Critical Race Theory (CRT) is one of the divisive doctrines ever to threaten American students, and it sparked an unprecedented grassroots rebellion by parents whose stories of ideological resistance are detailed in our latest book The great insurrection of parents.
A multidisciplinary educational philosophy that places race at the middle of American history and culture, CRT is analogous to racial Marxism – with whites seen because the oppressors and non-whites because the oppressed. Philosophy is at the middle of high-profile mental efforts corresponding to The Latest York Times’ the controversial Project 1619, which claims that slavery and anti-black racism lie at the center of all the American experience. In The great insurrection of parentswe present the profile of several parents, students and native leaders who bravely stood up and fought against CRT.
One unlikely hero is Gabs Clarka widowed, low-income African-American mother of 5 who lived in a motel in Las Vegas.
![Gabrielle Clark, whose son is of mixed race and fair skin, says he was forced to do class assignments that categorized students by race, religion and sexual identity. He refused - and failed the test.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/gabrielle-clark.jpg?w=881)
Her high school-aged son, William, attended the local charter school, which required a course in so-called The sociology of change. In response to Clark, the course included an project where students were asked to “write down their identity, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion”.
William, who’s of mixed race with blonde hair and blue eyes, refused the project and received a failing grade at school, which prevented him from completing his studies. In response to Clark, due to his light complexion, the category saw her son as “a grimy, dirty stalker. “
Clark filed a federal lawsuit, accusing the varsity of violating William’s First Amendment free speech, Fourteenth Amendment equal protection, and federal anti-discrimination laws for forcing him to perform a job based on race. The case has since been settled out of court.
![Author and academic Lance Izumi describes CRT as one of the greatest threats to American education today. His new book describes how bored parents across the country are demanding that schools end their obsession with identity.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/lance-izumi-2.jpg?w=1024)
Parents, Clark says, need to comprehend that it’s as much as them to query the impact of CRT on education, as she did. “Simply because you’ve gotten these rights,” she said, “in the event you don’t fight for them, it’s such as you haven’t got them.”
William’s case shouldn’t be an anomaly. We interviewed a California student named Joshua, who asked that his real name not be revealed, and who told us some shocking stories in regards to the CRT exercises he endured within the classroom.
![The great rebellion of parents](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/Great-Parent-Revolt-Cover.jpg?w=662)
As a seventh grader, he needed to take part in the so-called privileged walk. On this absurd exercise, the entire class formed a line while their teacher read out privileged characteristics corresponding to “I’m white” or “I’m male”; students needed to take a step forward if the trait applied to them.
Joshua said he felt like being in a criminal gang with students “singled out for privileges they cannot really help or control.”
This personal information “shouldn’t be the priority of other students in my class and so they don’t have any right to this information,” said Joshua, who’s white. He added that students and teachers “are afraid of what they are saying for fear that they could mess up about race, pronouns or identity.”
![The controversial 1619 project by Nikole-Hannah Jones was embraced by teachers preferring CRT due to its focus on slavery and anti-blackness.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/nikole-hannah-jones.jpg?w=1024)
If that appears like Communist China, just ask immigrant mom Xi Van Fleet.
Now based in Virginia, Van Fleet grew up in China during Mao Zedong’s horrific Cultural Revolution that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. He mentions Mao’s Red Guards, mostly middle school and highschool students, identifying alleged anti-revolutionaries, escorting them to the town, and holding public trials.
“In China, at a really young age, we were taught to only shut up,” says Van Fleet, who sees parallels between today’s hyper-racial climate and Mao-era China.
![Since being published by The New York Times in 2019, Project 1619 has both entered mainstream curricula and has been condemned as inaccurate by countless leading historians.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/3000.jpg?w=841)
“Every little thing that happens here happened in China throughout the Cultural Revolution,” she told us, which is why “there ought to be no place for CRT in our schools.”
He says CRT will result in “total control of the population by the few at the highest.”
This sort of control is clear at Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia, the state’s best academic school, situated in Fairfax County.
Asra Nomani, the mother of an immigrant Indian whose father marched with Mahatma Gandhi, was a number one parental leader protesting against a change at school admissions policy that downplays the importance of grades and test scores in favor of subjective aspects corresponding to “lived” student experiences and limits on the number of scholars admitted from Asian schools. The goal, he says, “is to stop too many Asian students.”
Nomani blames CRTs “that praise or blame members of a specific race solely because they occur to be that race.” Supporters of the brand new admissions policy derisively referred to Asian parents as being round the corner to whites, but Nomani said “we didn’t apologize.”
![Virginia mom Asra Nomani, an immigrant from India, sued her son's school after she believed it changed its admissions policy to penalize Asian students.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/Asra-Nomani-02.jpg?w=683)
Nomani helped arrange the coalition Thomas Jefferson’s parents who’re suing to overturn the varsity’s admissions policy. Their efforts also resulted in Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares investigating the varsity for possible violations of state law.
We also spoke with Lia Rensin, a mom from California who’s the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. Rensin fights what he describes as a CRT-inspired version of Ethnic Studies, often dubbed “liberated ethnic studies”, which formed the idea of the design of the Model Ethnic Studies Curriculum proposed by California education officials. This project also included anti-Semitic elements for instance, song lyrics demonizing Jewish control of the media.
Massive protest by grassroots groups like Rensin’s group Alliance for Constructive Ethnic Studies fhe forced California officials to withdraw the acute curriculum design and approve a more moderate model ethnic studies curriculum.
“Resistance,” says Rensin, “has to come back from people who find themselves aware of what is going on on, who’re pushing back and saying … you should not indoctrinate my children.”
The Pledge of Allegiance says we’re one indivisible nation. As I learned while researching our latest book, these parents are true American heroes who’re leading the fight to maintain us a land of freedom and justice for all.
Lance Izumi is senior director of the Education Center on the Pacific Research Institute. He co-authored, with Wenyuan Wu and McKenzie Richards, the brand new book PRI The Great Parental Rebel: How Parents and Grassroots Leaders Fight Critical Race Theory in American Schools.