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Chinese-American Parents Condemn Critical Race Theory

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Chinese-American Parents Condemn Critical Race Theory

"Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a hateful, divisive, manipulative fraud."

Asra Q. Nomani
Feb 24, 2021
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Chinese-American Parents Condemn Critical Race Theory

asrainvestigates.substack.com

In February 2018, CACAGNY celebratedChinese New Year ​in a parade in Flushing, N.Y.

FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. — This past weekend, I spoke at an online conference of CAPA-Fairfax County, a local chapter of Chinese-American parent groups in the country, mobilizing to defend merit-based education in the United States.

As some participants spoke in Chinese, I could make out some key phrases: “‘moral courage,” “public service,” and “Cultural Revolution.”

When it came my turn to speak, I told the Chinese-American parents: you can save America. After surviving the Cultural Revolution, they uniquely recognize the dangers to an ideology like critical race theory, the race-based philosophy that dismantles core principles in our society, such as the idea of the American Dream, replacing the idea of equality with the disingenuous notion of “equity,” and punishing Asian-American children for their advanced academics.

They cheered their potential role in the country that they love.

And now we see just that kind of moral leadership by another association, CACAGNY​ ​紐約同源會, the Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater New York, which published a letter yesterday denouncing critical race theory as “a hateful, divisive, manipulative fraud.” A member @queens_parents published the letter on Twitter, and it can be found here online at their website www.cacagny.org.

On Twitter, follow parent advocate Chien Kwok @Chien_Kwok, former CACAGNY president Wai Wah Chin, and others, such as @ycinnewyork, who all reveal great moral leadership standing up the dumbing down of gifted education in New York City. Kwok was one of the first people I contacted when we started organizing at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, against the divisive critical race theory activists who lobbied successfully to removed the merit-based admissions test, in their bid to reduce the number of Asian-American students at the school. We continue to fight them.

I’ve republished the full letter here so that you can be inspired to stand up with these parents for a simple hope: to challenge the divisive, bigoted and racist ideas of critical race theory and advocate for an America where children are valued for the “content of their character,” as Martin Luther King said, not the color of their skin.


February 23, 2021

CACAGNY Denounces Critical Race Theory as Hateful Fraud

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a hateful, divisive, manipulative fraud.

CRT appears in our workplaces under the cover of ​implicit bias/sensitivity​ ​training​. It infiltrates our schools pretending to be ​culturally/ethnically responsive​ ​pedagogy​, with curricula such as the New York Times’ ​1619 Project​ and Seattle’s ​ethnomathematics​. Hate groups, with allies in politics, the press and education, pass CRT off as ​anti-racism​ and ​diversity, equity and inclusion​, but CRT is exactly the opposite. From its very roots, CRT is racist, repressive, discriminatory, and divisive.

What is CRT?

Heavily influenced by such hate promoters as Marx, Lenin, Gramsci, Schmitt, Marcuse, Foucault and Freire, but with ​race struggle​ replacing ​class struggle​, CRT’s main ideological dogmas are:

  • You are not a person. You are only your ​race,​ and ​by your race alone you will be judged​.​ (1)

  • Justice is about equal ​rights​, but ​Social​ Justice, or ​equity,​ is about equal ​outcomes​. Only Social​ Justice matters; Justice does not. To achieve equal outcomes, ​forget equal rights​.

  • All unequal outcomes by race -- ​inequity​ for short -- are the result of racial ​oppression​.

  • All Blacks are oppressed and all Whites are oppressors. This is ​systemic​:​ n​ ever ask ​whether oppression occurred, only ​how i​ t occurred. Everyone and everything White is ​complicit​.

  • If you are White and won't admit you are racist, you are racist by ​implicit bias​. To reduce implicit bias, you must self-criticize, confess to ​privilege​, apologize to the oppressed race.​ (2)

  • Whiteness​ is belief in, among others: ​achievement​, ​delayed gratification​, ​progress,​ schedules​ and ​deadlines​, ​meritocracy​, ​race-blindness​, the ​written word​, ​facts​ and ​objectivity (they deny​ lived experience)​ , ​logic​ and ​reason (​ they deny​ empathy​), ​mathematics​ and science ​(until they are ​de-colonized a​nd ​humanized​).​ (3)

  • CRT suppresses dissent with ​cancel culture​: publications withdrawn, college admissions rescinded, online presence wiped out, business relationships ended, jobs terminated.​ (4)

Today, the best-paid promoters of CRT are probably Robin DeAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi. Notable CRT critics include James Lindsay, Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, Chris Rufo, Thomas Sowell.

