During the 2020 fall semester, Kali Fontanilla—a high school English language teacher working in the Salinas, California, school district—noticed that many of her students were failing one of their other classes: ethnic studies. This was at the height of the pandemic, and instruction was entirely online, leaving many students in the lurch. Still, Fontanilla thought it was odd to see so many Fs.
Salinas has a majority Mexican population; all of Fontanilla’s students were Hispanic and were learning English as a second language. Education officials who propose adding ethnic studies to various curriculums—and making it mandatory, as the Salinas school district did—typically intend for privileged white students to learn about other cultures. There’s a certain irony in requiring members of an ethnic minority to study this, and an even greater irony in the fact that such students were struggling intensely with the course.
“My students are failing ethnic studies,” says Fontanilla, who is of Jamaican ancestry. “I would say half of them are failing this ethnic studies class.”
This made Fontanilla curious about what the course was teaching. All of the high school’s teachers used the same online platform to post lesson plans and course materials, so Fontanilla decided to take a look. She was shocked by what she saw.
“This was like extreme left brainwashing of these kids,” says Fontanilla. “Critical race theory all throughout the lessons, from start to finish. The whole thing.”
“The teacher had the kids all learn about the four I’s of oppression,” says Fontanilla. The four I’s were institutional, internalized, ideological, and interpersonal oppression. “And then there was a whole presentation on critical race theory and they actually had the students analyze the school through critical race theory.”
Slides from lesson plans provided by Fontanilla confirm that the ethnic studies course references critical race theory by name.
The original meaning of the theory, at least when taught at the college level, is that racism so pervades U.S. society and U.S. institutions that it is impossible to separate race from other issues: All policies, structures, and laws were built under the auspices of racism, a sort of original sin that shapes the country’s institutions. In common parlance, opponents often use the term “CRT” to refer a broader set of concepts, like intersectionality—the idea that there are different kinds of oppression that all stack on top of each other—and privilege.
Salina’s version of the course included a “privilege quiz”: Students were expected to rank themselves based on their marginalized status or lack thereof. The lesson plan included an image of two white girls—former Republican President George W. Bush’s twin daughters, to be precise—at the top of the privilege hierarchy.
“Some people are born in third base and think they hit a triple,” says Fontanilla, recalling the intended message of the exercise. “So basically, they were born on third base and they graduated college because they had a head start.”
Many people might consider such activities to be a form of left-wing activism infiltrating the classroom . Fontanilla is one of them. As a Christian, a conservative, and a black woman, she doesn’t believe that students—especially her students, learning English as a second language—need to be taught to check their privilege.
“It’s hyper-race-focused,” says Fontanilla. “And whenever there’s hyper race focus, racism will follow.”
Fontanilla decided that district parents had a right to know what was in the curriculum, and took steps to obtain the lesson plans so that she her job would not be at risk if she leaked them. She contacted an attorney for help, but when they finally received the documents, the district had omitted the slides that included the words critical race theory.
She decided to write a letter to the school board in protest of the ethnic studies curriculum. It was read aloud at a meeting on June 22.
“I do not appreciate constantly being pandered to and treated differently because of the color of my skin, especially since I did not have the freedom to not go along with it,” Fontanilla wrote, warning that the curriculum was an attempt at left-wing indoctrination. The statement elicited cheers from other parents attending the meeting. In response, the school board prohibited anti-CRT comments at its next public gathering.
Full story at Reason.
And this is relevant to Catholic Californians because….
Because many catholic californians have children in the public school system and need to be informed of current spreading trends
why? because Catholics in California and everywhere else should abhor and resist phony race-war propaganda and tactics aimed at our vulnerable children. why lay a guilt trip on them for something for which they had no responsibility? that’s reverse-racism—ascribing to our kids evil attitudes and actions of prior generations held by forbears either through guile or ignorance. isn’t the purpose of CRT intuitively obvious? one of its primary tenets is insisting that society remains inescapably bound by past mistakes, and is incapable of progressing. In other words, evil once done infects a society FOREVER. NONSENSE, believed only by wallowers in victimology!!
Critical race theory boils down to: black or brown good, white or yellow bad. Give black and brown whatever they demand, push white and yellow aside to make room for black and brown.
It’s going to foment a civil race war and ruin the country.
I already look with skepticism at any person from a favored class that occupies a position of responsibility in government or business or education. They got the job because of racial quotas, not on merit.
Just look at our vice president. She’s thoroughly unqualified for anything and has no achievements and can’t reason her way out of a paper cup, but she keeps getting promoted. All because she’s black.
