This article was originally published in The Wall Street Journal on March 7th, 2021.
Introduction (March 8th, 2022)
As the great Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes once wrote, “There are years when nothing happens and years when centuries happen.”
As I write this, Russian tanks have overrun the small Ukrainian town that my wife’s family left behind when they immigrated to North America as refugees from the USSR over 40 years ago. This past year has indeed been one when centuries have happened. But despite all of the changes in the world, I believe that the article below is still as relevant today as it was on the day it was published last year.
Some people seek to conserve what is good in our society while others seek to destroy what is bad. I believe that a healthy society needs room for people with diverse perspectives. Like the gardener who grows beautiful roses by tending to the plants that are desirable while simultaneously removing the weeds, the best outcome is for us to all work together to achieve a common goal.
Last year, I spoke up about my experience with a new philosophical orthodoxy that has taken root in our culture, and is causing us to regress around issues of race, racism, and tolerance for diverse perspectives. Instead of gratitude, this philosophy centers grievance. Instead of inspiring optimism, it invokes learned helplessness. Instead of forgiveness, it encourages us to drink the poison of resentment. Instead of teaching our children that they are unique individuals united by our shared humanity, it insists that they identify as members of racialized identity groups locked in a zero sum battle for power.
One year ago, we launched the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR). I was compelled to devote my time and resources to advocate for a philosophy and set of positive values that are shared by the vast majority of Americans and people of goodwill around the world. Our philosophy advocates for civil rights and liberties, and compassionate opposition to racism and intolerance rooted in dignity and our common humanity.
Over the past year, almost 40,000 people have joined us in standing up for our shared values of fairness, understanding, and humanity. We seek to be a force for positive change, and to ensure that—like the gardener—our society tends to the pro-human rose garden and removes the philosophical weeds that have taken root and risk taking us in the wrong direction.
Our aim is not to criticize, but rather to play a constructive role in bringing about positive change. I am excited to work with you to ensure that the next year of our movement inspires and unites even more Americans around the pro-human principles and positive values that so many of us share.
Warmly,
Bion
Dividing by Race Comes to Grade School
Students, ages 5 through 11, are urged to ‘check each other’s words and actions’ and become committed activists
By Bion Bartning
March 7th, 2021
My awakening to the new orthodoxy began during this past summer of discontent. In mid-June, a few weeks after the George Floyd protests began, the head of Riverdale Country School, the New York City private school my wife and I entrusted with the education of our two young children, sent a memo apologizing for unspecified past wrongs. “We have the responsibility to use our privilege to fight for change,” he explained. “We are also free to shift some aspects of our culture more quickly than other institutions and organizations.”
In September, at the first assembly of the year, instead of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and singing “America the Beautiful”—longstanding school traditions—the head of the lower school announced that the “theme” for the year would be “allyship.” He then played a video in which the school mascot told students, ages 5 through 11, to “check each other’s words and actions.” The lower-school head had earlier written that “it is essential that parents/caregivers and educators acknowledge racial differences (as opposed to a ‘colorblind’ stance)” and offered reading recommendations such as Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility.” Families at Riverdale are encouraged to join school-sponsored “affinity” groups to bond with people from their ethnicity or skin color. One is called simply “the POC,” short for “parents of color.”
At this point in the story, perhaps “lived experiences” become relevant. I am half Mexican and Yaqui, an indigenous tribe native to the U.S.-Mexico border region, and half Jewish. I spent the first year of my life on a commune in Berkeley, Calif. Growing up, I was aware that I had darker skin than my mother and my classmates, but I was never taught to define my identity by the color of my skin. My mixed background and ancestry made me feel like nothing more than a typical American.
My wife came to North America as a refugee from the former Soviet Union. She spent the first five years of her life in an intolerant society where her “group identity” as a Jew was stamped in her passport. In school she was taught to keep tabs on friends and family, and after one particularly effective lesson, she was inspired to turn in her own father to the local police for “crimes against the state.” Fortunately, no harm came of it. But suffice it to say we are both allergic to forced conformity, especially when young, impressionable children are trained to obsess over “racial differences” and be on the lookout for deviations from orthodoxy.
We started to ask questions. I have always felt a strong connection with Martin Luther King Jr. ’s dream of an America where people “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” I advocate genuine antiracism, rooted in dignity and humanity. But the ideology underlying the “racial literacy” guide distributed by the school wasn’t like that. Instead of emphasizing our common humanity, it lumps people into simplistic racial groupings. It teaches that each person’s identity and status is based largely on skin color, and leaves no place for people like me, who are of mixed race or don’t place race at the heart of their identity.
After confirming that the curriculum, obtained from a nonprofit called Pollyanna Inc., was “one of many resources” the school was using, I became concerned by the emphasis on grievance over gratitude and by the stated goal of turning young children into committed activists. “By the end of the unit,” one section of the curriculum explains, “students will set commitments for rectifying current social ills, such as learning and planning how to carry out anti-racist activism and/or social advocacy in their communities.”
