The following was submitted to Mia Howerton at the US Department of Education
It is troubling, if not surprising, that the federal government expresses any interest whatever in the conduct of education in the United States of America. If there is any subject which the federal nature of our republic entrusts to local control, it is surely education.
Substantively, the mention in the proposal of the New York Times “1619 Project,” a flawed and tendentious re-orientation of our national self-understanding, and the inclusion (in an approving way) of Ibram X. Kendi, are signals to any moderately well-informed observer that the federal initiative proposed here will inevitably contribute to more racial animosity and divisiveness.
It is supremely ironic that at a time when every objective measure of actual racism in the United States reveals it to be exiguous and declining, government should decide that re-education of the masses is necessary to extirpate “systemic racism.” This effort is obviously designed to promote a specific political agenda, reinforcing the point at which we began this comment, that government, and in particular the federal government, should be kept as far away from education as possible.
There is systemic racism in the United States, of course. There is the “system” of racial preferences in hiring, advancement, and education that have been insinuated into our legal and governing institutions under the guise of affirmative action and racial quotas. There is the “system” of automatic assumption by the media of white guilt in any instance of friction where the parties are of different races (harder and harder as it to determine what those “races” are). There is the “system” agitating for discrimination in admissions against Americans of Asian heritage in our public schools and universities.
This Proposal itself threatens to further “systematize” racism in the United States by promoting a national policy of infantilization of minority groups, its rationale being that without government help minorities are unable to compete in the real world. Such a policy ignores the very real accomplishments of minorities both today and during the times in our history when there really was systemic racism. The psychological effect of this selective erasure of history cannot be helpful now or in the future.
The Board of Directors and Faculty of Mount Liberty College stand with Chief Justice John Roberts: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race” (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No.1, 2007).
It is obvious that this proposal can in no way be interpreted as “stop[ping] discrimination.”
As the Board of Directors of Mount Liberty College, we urge total rejection of the Proposal.
Gordon S. Jones, B.A., M.A. Ed., M.Phil.
Jennifer Jensen, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.
Frank Brown, B.A., J.D., L.L.M.
