Eugene Volokh’s blog at Reason , reported on a policy in Contra Costa, California whereby students were to be readmitted to school for in-person classroom learning based on their race. The least privileged, by Contra Costa’s count, would be first. “Look. I’m cool with people wanting to send their kids to ‘Social Justice Country Day’ – but don’t do it to my kid against my will with my tax dollars in my public school system,” Neily says. When Parents Defending Education posts tabloid articles about the battles over anti-racist curricula “Look. I’m cool with people wanting to send their kids to ‘Social Justice Country Day’ – but don’t do it to my kid against my will with my tax dollars in my public school system.” that fairness requires everyone arrive at the same level of status regardless of their starting point – as opposed to equality – which insists that everyone have the same opportunities to pursue status regardless of their starting point. Of course, both are guiding ideals, neither of them straightforwardly achievable. In practice, “equity” typically refers to changes in admissions procedures and other student rankings to avoid the appearance of racial sorting. Reforms to private-school admissions parameters leave competitively-minded parents to worry that their child’s expensive education is hemorrhaging prestige points. At public schools, though, the stakes are somewhat different: The Volokh Conspiracy,
with a racial equity consultant – that shouldn’t happen.
Plenty of the complaints are pure rants, too – or stem from fear and anxiety stoked by lockdowns and intensified by administrators’ own paranoid secrecy. In the Rockwood School District in Missouri, for example, an administrator, probably exhausted by prying parents, e-mailed teachers instructing them to remove the anti-racist curriculum from its online platform while continuing to teach it. “People feel disenfranchised,” Neily says, seeming to adopt the terms of the movement. “That’s not necessarily the case – but when you hear anecdotes like that, it plays to a lot of people’s worst fears.” When I ask whether parents should be afraid of activist-inflected lesson plans, Neily says, “That’s much less of a problem than the school board passing a policy, like, We will now mandate affinity groups .” No such policy exists, she then clarified – not that she’s heard of, anyway. But should one arise, the tip line’s always open. THE EQUITABLE EXIT Critics at public and private schools alike are disturbed by purported trends like racial affinity groups sorting student discussions of race by skin color, handouts and prompts that lead students to determine their relative “privilege” based on their race, and the removal of canonical classics to make room for a more racially inclusive reading list. The school of thought that animates these practices also promotes ideas like the importance of equity – which typically means
American Consequences
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