Blacks and Jews join to protest California plan for critical race theory in high-school curriculum; Though ratified 11-0, why it's flawed fundamentally

Christians join Jews outside of L.A. Federal Building Sunday, 7 Mar'21, to protest identity-politics,
Ethnic Studies curriculum California state officials sought to mandate  (photo: End Jew Hatred)

"Teach Love Not Hate,” a Los Angeles protest contesting the proposed Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) was held at the West Los Angeles Federal Buildingon Sunday March 7th.  The protest, featuring speakers Jewish and Christian, white and black, was sponsored by organizations End Jew Hatred, Yad Yamin, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and The Lawfare Project.

The event drew approximately 100 attendees. JooTube caught-up with a few of the speakers for up-close explanations of their views. Joshua Washington, a Zionistic Christian with the Institute of Black Solidarity with Israel, and Maytal, a Persian-Jewish mother of school-age kids, express the alarm of California's Jewish Community

Maytal goes a step further and, coming from an Iranian-Jewish immigrant family, comments on the Biden Administration appointing pro-Iran and anti-Israel officials to manage nuclear arms limitations negotiations.

Jewish Journal Editor-In-Chief David Suissa also spoke during the protest, argued that his main issue with the ESMC was that it inculcates students with the notion that their core identity is based on their ethnicity rather than their individuality.

At the Los Angeles rally, black civil-rights activist, Ted Hayes of "Love is Real" (LIRM.com) and gentile advocate for Israel and Jews, Laurie Cardoza-Moore of "Proclaiming Justice to the Nations" (PJTN.org) discuss their objections to ESMC.

 

Aaron Bandler, in the Jewish Journal, March 8, 2021 wrote:

In his speech, Mr. Washington pointed out that Martin Luther King Jr (a day before his assassination) had said that there was increasing radicalization among some in the Black community that “There are some who are color-consumed and see a kind of mystique in being colored, and anything non-colored is condemned.” Dr. King, he added, explicitly REJECTED that line of thinking. Mr. Washington stated, “What we are saying now with this Critical Ethnic Studies curriculum is an academic reiteration of the 'color consumption' that King described. This is part of why many like Dr. King are excised from the curriculum - and Dr. King himself is lambasted and belittled as weak and docile.”

Joshua Washington addresses anti-Semitism among the Left and African-American mainstream:

Mr. Washington added that several civil rights leaders are ignored and disparaged in the curriculum while it glorifies “militant violence.”

He also said that the history of Jews and the Black-Jewish alliance is underrepresented in the curriculum, while Arab studies are overrepresented and fail to mention “the centuries long slave trade of Africans that still continues today.”

Washington warned that more than 20 school districts in California have adopted the first ESMC draft that many Jewish groups viewed as problematic. “If your school district is one of those districts, it is up to you to apply serious pressure on your child’s school to get rid of this,” Washington said. “Apart from espousing poisonous doctrine, the curriculum is filled with lies and half-truths and complete distortions. It isn’t a celebration of different culture; it’s a celebration of a single destructive ideology.” 

He added that “no revision can redeem this Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum. What can redeem it is a return to the drawing board with a new group of authors with more diversity of thought - and not a group of people with the clear and obvious anti-Jewish, anti-Black and anti-peace agenda!”

"Ethnic studies curriculum passes 11-0 after one final day of sparring" by Gabe Stutman in Northern California's JWeekly 19 March

... The curriculum passed with a number of Jewish concerns addressed; it now includes two lessons on Jewish Americans, absent from the first version, in the section “Interethnic Bridge-building,” it discusses antisemitism at multiple points, and it does not mention the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel nor the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“The model curriculum approved today by the State Board of Education is a vast improvement over prior drafts and a win for everyone who fought to remove bigoted and discriminatory content about Jews and Israel,” said Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel of Woodland Hills and state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, chair and vice chair of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, respectively, in a joint statement.