God help us.
That’s what happened to Clarence Thomas (who was recently declared not part of the “community” by bi-racial Sunny Hostin on The View). When he graduated from Yale, law firms assumed he got in because he was black and that his grades were inflated.
I’m going to take umbrage with your response – too many stereotypes of the objectives and teachings of CRT. Should one, whether white or POC, be aware of how race has played a role in how society developed here in the US? For some, it’s uncomfortable, especially if they discover that someone in their own DNA had slaves, or was a member of the KKK, etc. I had relatives who fought on both sides of the Civil War, yet I do not feel any guilt over those facts, but for many, it causes them to feel some level of shame and trying to figure out a way to assuage others from demanding some reparation or counter privilege. The idea is to face the facts of our collective mistreatment and abuse of diverse groups so that then we can 1) restore the relationship somehow so that it’s no longer a point of concern and 2) learn so as not to repeat such acts again, and if possible, change the paradigm so that as a society and to a certain extent individuals that prejudice and privilege are not part of our collective psyche. So if one holds the opinion that CRT is all about making one feel “bad” or “guilty”, that’s on them, not neccesarily on the curriculum. Like all subjects, the teacher and school can slant an issue a certain way.
I think you know about the Whoopi Goldberg scandal from The View.
It started because a Tennessee school board banned the graphic novel (if you don’t know, they are like cartoon books) Maus because of foul language and nudity.
Another person on the panel actually said “They banned it because they don’t like history that makes white people look bad.”
There are plenty of resources on the Holocaust that don’t use bad language or have nudity and are not cartoonish depictions using cats and mice.
I wonder if the fact that it happened in a Southern State that made that person say something so bigoted. .
Every white person in the South knows that there are good people and bad people. They know that the Holocaust was bad. Lots of Southerners fought against Hitler in WWII (although they are passing away now.)
That person was not suspended.
The assumption that anyone who is not white must have gotten the job because of affirmative action is racist to the nth degree. How many white people got their job because they were white. When RBG was asked how many women should be on the SCOTUS she said nine would be good, since nine men had been the norm prior to O’Connor. You see, there aren’t white jobs and black jobs or brown jobs, there are just jobs. There have been 115 justices on the court, only 5 were women and only two African American. I wonder if the rest got their jobs because they were white?
Bob One, so you are saying that the Presidents of the United States were racists?
That there were qualified candidates who were not nominated simply because they were female or people of color.
It is possible but do you know of anyone?
Because we ought to get triggered by trivialities more often.
Critical Race Theory is now illegal in education, from preschool through grad school, in several states– with more states making plans to outlaw it. CRT should be banned in all 50 states.The schools should return to teaching good manners and Christian morals. “Love thy neighbor,” as the Bible teaches. Many good parents– Catholics, Protestants, Jews, etc.– and families of all races– are worried about their children being harmed.by subversive, dangerous, immoral leftist liberals, in the schools. Catholic schools, and other private schools, likewise, need to ban the evil CRT.
Cancel culture. What ever happenned to freedom of speech ?
CRT is a part of the extreme leftist “cancel culture”– psychologically manipulative brainwashing, underminining, subversive, controlling, and destructive.
YFC– CRT has a long list of people they seek to “cancel” and destroy!
I really don’t think that’s true Ban. I think it’s just that people don’t seem to want to have their kids taught the complete history of the US.
This has nothing to do with history. It sounds like you don’t know anything about CRT, nor read the article.
CRT’s bottom line is really about helping us as a society and individuals to learn from our past, to not use it as an excuse for gaining or losing privilege, but as stated, to “love our neighbor” as the Bible and other holy writ teaches. Banning CRT will not make the cause of that objective go away, and the fear that CRT is inherently leftist, subversive, etc., is a way to proclaim one’s righteousness about trying to ban it. Good manners and Christian morals aren’t taught in schools, but not because it’s replaced by CRT. One can do both. I wonder if BAN CRT is of the ilk that believes all teachers are inherently liberal (er, excuse me, subversive, dangerous, immoral and leftist), and therefore a danger to their children. I would suggest that instead of banning it, CRT should be amended and negotiated by educators and parents from both sides of the debate so that the objective is met. We study the Nazis, WWII and the Holocaust less about glorifying war, or heroism per se, but really to learn from that era, to be vigilant about how a country can be swept up in evil, and how humankind can commit atrocities that hopefully, through learning about them (instead of denying it all) our children are cognizant of them and thereby prevent it. Regrettably, as the saying goes, through our own neglect of facts, and unwillingness to face them directly, we are set to repeat them.