CRT: Three Examples

In June 2020, the City of Seattle ran an ​anti-racism​ training session for the City's White staff. The session began with instruction that all White people have a ​natural sense​ of racial superiority. The session then required participants to confess their ​complicity​ in a ​system of White supremacy​, ​undo their Whiteness,​ ​be less White,​ and ​become accountable to Blacks​ in their ​every thought​.​ (5)

In August 2017, a 12th grader at a public charter school in Nevada, William Clark, took a civics class that was required for graduation. In this class, students were told to declare their race, gender, etc. The class was then bombarded with material singling out Whites as ​racists​ who ​enjoy the privileges​ of an ​oppressive structure.​ Because he was identified as White, William was subsequently harassed by classmates, teachers and administrators. Escalating abuses followed, including bad grades from the class. William and his mother have since taken the case to Court.​ (6)

In January 2021, third-graders in a Cupertino, California elementary school math class were told that they lived in a ​dominant culture​ of ​White​, ​cisgender​, ​educated​ ​Christians​, and this culture was created to ​hoard​ ​power.​ The kids were then told to check themselves off on a list of victimization categories -- race, gender, religion, family structure -- to find out which categories made them oppressors,​ and which made them ​oppressed​. A Chinese parent found out about this and organized parents to stop it. It reminded them of Mao’s bloody Cultural Revolution. The school later decided that the material was not grade-appropriate, but will still use it for older classes.​ (7)

What CRT Means for Americans of Chinese Descent

Chinese Americans are​ people of color​ and therefore start from the ​oppressed ​side of CRT’s binary. But as we overcome discrimination and achieve upward mobility, we are now ​White by adjacency​. In New York City, ​Black Lives Matter​ rioters with CRT signs assaulted our rally supporting merit-based education. We have come into CRT’s crosshair.

Education is the main area where CRT attacked us. CRT, naturally, demands automatic preferences for Blacks in admissions to selective institutions and programs. That is unacceptable to us: such racial preferences come at the expense of our children, at the expense of academic standards, and at the expense of basic fairness.

For top colleges, CRT uses the ruse of ​multiple-criteria​ ​holistic admissions​, which allows Harvard to reject Asians with better academic and extra-curricular credentials than those of admitted applicants. Despite never having met the applicants, Harvard admissions officers somehow conclude that Asian applicants ​lack integrity and courage​ -- directly contradicting evaluations from interviewers who met the applicants, and from teachers who’ve known the applicants for months if not years. If smearing Asians this way isn’t ​hate speech,​ then what is? Call it ​diversity, equity and inclusion​.

For top high schools and grade schools, CRT uses the scheme of ​lotteries​ to lower admission standards. Just lowering admission cutoffs isn’t enough; when cutoffs were lowered, ​too many Asians​ still passed the cutoffs and had to be admitted. Lotteries does the trick: with the luck of the draw, lotteries let lower-qualified Blacks skip over better-qualified Asians. Lotteries have been proposed or are used against Americans of Asian descent in Boston, San Francisco, Northern Virginia, and here in New York City, all under the banner of ​Social Justice ​and​ equity​.

One way or another, CRT wants to get rid of ​too many Asians​ in good schools. Asians are over-represented.​ CRT is today’s Chinese Exclusion Act. CRT is the real ​hate crime​ against Asians.

Twitter avatar for @ConceptualJames
James Lindsay, increasingly relevant @ConceptualJames
Read the whole letter if you can. The Chinese-American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York (CACAGNY) has explicitly denounced Critical Race Theory as a hateful, divisive fraud. Asian-Americans are a minority group discriminated against by CRT and expected to carry water for it.
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3:21 AM ∙ Feb 24, 2021
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Some of CRT’s ​hate speeches​ against Asians are obvious: ​too many Asians​ and ​Stuyvesant doesn’t look like the City​ need no explanation. They can also be subtle. For example: ​Stuyvesant is not diverse.​ Since when is it not diverse for a school to have dozens of languages spoken at home, all major world faiths practiced, most cultural experiences inherited, from ancient civilization-building to rise and fall of empires, to slavery, colonization, revolution, and diaspora? Even if CRT dismisses all this and reduces everything to just ​looks​ -- do ​all Asians look alike​ to them?