“The just-approved model curriculum, while not perfect, addresses the major concerns our community identified nearly two years ago,” said Tye Gregory, executive director of JCRC, the agency that works on behalf of the Bay Area Jewish community on critical issues affecting Jews.

Other groups, including StandWithUs, the AMCHA Initiative, the Alliance for Constructive Ethnic Studies and the American Jewish Committee, still opposed the curriculum as written.

The national AJC office said in a statement Thursday that revisions were “a salve” but were “ultimately not curative of the fundamental flaws at the heart of the original curriculum, much of which represented a rigid ideological (but sharply contested) world view.”

Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs, an L.A.-based nonprofit focused on supporting Israel and combating global antisemitism, said the organization was “disappointed that this model curriculum was approved as is,” adding, “we are proud that so many spoke out at today’s meeting and for nearly two years leading up to this vote … without their voices, the curriculum would have been dramatically worse.”

The textbook-length model curriculum sparked more than 82,000 public comments over three review periods since the summer of 2019. More than 38,000 of them were summarized by the CDE as “Comments about Jewish Americans and/or antisemitism,” by far the most of any category.

The curriculum next will be edited by CDE staff to reflect minor changes and to include a definition of “critical race theory,” which State Board of Education members suggested was necessary to resolve confusion.

Read full article at JWeekly.com

"The problem with ethnic studies isn’t just how it treats Jews" by Jonathan S. Tobin  March 19

Anti-Semitic content was removed from a proposed California public-school curriculum. But the real danger is a radical and divisive ideological agenda at the heart of this effort.

(JNS) Some Jews are declaring victory. Their long battle to alter the draft of the proposed Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) for California public schools ended with an outcome that left the Simon Wiesenthal Center “encouraged.” The effort to remove overtly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel content from the document was approved by the California State Board of Education succeeded. Yet the center remains “concerned” about the program. The American Jewish Committee agreed. It referred to the ESMC as “fundamentally flawed.” StandWithUS concurred, calling it “problematic.”

At stake was a new school course requirement for schools from K-12 that would make the study of the histories, struggles and contributions of Asian, African-American, Latino and Native American communities an integral part of public education in the nation’s most populous state. The fourth and revised draft of the curriculum now includes material about, among others, Jews, Armenians and Sikhs.

The first draft, which provoked a strong protest from Jews, included anti-Semitic and anti-Israel language. It effectively endorsed the boycott of Israel by listing it alongside the Black Lives Matter movement and #MeToo protests against sexual harassment as praiseworthy activities. It referred to the establishment of modern-day Israel by the term nakba, the Palestinian word for “catastrophe.” It spoke of Jews gaining “race privilege” because of their skin color, which makes them part of the oppressive majority grinding down minorities. And it even included a song lyric that spoke of Jews manipulating and controlling the press.

That’s all gone from the final draft that’s been approved and included in it now are lesson plans on American Jews, including one on the Mizrachi Jewish experience that discusses anti-Semitism. Both contain the widely accepted definition of Jew-hatred, according to the International Holocaust Remembrance Association, as well as material on anti-Semitism from the Anti-Defamation League.

That’s enough to satisfy some in the Jewish community. The California Legislative Caucus and the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council have withdrawn their objections entirely. Tyler Gregory, executive director of that JCRC, said in a press release that “we need ethnic studies now. Ethnic studies gives marginalized communities the agency to define and share their own stories, cultures and histories. As Jewish Americans, we relate to this urgent need.”

So why do many Jews remain worried about the implementation of this curriculum?

Part of the reason stems from justified concerns about how it will be implemented in the 1,037 school districts around the state, where local boards of education will have considerable leeway in interpreting the curriculum. That could lead to endless controversies as the various groups seeking to be represented demand that their preferred lesson plans be the ones used, as well as fights over the emphasis that individual teachers and schools may choose in teaching about ethnicity.

