"Some critics assert that Critical Race Theory ("CRT") and other related ideological approaches are fanning the flames of anti-Semitism. They argue that CRT’s binary “oppressed vs oppressor” paradigm often erases the distinct experience of Jews, who do not fit neatly in either category.
They further argue that linking one’s identity to privilege will inevitably connect Jewish identity to “Jewish privilege” and power. It will also, they assert, generate a simplistic, one-sided view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as Israel will invariably be deemed the oppressor.
The critics express grave concern that the related concept of “equity” as popularized by Professor Ibram X. Kendi – that all groups are standing in roughly equal footing or representation – will exacerbate anti-Semitism.
The problem with this definition is that it treats differences among groups as expressions of racism and white supremacy. Such a view, they worry, will be weaponized to scapegoat Jews and Asians, among others, whose average income and educational achievement significantly exceeds the mean. Lastly, those concerned about CRT’s role in inflaming antisemitism worry that in claiming a monopoly on discourse, critical race ideologies undermine society’s enlightenment values of liberal discourse and free expression, which have always inured to the benefit of minority communities. A more illiberal society, they argue, will be bad for Jews.
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens contends that the ideology spawned by CRT is particularly dangerous to American Jews:
The intellectual battle against critical social justice theory (often called “woke” ideology) is one no true Jewish leader can shirk. That isn’t merely because a spirit of liberal-mindedness matters to Jewish well-being. It’s because woke ideology invariably combines three features that ought to terrify Jews: a belief that racial characteristics define individual moral worth, a habit of descending into anti-Semitism, and a quasi-totalitarian mindset that insists not only on regulating behavior but also on monitoring people’s thoughts and punishing those who think the wrong ones."
Four years ago, we met with nonagenarian, Daniel Szafran, who survived the Nazi genocide of European Jewry as a slave laborer. Having relocated to Las Vegas, he delivered a parlor talk before a small group of Israeli-American Girl Scouts who had returned from took an educational trip to one of the camps in which he was a slave-laborer- the Auschwitz death camp. Mr. Szafran didn't believe that Holocaust education is emphasized sufficiently in America - or even in Israel.
Mr. Szafran's host for the parlor talk, Mr. Natan Barashy, bemoans leftist influence in minimizing history resulting in the Holocaust in educational curricula. He also condemns Democratic Socialists throughout the world buying-into the libel which reverses Israel's defense against Islamist-Imperialist, Iranian-armed, Palestinians as "aggressive" - but supporting the anti-Semitic Muslim world, religiously mandated to annihilate the Jews of the world in a Muslim-led Holocaust against Israel.
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.
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!”
... 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.
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?
