☆ Opinions: Intersectionality/DEI aren't gone from local schools. They're just under different names (3/6)
As ever with the free market, many Silicon Valley companies are now dropping their DEI depts, initiatives, and language. But education—from Kindergarten to college—is a whole different story. Free speech advocates Kenny Xu and Dr. Tabia Lee analyze in this Opp Now exclusive.
Opportunity Now: Dr. Lee, you asserted earlier that intersectionality—as a paradigm and pedagogy—has taken over local public schools. How might folks identify it in education institutions they're considering?
Tabia Lee: Several years ago, the State of California put out a (still highly contested) model curriculum for ethnic studies; and when you look at it, you will see the principles and claims of intersectionality and why it's needed to achieve social justice, right there in the curriculum. You know, units on “What's my place? Where do we see racial privilege?”
Kenny Xu: This is the subject of my second book, School of Woke (written and published in 2023). I visited K-12 schools across the nation, interviewing the parents and analyzing the materials that students are being taught. And you'd be shocked at some of the things I observed.
Fourth graders are being given fill-in-the-blanks that say, “ We live in a world with systemic ___” and expected to write “racism.” Kids are being given coloring books with angry protesters on the cover. There's a “Wheels on the Bus” cartoon that was taught in a New York City public school where one stick figure is Black and the others are white—and it asks, “What’s the difference with this kid?” Students are supposed to answer, “Oh, he’s Black.”
By the way, it was, like, the third thing that the kids noticed. One of them said he had a hat. But, no, the teacher wanted him to say that he was Black and, therefore, was going to be treated differently. All of these things really happened in schools around the country.
TL: Yes, children actually had to live through these things.
If you're looking at local school curriculum and see intersectionality in there, then that's time to double-click and do some research. That's the time to go to the school board. That's the time to meet with the principal and ask, “What other ideas are being taught here to our community besides this? There are other ways to view human will and agency than this.”
Intersectionality is not research or evidence based, even if it is touted as important and necessary in academia. And, look, I'm not saying nobody should teach it. I'm all for diverse perspectives. But if that's the only perspective you're teaching—or allowing your school's teachers to teach—it's problematic. And you're doing students a disservice by showing them only one way of seeing the world.
KX: Exactly. It's just one theory.
Thankfully, some school mandates related to the Woke intersectionality pyramid are being rolled back. Others are not. When it comes to universities, it's a particularly tough road.
ON: How so?
KX: What I have noticed culturally is this: companies are rolling back the censorship that they did in the name of Woke. X got bought by Elon Musk and has seen changes. Even Mark Zuckerberg, right? Meta was used as a tool during the Biden administration to censor conservatives and any ideas questioning the Biden agenda on Covid or race. But Zuckerberg recently went on Joe Rogan and said, “We're not doing that anymore. We were pressured by Biden to do it.” Okay, sure. Likely story.
But on college campuses, this stuff is still very much alive. There have been incidents at Davidson College, for example, where I work. Videos were shown to student athletes that asked them, “Are you a racist for believing in XYZ idea?” And these videos gave such a “you’re with us or against us” mentality that it left no room for students to breathe.
This is what critical social justice does—it is inherently divisive. It acknowledges the divisiveness of its own ideology, but it is inherently divisive. So these kinds of trainings and movies and curricula may be backing down in part, but there are still segments of our institutions—across the country—that are owned by people with this ideology.
TL: I'm a senior fellow with Do No Harm Medicine, which has put out recent reports tracking the renaming, revisioning, and relaunching of DEI programs in medical schools across the nation. These ideologies are still permeating our schools—just under new language.
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