But the problems with this curriculum go much deeper than just a matter of implementation. The idea of ethnic studies sounds like an anodyne concept that everyone should embrace. It’s actually a terrible idea tainted by what even the liberal-leaning American Jewish Committee rightly termed “a rigid ideological worldview.”

For all of the talk about ethnic studies empowering marginalized minority populations and giving children positive role models, the concept at the core of this effort is critical race theory. That’s an idea that views all Americans solely as members of racial and ethnic groups, not as individuals. As with other permutations of this toxic idea, the goal of the curriculum isn’t so much to fight racism as it is to enshrine race consciousness at the heart of every discussion and topic.

The Critical Ethnic Studies Association, which was the original driving force behind this program, isn’t really interested in celebrating diversity and adding the stories of different groups to the accepted narrative of American history. What they want is to replace the old story of America as born in a fight for liberty and seeking, despite problems and the sin of slavery and racial discrimination, to progress towards freedom for all with one that views it as an irredeemably racist nation.

The point of the curriculum they inspired, even in its revised form, is not one of inclusion of minorities in the story of America, but rather, to indoctrinate all students in the idea of “translating historical lessons and critical race theory into direct action for social justice.” Its purpose is to reinforce a leftist worldview that sees what earlier generations celebrated as the “American creed” of opportunity, meritocracy and liberty as merely a “dominant narrative” that serves white privilege and racism.

I understand why Jewish groups scrambled to be included in the mix of ethnic, racial and religious narratives that could be taught. The danger, however, is not so much that those stories will be lost amid the importance that the curriculum places on teaching about minorities who are viewed as marginalized rather than about Jews who are not seen as protected victims that must be extolled.

The trouble with ethnic studies is that even with the more overt symptoms of anti-Jewish prejudice removed, the curriculum is still a political catechism rooted in intersectional ideology about Third World nations and people of color locked in a never-ending struggle against white oppression. The subtext is therefore still one that puts Jews in the unfortunate position of either denying their own “privilege” or being enlisted in a political struggle that has little to do with a celebration of diversity, let alone the manifold blessings of American liberty.

The disturbing aspects of this teaching go beyond the trouble it makes for Jews. After all, in California, students are only required to take three semesters of English and two of math to graduate high school. But while subjects like biology, chemistry, physics, geography, civics, history and foreign languages are merely optional, this ideologically tainted ethnic studies curriculum will be mandatory. Think about what this means for the future of a country in which important disciplines, including those that were once correctly viewed as essential for an informed citizenry in a democracy, are ditched in favor of lessons about prioritizing race and tearing down the country.

Those who are trying to remind Californians of the struggles and achievements of Jews in America have a good story to tell that is deserving of attention. The same is true of Mexican-Americans, African-Americans and a host of other groups. But Jewish success in the United States is rooted in the core truths about that so-called “dominant” narrative about the country in which immigrants from a variety of backgrounds joined together to embrace the values and the ideas of the Founding Fathers about political and economic freedom. The same is true for the successes of every other group, including those who were subjected to far worse discrimination than the anti-Semitism that Jews had to face.

By enshrining an ethnic-studies course into law in this manner, California has set up a destructive competition along racial, religious and ethnic lines that makes race the primary way we all define ourselves rather than as individuals and Americans. It glorifies a struggle for “equity” in which some Americans will get privilege and power based on their group identity, rather than demanding that all are given an equal chance and be judged on their own merits.

We should know the stories of all groups that make up the mosaic of American life. But the critical race theory animating this curriculum and other versions of it infiltrating into American society is a poison that undermines national identity and patriotism. Instead of Jews demanding their piece of the ethnic pie and begging that the core ideology of intersectionalism that dismisses them as privileged whites be watered down, we should be rejecting the entire edifice of this deplorable curriculum as something that will hurt all Americans. 

Read original "The problem with ethnic studies isn’t just how it treats Jews" by Jonathan S. Tobin at Jewish News Syndicate.