Dremel does not acknowledge that CRT underlining thesis is that “whites” are evil and oppressive. This idiotic idea leads people like Orpah Winfrey to believe that poor white person in Appalachia has more privilege than her. The main problem facing blacks here in America is not ‘systemic racism” but the fatherless homes and the destruction of the black family unit. White liberals have been the biggest threat to blacks for 3 generations and should be jailed en masse
No, Michael Dremel. You cannot replace teaching and inculcating in children good manners, Christian morality and living a good, responsible life, with revolutionary garbage– undermining and harming students, starting race civil wars, and destroying classrooms, communities, and the country. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. taught and led by Biblical teachings only, of our duty to love thy neighbor. There is no replacement, no shortcut to living as Christ taught us.
Rewriting history risky business. Those who learned the old usually don’t like the new, and the new is often no more accurate than the old. Critical Race Theory is a graduate-level course. Many think that its content is seeping into grade and high school classes. Most often it is not, but people think it is. It is also THE idea that is used to make people think that bad stuff is being taught in schools. When I taught US history back in the early ’60s, we didn’t realize it at the time, but we really were teaching a white man’s version of our history. We taught about the great writings of our Founding Fathers, but we didn’t teach that Washington and Jefferson owned slaves, or that most of our first dozen presidents owned slaves. We mentioned the economy of the South that involved slavery but didn’t teach that it was a slave-based economy for which they were willing to go to war. Today the schools in most states teach a broader and truer history, not a propaganda version.
Bob One, American schools have the responsibility to teach facts of our history to young children, and instill pride and patriotism, and respect for our great Nation. We are a great and blessed country! We have sought to correct our flaws, such as slavery, and many other “wrongs”– and should be proud of that! It is terribly naive of stupid liberals to expect and demand an impossible “perfection” of a country, its leaders, and of an ethnic group or a race! Children must grow up with a realistic and balanced understanding and awareness of themselves, as human beings, and of all other human beings, too. Children must be taught respect for their excellent (though human) teachers, parents, priests and nuns at church, policemen, and all other adults! Kids must be taught Christian Morality, and “love thy neighbor,” and that racism is a sin. CRT and all other leftist psychologically subversive, damaging, undermining, anti-American ideologies must be banned. Yes, America, and our cherished Democracy, is worth dying for! And our great Nation has been built upon the heroic sacrifices of many lives.
Ummm didn’t we make a Constitution in order to form a more “perfect” Union? Isn’t the struggle for an ever more perfect Union one of the things that makes us a great nation? Doesn’t the fact that we admitted in writing that the Union still needed perfecting mean we are and have always been imperfect?
It sounds like you didn’t read the article, and have no familiarity at all with CRT. And by the way– did you know that CRT despises our American Constitution, they ignorantly claim it is an evil document written by a bunch of privileged, racist White men.
Dear Ban, I’d love to see a place where I can read the curriculum itself that says the things you say it says, Remember that the Constitution WAS written by rich white men, many of whom were racists insofar as they OWNED African slaves, and it did make a legal system in which slaves were considered 3/5ths of a person for the purposes of taxation. Is this what you mean? You find it offensive that people are taught these true things?
YFC, just look online, and you will find plenty of information on CRT. Including a list of states that have banned it, and why. As of 2022, about seven states have totally banned CRT, sixteen other states are in the legislative process of banning it, and more states have proposed legislation, to ban CRT. Plus, school boards in nany other states have formally banned it.
I want to see where YOU got your source, because it doesn’t say what you say it says. And as others have pointed out, CRT as such isn’t even taught until graduate and advanced undergrad curricula.
What many right wing people have done is to label any fair mention of race and racial history is CRT. It is not. The list of books banned, for example, for mentioning race at all is enormous.
I want to see YOUR source. Just because school boards banned something doesn’t mean that they or you know what CRT actually IS.
That is the problem. Does this curriculum unite people or divide?
But that is also not the purpose of education.
The truth is the truth.
What the end result of any kind of teaching is…we do not know.
I do not like to see the CRT thing used because it has become a thing of it’s own.
There is curriculum. Chosen by whoever. Each teacher makes their decision on what to cover in the time allowed.
Rather than complain about a theory, the reality should be examined.
There are a lot of concerns about this kind of teaching.. One of mine is that they are going to create more people who think characteristics that they are born with inhibit their success in life. Also, society is changing at such a rapid pace that this stuff will be outdated in one or two years and then these kids hit adulthood and they have been taught to live in a world that does not exist outside their own school.