My concerns multiplied when, going off the Pollyanna curriculum, our fourth-grade daughter and her 9- and 10-year-old classmates were given “The Third Chimpanzee for Young People,” a book intended for middle and high schoolers that covers mature topics such as adultery, self-mutilation and suicide. After we and other parents argued that it was inappropriate, the teachers backtracked and asked students to return the books. But school administrators didn’t want to hear our questions.
Less than a week later, concluding an unrelated email exchange, the head of the school wrote to us: “I wonder if this might be a good moment to think whether or not this is the best school for you and your family—being philosophically misaligned is never a very good experience for all concerned.” It took him almost a month to respond to the letter we wrote in reply, explaining that our philosophy hadn’t changed and asking if our children were still welcome at the school.
We were confused and upset. We had chosen Riverdale based on its promise to develop “character strengths” like grit, optimism and gratitude and to promote open-minded inquiry and critical thinking. How had it, like so many other schools, gone so quickly down this path?
While many of us have encountered this intolerant orthodoxy only recently, it debuted on college campuses more than 40 years ago. Sensible people thought it was a joke—or at least that it would remain on campus, since it could never survive contact with the “real world.” That was wrong. Masquerading as “antiracism,” this cynical worldview is being spread like a virus by an army of paid consultants and true believers. Few people have been willing to stand up against it. At Riverdale, many parents privately express concerns but aren’t willing to speak up. They fear being called racist—or, worse, losing their coveted spots.
The real story here isn’t about Riverdale. My kids’ school is one tiny data point. This backward belief system is capturing public and private schools across the country. City Journal’s Christopher Rufo reports that a public school in Cupertino, Calif., forced third-graders to rank themselves according to their “power and privilege,” and the San Diego Unified School District held a training in which white teachers were told that they “spirit murder” black children and should undergo “antiracist therapy.” There are hundreds of examples, and countless others that haven’t been reported. Millions of American children are being taught to see the world in this reductionist way.
Almost 70 years after Brown v. Board of Education, there is an urgent need to reaffirm and advance the core principles of the civil-rights movement. This isn’t an issue of left versus right. The defining question of our time is: How do we break through the demonization and division, and find the courage to move forward together, as Americans?
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This completely mirrors my experience at my kids' NAIS school. It's amazing how effective the NAIS' campaign was to goad schools into adopting this extreme ideology on such a grand scale. Same thing - first day school assembly in the fall of 2020, notably given Zoom, since the kids were home due to COVID and it focused on white privilege and intersectionality - this was for middle school. On so many levels, it was so wrong. It's hard for me to still process that people think this is morally right. Needless to say, we left the school.
"Our philosophy advocates for civil rights and liberties, and compassionate opposition to racism and intolerance rooted in dignity and our common humanity. " Bravo!! Necessary, but insufficient. Also necessary are the relentless pursuit of truth and the expectation that all are open to pursuing it. This means we need to challenge those people who posit their truth and authority, and especially to call them out when they make claims that some other group is racist. The label of "racism" should be taken seriously and with the gravity and scorn it deserves. However, it is thrown around so much and applied with no evidence that it has been rendered meaningless. Indeed, the word "racism" is only really a cudgel, wielded by those who wish to dominate others and or to just feel good about themselves. When someone claims someone else (or some other group) is racist, then we need to demand they provide proof. The BIPOC classification needs to be challenged. It is inherently racist and divisive. We are all human. We all share the same abilities for good and for bad. To hold that some people are more inclined to do good or bad based on the color of their skin is not only ignorant, it is racist. That is, and by what is seen in the news, those claiming to be antiracist tend to be the most racist people out there.
Truth is pursued by challenging what we think we know and how we think we know it. My own maxim is, "Everyone is mostly wrong about everything always". However, if and when we share our thinking with others and keep open to challenging our own thinking, we can compare and test ideas to find the faults. We all make assumptions. We all use our perceptions to learn even though our perceptions and especially the conclusions we draw from them are fraught with error. The threat to learning is over-confidence in one's position and egocentrism. Herein is the main problem that has caused the great divide in society. The elitist mob has positioned itself as unassailable. They are authoritarian. One either "assimilates into to Borg" or he/she is eliminated. The clamor of the struggle has little to do with racism, homophobia, transphobia, et cetera ad nauseam. It has to do with free-thinking individuals resisting the Progressive juggernaut.
One tactic we might try is to challenge any and all claims of racism. Elicit the evidence, or the lack there of, from those who make such accusations. Expect and demand people provide the evidence and thinking they use to hold their position. Challenge the claim and the person making it. If we did these things, I expect most claims of racism would evaporate and that those that are real would be exposed. Pursue truth. You cannot effectively address racism if it is just anything that someone doesn't like and/or cannot substantiate.