Another trend that should concern us is CRT’s coming collision with immigrants. Black militancy was always receptive to the view that immigrants steal jobs and resources from Blacks, but the bigger irritant is ​immigrant values​. Arriving with little more than their human capital, immigrants are grateful to be here, work hard and educate their children hard, and believe in the American dream under the Constitutional guarantee of ​equal rights​. Most infuriating for CRT is that immigrants, including Blacks from West Africa and the Caribbean, are making real progress. When CRT eventually clashes with immigrants, we will find CRT’s racism and hate against us ratcheted up another notch.

We Have to Start Fighting Back!

We need to recognize CRT through its fraudulent packaging, call it out, ​resist​. Parents need to watch for CRT in schools, talk to each other, and organize, like the Cupertino Chinese parents.

Regardless, parents need to speak with their kids to ​anti-indoctrinate​ (or ​un-doctrinate​) them at home. This needs to start early, because CRT indoctrination also starts early. Don’t trust schools and teachers blindly.

On the political front, President Trump issued an executive order to ban CRT indoctrination at the Federal level. President Biden rescinded that order upon taking office, so our best hopes now rest with the states, several of which have proposals to ban CRT indoctrination. New York legislators don’t lean that way, so we must ​vote​ to elect state legislators who represent our views on CRT!

On the legal front, several CRT lawsuits have been filed, relating to freedom of speech, compelled speech, and hostile work environment. Parents should keep abreast of these cases and seek counsel when appropriate -- the brave people filing these lawsuits are regular folks just like us!

CACAGNY​ ​紐約同源會
Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater New York PO Box 130024
New York, New York 10013
www.cacagny.org

Footnotes:

  1. When race ​intersects​ with other victimization categories, e.g. gender, race​ ​is always primary.

  2. Public ​struggle sessions​ in schools and offices are sometimes called ​courageous conversations.​

  3. This list proves beyond any doubt CRT’s shocking bigotry and utter condescension against Blacks.

  4. When cancel culture is paired with ​racial hyper-sensitivity​, outcomes can be farcical. That’s what got a popular business communications professor suspended over the ​Chinese filler 那個, 那個.

  5. Black staff weren’t invited to anti-racism training because ​it is impossible for Blacks to be racist​.

  6. Also in Court is Dave Flynn, coach at a Massachusetts school. He was fired after he complained to the school about similar ​Black Lives Matter​ CRT material in his daughter’s 7th grade class.

  7. When the Berkeley, California School District used similar CRT material on older grades, they had to suspend it because anti-White bullying got out of control.

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Chinese-American Parents Condemn Critical Race Theory

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3 Comments
Erin Reeves-McMillan
Feb 27, 2021

This is truly encouraging and inspiring. This country needs the voices of immigrants who have escaped repressive regimes to rise and educate the uninformed, unconcerned, docile American public. Thank you for your courage, wisdom and strength.

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Cary Jackson
Mar 27, 2021

These views of CRT are incredibly oversimplified and presented in a beguiling way. These attacks on CRT are thinly veiled fraudulent attempts by corporatist 'scholars' to bring the RW culture war to universities, and face it: A means of stifling BLM, the US civil rights movement.

If we are going to target academic fraud, first and foremost let's start with Koch Brothers/corporatists scholars bashing "CRT" --an obscure academic movement--as a canard to defund universities and the public sector.

It's not hard to smell the ideology emanating from this piece, a far RW hit job. I admire your work and your life story very much, so these types of hit job pieces in RW and laughably oversimplifed depiction of current black political ideas does NOT do you justice.

i hope you can see that ultimately a ban on CRT is very much like CCP communist chinese rule--in addition to being patently absurd. Also, i hope you realize your own grievances regarding Asian American students could be banned as well....if you give it some thought.

Academic Bans. UNAMERICAN. Attacks on universities. Cowardly. I want to respect you.

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