Critical Race Theory and a call for exodus from Hamilton County public schools
Paige Miller, chair of Moms for Liberty and Tony Kinnett, executive director of The Chalkboard Review
On Feb. 23 I went to see Tony Kinnett, the former science coordinator for Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS), speak at the Plum Creek Golf Club in Carmel. Kinnett’s lecture was the inaugural event of the Hamilton County chapter of the group Moms for Liberty, which claims to have 195 chapters in 37 states and 100,000 members.
It was the Moms for Liberty chair Paige Miller, however, who gave me my headline when she encouraged a “mass exodus from our public schools.”
But we’ll get to that.
Kinnett, who is executive director of Chalkboard Review and Choice Media, focused the bulk of his energy discussing what he sees as the detrimental effect of race-conscious teaching in K-12 education (i.e. “Critical Race Theory”).
Some recent Carmel Clay School board meetings have been contentious affairs due to the unruly behavior of activists and parents, motivated by claims that Critical Race Theory has infiltrated Carmel public schools.
I was interested to see what Kinnett would have to say about CRT because my daughter, who has attended Carmel schools since kindergarten and is currently a senior at Carmel High School, has seen no evidence of this theory being taught in her classes. (One of her history teachers, she tells me, displayed a Trump bobblehead on his desk.)
But according to Kinnett, CRT stretches beyond the classroom into school administrations including current Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts.
“I have a problem when [they] see a Black kid and say, Oh, see they're Black,” he said. “They must need additional resources. They're Brown and must need additional resources. That's not how it works. It's incredibly demeaning. And here's where it all stems from. You've all heard the term Critical Race Theory.”
According to Kinnett, CRT is “viewing every aspect of society as a consequence of racial differences.”
(In “What is Critical Race Theory and Why it is Under Attack?” Stephen Sawchuck writes, “Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.”)
Kinnett also cited, as an example of CRT in action, a lecture by Indy10 Black Lives Matter activists addressing students in the K-8 Butler University Laboratory School 60. During this lecture, the activists told students, among other things, that Black kids didn’t receive the same opportunities as white kids.
But before Kinnett took a deep dive into the history of CRT for the audience of approximately 100 (all white, all without facemasks except for me), he went off on an odd tangent. That is, he recounted his being served meals in various Hispanic households.
"Speaking fluent Spanish and working with a lot of Hispanic communities across the upper and lower Midwest, I've had an opportunity to experience a lot of really cool cultural things," he said. "And what's really amazing about being in several Hispanic households from several different regions of Latin America and the Caribbean; they're not really super hyper-protective of their culture. If you've never eaten a meal at a table in a Hispanic house, I hope that you endeavor to do so before you die because it is one of the most amazing experiences ever... And it's one of the reasons that I have such a heartache for Hispanic communities and how they're treated in the modern progressive environment.”
Kinnett, I should note, failed to mention how badly many Hispanic communities were treated during the four years of the Trump administration.
He then launched an attack on certain notions of African American identity.
“So if you were Black, you must be part of a specific Black culture that came out of Southern America in slavery,” he said, before citing a number of authors associated with Critical Race Theory. “That is the current idea [of] the Kimberlé Crenshaws, the Richard Delgados, the Gloria Ladson-Billings, the Ibram X. Kendis and on and on and on and on. [They] state that the cultural factor of a person is the color of your skin. You and I know, of course, that's garbage.”
During his talk, Kinnett seemed to refer to a kind of “master scripting.” That is, he talked about the Black figures who he claimed were not being talked about enough in public school classrooms. Figures such as Jan Matzeliger, inventor of the automatic shoe laster. According to Kinnett, Matzeliger and the others he mentioned epitomized the American dream.
