mehiel believes progressives are “really good at deception” and “redefining words,” she also recognizes they have equally impressive flaws.
“One his overreach,” Mehiel noted, “and the other is underestimating the American people.”
Back during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers demanded that schools be closed and in-class lessons be replaced by virtual classrooms. Many now believe the “beginning of the end” had its incipience when parents—stuck at home during quarantine because their jobs were deemed non-essential—discovered that their kids were being lectured with BLM propaganda rather than learning how to spell, add, and subtract.
Then those parents began showing up to school boards meetings. Then videos of their angry sentiments started going viral on social media. Then governors started signing bills to ban CRT in schools and the whole carefully woven CRT tapestry began to quickly and contentiously unravel.
“You don’t like CRT?” Mehiel asked rhetorically. “Then how about Culturally Responsive Learning? If you don’t like that—you’re a racist!”
“I think it’s a tactic to confuse and grey out the lines so people get frustrated and give up,” Mom’s For Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich told The Epoch Times. “But parents are not going to give up. This is going to take true grassroots movement. It’s going to take everyone engaged and involved. It’s going to take parents with eyes on the backpacks coming home, on the papers, on the curriculum, on the textbooks. It’s going to take public records requests and I think the American people are up for it.”