Critical race theory proponent and author Ibram X. Kendi led a conversation Wednesday at an American Federation of Teachers (AFT) conference titled “Together Educating America’s Children.”
The second-largest teachers’ union in America hosted the progressive intellectual to share with attendees how to inculcate anti-racist attitudes and activism in students.
“Hear from Dr. Ibram X. Kendi in this free-ranging discussion with student activists and AFT members on his scholarship and on developing anti-racist mindsets and actions inside and outside classrooms,” the promotion for the session read.
Kendi authored Stamped from the Beginning: A Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America and How to Be an Antiracist, books commonly associated with CRT, professing that systemic racism is an irredeemable stain on the country’s past that can only be reconciled and rectified by present and future discrimination against the descendants of white oppressors. He posits that equity can only be achieved by identifying and dismantling the remnants of racism in every idea and institution in American society.
The AFT website statement praises Kendi’s “relentless and passionate research” that “puts into question the notion of a post-racial society and opens readers’ and audiences’ eyes to the reality of racism in America today.”
The Boston University professor also professes that racism denial is a disguise that perpetuates injustice, and that it is not sufficient just to not harbor or apply prejudice on a personal level.
“One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist. There is no in-between safe space of ‘not racist.’ The claim of ‘not racist’ neutrality is a mask for racism,” Kendi writes in How to Be an Antiracist.
The Kendi feature at the AFT summit comes after it was discovered that the National Education Association (NEA), the nations’ largest teachers’ union, passed a resolution to conduct opposition research on organizations that oppose integrating critical race theory into school curricula.
Shortly after, another measure detailing the NEA’s new campaign to promote and defend the teaching of CRT in the 14,000 public school districts it collaborates with mysteriously disappeared from its website.
The agenda item had read, “We oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and/or The 1619 Project.”
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