While Kinnett didn’t give a definition of master scripting, one could easily be found in the work of one of the aforementioned authors that he so derisively cited. In an article titled, “Just what is critical race theory and what's it doing in a nice field like education?” Gloria Ladson-Billings posits that teachers too often refer to a certain “Master Narrative” when it comes to teaching Black history. That is, they praise individual characteristics of various African American figures while detaching them from narratives pertaining to political power. Per Ladson-Billings:
This master scripting means stories of African Americans are muted and erased when they challenge dominant culture authority and power. Thus, Rosa Parks is reduced to a tired seamstress instead of a long-time participant in social justice endeavors as evidenced by her work at the Highlander Folk School to prepare for a confrontation with segregationist ideology. Or, Martin Luther King, Jr. becomes a sanitized folk hero who enjoyed the full support of ` ` good Americans’ ’ rather than a disdained scholar and activist whose vision extended to social justice causes throughout the world and challenged the USA on issues of economic injustice and aggression in Southeast Asia.
Kinnett also had some novel (at least to me) notions of cultural and racial identity. He gave the example of two children growing up on 38th St. in Indianapolis who have different colored skin. These two children, he said, would have more in common than two children with the same skin color, one living in Indiana and the other in New England. He then equated CRT notions of African American identity with those of the Nazis: “There was one group in history that was very interested in you tracking how much of one kind of blood out of your veins in fact that they made you carry around a card that said I am 1/4 Jewish,” he said.
But it seemed to me that Kinnett’s argument was more than about blood or melanin. He was taking issue with how people — certain people — construct their own identity and with the right of those same people to speak about, and to, their own history.
His argument seemed disingenuous to me, even if unintentionally so. He was more than willing to grant that different Hispanic households have a lot in common (i.e. that they’re not hyper-protective of their culture, that they serve wonderful meals, and that they’re treated horribly by progressives) while suggesting that geography trumps cultural similarities for African Americans.
At any rate, I don’t think most of his audience cared about the lack of consistency in his lecture that clocked in at approximately 40 minutes.
During the Q&A, Kinnett answered a question about Indiana State House Bill 1134, which restricts teaching about race and racism. While in favor of passing an anti-CRT bill, he didn’t like certain provisions, such as allowing parents to sue teachers (a provision that has been removed). He also said that individual anti-CRT bills should be passed rather than omnibus legislation which resulted in certain provisions being watered down.
He also answered questions about transgender and gay rights by saying basically, that it’s nurture, not nature; he answered questions about a certain state senator who wanted to combat CRT by remaining neutral on Nazism. (After these comments, this certain state senator backpedaled.) Kinnett tried to put these remarks in context by talking about inherent characteristics. “Nazis are bad enough on their own,” he said. “Without discussing the inherent part first, let me explain why that is important. Nazis are not bad because they are called Nazis. Nazis are bad because of the horrible they believe the horrible things they said.”
After Kinnett was done with Q&A, he handed the microphone to Paige Miller, who, she said, had recently retired after teaching in Carmel schools for 33 years. She is also co-founder of the advocacy group Unify Carmel and a onetime candidate for the Carmel Clay schools board. “I also went to Carmel schools from kindergarten through high school,” she said. “I truly believe what we're going to have to do is a mass exodus from our public schools …”
She made her support known for vouchers “where the money follows the child and that gives parents, everyone, an opportunity which would make this exodus possible.”
It was clear that Moms for Freedom has the public schools in their crosshairs, not just in Hamilton County, but everywhere else in the country where they have a chapter. Critical Race Theory is their Trojan Horse, but that doesn’t mean they disbelieve their own narrative.
“We just need to speak for our kids, and that's what it comes down to; your kids and your grandchildren and you need to protect them,” Miller said. “You've been kicked […] out of the classroom for two years. Demand to go back into the classrooms, find out what's going on. Volunteer and you know what? Masks have gone away. It's all going to go away because of midterm elections … Find out what teachers you can trust and let them know that you can be trusted. There are good teachers out there, a lot. Okay, thank you for coming.”
Correction: The original draft mis-stated the circumstances of Tony Kinnett’s leaving IPS.