Rather than be oppositional and angry, people should calm down and sit down with each other and talk it out until it’s done. Rather than “we;;, we are out of time for this meeting.” Keep working.
I agree with you that schools should teach the truth. Let’s forget CRT, because it isn’t taught in99+% of schools no matter what Tucker and Laura tell you. So, let’s teach the truth, not to make some people feel inferior or guilty, but so that we have educated citizens and don’t let us relive some of the mistakes in our history. Did we have a Klan that lynched people because of the color of their skin? Did we burn down whole Black communities because they were black? Did we have red-lining in the banking and real estate industry? Did we inter Americans of Japanese descent? Did we forcibly move Native Americans off their land so that white people could take it over? Did we go to war with our southern neighbors so that we could annex their land? Did we try to forbid people of the Islamic faith from immigrating to the US? Did we have massive discrimination against Catholics and Jews? We are a great nation, exceptional in fact, but we made mistakes along the way and we need to make sure that we learn about them.
History Teacher, we learned about all of this in school, except for the burning of black communities. We saw Martin Luther King Jr. murdered. Nobody had to convince us that there was racism. We lived in it. We worked for employers who would not hire black people. We knew people whose families disowned them because they married someone they did not like (other race, other religion, other social class).I had a parent who could not stand Earl Warren because of the “relocation” of the Japanese-Americans. He could not stand the Kennedys because Joe made a lot of his money from the failure of the stock market in the 1929-30. Once they are rich and famous, then they are all for the poor and for civil rights.
This isn’t history; it is our life.
No history teacher had to teach it to my kid. I taught it to him. Knowing there are people like the Klan out there was scary to white people, too.
There is a difference between a voluntary group of people who are doing something illegal and what the people who were running local, state and the federal government did. White Americans do not approve of the governments discriminatory actions. There wasn’t anything they could do about it. Just like now. The government who did this stuff acts like WE are the problem. The media who only recently started to undo it’s stereotypes and bigotry turns around and calls us racists.
There is currently a lawsuit of a big group of Asian-American students, against Harvard University, who were all rejected by the Harvard U. Admissions dept., based solely on race and Affirmative Action requirements. Hope these Asian-American students win their case.
This is relevant to any Californian who cares about our children not being harassed by marxist indoctrination, and efforts to divide them and us by forcing everyone in a racial ghetto and turning us against each other,
God bless Ms. Fontanilla!
Last year, the State of Delaware passed a bill that mandates that all schools must include teaching Black history interwoven into the curriculum, not as a separate subject. And to also teach kids that racism is wrong. And no CRT. Wonder if Kali Fontanilla is familiar with this new program, and what she thinks of it? Also, I wonder what SCOTUS Judge Clarence Thomas’ opinions might be, on all of this.
There are way too many incorrect definitions of CRT here. Let’s start with the original definition (Matsuda, 1991): “the work of progressive legal scholars of color who are attempting to develop a jurisprudence that accounts for the role of racism in American law and that work toward the elimination of racism as part of a larger goal of eliminating all forms of subordination” (p.1331).
How CRT relates to education is in the form of a methodology. Researchers Yosso and Solorzano define it as such (I paraphrase): “Critical race methodology is a theoretically grounded approach to research that (a) foregrounds race & racism in all aspects of the research process, (b) challenges the traditional research, (c) offers a transformative solution to racial, gender, and class subordination, (d) focuses on the experiences of students of color, and (e) uses the interdisciplinary knowledge of other studies like ethnic studies, women’s studies, sociology, history, humanities, and the law.”
If you’re confused after reading this it’s probably because CRT only exists in graduate-level work. That’s where it came from, that’s where it exists, and no…it’s not being taught in TK-12 education. But yes, there exist examples of teachers that quote “CRT” in their work with teens in TK-12 school work. Are those teachers experts? Are they well versed in CRT? Might they be approaching CRT ineffectively? Might these teachers have a misunderstanding of what CRT is all about?
Please remember that teachers are human. They don’t always get it right. It’s easy to cherrypick extreme stories like this one and then pretend that this is what’s happening across all schools. If you want to know more about what’s going on in your kid’s schooling, then check out your teacher’s website. Open your kid’s backpack, look & read the worksheets, check out their Google Classrooms, or whatever they use; make an appointment with that teacher, zoom in, call in, the point is…don’t get your information from social media.
Again, CRT in education is a graduate-level work at universities. It is the study of how race and racism are embedded in our institutions, and how it can be used as a pedagogical framework to understand better the experiences of people of color in our society.