School systems and colleges now routinely subject students and staff to racist scapegoating under the guise of promoting “diversity” or “anti-racism.” Radio broadcaster Rob Schilling reports on one example in Virginia: the Albermarle County Public Schools’ hiring of diversity-trainer Glenn Singleton. Singleton’s firm got paid a whopping $15,000 just to give a one-hour seminar. Singleton blames white teachers for poor performance by black students, even as he promotes offensive racial stereotypes, claiming that “white talk” is “verbal, impersonal, intellectual” and “task-oriented,” while minority talk is “emotional.”
As Schilling notes, progressive Albemarle County required “all school division employees” to “participate in a compulsory one-hour race-intensive Zoom seminar” by Glenn Singleton “on Friday, March 26. The schools paid “$15,000 (plus additional technology expenses of approximately $1,000)” for this brief seminar. And that’s not the whole cost: “A schools’ spokesperson was unable to ascertain” the cost to pay hundreds of “employees not otherwise working at the time of the presentation.”
Singleton’s racial stereotyping is the kind of thing that fosters poor performance among some black students, who believe studying is “acting white.” Studying requires being “verbal,” “intellectual” and “task-oriented,” all things that Singleton disparages as being associated with “white talk.” Ironically, Singleton is hired by school systems to help eliminate the achievement gap between white and minority students. But his anti-intellectual message helps fuel that gap.
Singleton, who is African-American, puts a superficially positive spin on anti-scholastic attitudes, by denigrating white students’ focus on academic achievement as being coldly “impersonal” and “task-oriented.” That makes this anti-intellectual mindset all the more seductive to those black students who already may view studying as “acting white” and being a “grind” (and who taunt studious classmates of their own race by referring to them as “schoolboy,” “schoolgirl” and “little miss perfect”).
But Singleton gets hired by progressive school systems like Albemarle and Arlington to promote this pernicious message, even though his crackpot racial theories were criticized by the U.S. Supreme Court, in a case involving the Seattle Schools. In 2002, the Seattle Schools hired him to “educate” their students and staff about racism. Singleton often complains about “the ubiquity of white privilege and racism.” To illustrate how white people should behave, he points to an ashamed, self-hating white teacher who said that “although I often try to seek counsel of colleagues of color, it is inevitable that times arise where it’s only after the fact that one of them points out some flaw in my reasoning. The flaws are often the result of my ingrained Whiteness and my own blindness to its perpetual presence.”
Under Singleton’s influence, the Seattle Schools defined “individualism” as a form of “cultural racism,” said that only whites can be racist, and claimed that planning ahead (“future time orientation”) is a white characteristic that it is racist to expect minorities to exhibit.
In June 2007, the Supreme Court struck down the Seattle Schools’ use of race in student assignment, and 4 of the 9 justices criticized Seattle’s wacky, Singleton-influenced, definitions of racism in the course of their opinions. Justice Thomas, for example, cited those definitions in footnote 30 of his opinion to explain why the courts should not defer to school districts when they use race. Likewise, Chief Justice Roberts cited those definitions in footnote 14 of his opinion for the Court.
And yet, at least 220 school districts nationwide have hired Singleton to provide diversity training, and colleges have as well.
Singleton is not the only racist huckster getting rich providing discriminatory or anti-white “diversity” training. The Fairfax County Public Schools system paid $20,000 to an advocate of racial discrimination against whites for an hour-long speech and Q&A on “anti-racism.” That school system told the Daily Wire that Professor Ibram X. Kendi, who advocates discrimination, was invited last month “to speak to school leaders about his book, ‘How to Be an Antiracist,’ as part of the school division’s work to develop a caring culture.”
As the Daily Wire notes, “Under Kendi’s ideology, discriminating against others on the basis of race is a meritorious idea, so long as it is producing racial equity (i.e., anti-racist). Kendi explains this ideology in ‘How to Be an Antiracist,’ his 2019 best-selling book.”
As Kendi puts it, “the only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
Kendi is a radical who advocates totalitarianism, once wrote an op-ed suggesting that white people are aliens from outer space, and wants to create an “anti-racist amendment” and establish a “Department of Anti-racism.”
The widespread discrimination Kendi advocates would violate the Constitution, which regards discrimination and other racial classifications as a “last resort,” not as the “only remedy” for racist discrimination. (See Bartlett v. Strickland (2009)).
Moreover, the Supreme Court says that race-based affirmative action by school systems is only permissible as a remedy for governmental discrimination, not “societal discrimination.” (See Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co. (1989)).
Despite Kendi’s crackpot views on race, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey donated $10 million last year to a Boston University center run by Kendi. As Fox News notes, his donation came “on the heels of what appeared to be a racially-charged comment made by Kendi against Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. Kendi…appeared to equate Barrett to a ‘white colonizer”‘on Twitter for her decision to adopt two children from Haiti and suggested some White parents adopt Black children to use as ‘props.'”
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Liberty Unyielding on March 25, 2021 and is crossposted here with permission.
Image: Pixabay, Public Domain
$15K/hr.!?
What the heck! I can do that! I’ll even underbid ‘Professor’ Harold Hill Glenn Singleton! I can name that tune for $12K/hr! It’s the least I can do!
Yes indeed. Step right up. For the tiny, hardly-noticeable sum of $12K I can come to your business, your place of work, your home, your office, your bar, your gym — wherever it, is my friend, wherever you happen to be! I can show-up there and help you take care, because, my friends, you’ve got TROUBLE. That’s right. TROUBLE. That’s capital ‘T’ that rhymes with ‘P’ and that stands for PEOPLE.
People? You say. That’s right. Troubled people, Suffering People, Mean People, RACIST people. They’re everywhere my friends, simply everywhere. And I can help!
Ladies and gentlemen, either you are closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge, or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated by the presence of PEOPLE in your community!
That don’t mean to be that way. They don’t want to be this way! No sir. No ma’am. They just are. Because they don’t know. And they don’t know because I haven’t yet told them, yet. But I will. Yes sir I will!
That is my promise to you, my solemn vow. You can take it to the bank!
For just $12K small little dollars — a priceless investment in your future, my friends — I will tell them. I will show them. I will lead them to the light through the transformational process of COURAGEOUS CONVERSATIONS WITH MAGICAL NEGROES!
You gasp? You step back? What’s that you say, this ‘magical negro’. Well ladies and gentlemen he or she is that POC who possesses magical mystical powers and wondrous insights who by a laying-on of words and super sincere looks… (and definitely don’t forget the ritual chastisement & mandated confessional! (My Lord Good Friends it is that latter part which is the key!)) will Rescue you, will Cure you, will cause you to understand the bone-deep (DNA deep!) error of your ways and will point you to the Progressively Right Side of History! And what could be better than that!
Think John Coffey in The Green Mile…. think Morpheus in the Matrix….Bubba Blue in Forrest Gump for goodness sake. (You never know what you’re gonna get!) Think Hitch in Hitch, Bagger Vance in Bagger Vance! And now think Me and my Courageous Conversations with Magical Negroes who Just Know and Can Fix that Secret Racist in your Heart that only We can See!
All you mothers & managers of River City: heed that warning before it’s too late! Watch for the telltale signs of corruption! The minute your employee leaves the office, does he say things like, “I judge a man on the content of his character and not the color of his skin?” (oh the horror!) Don’t fret cause I can fix that! Does she turn on the radio and listen to R&B? Does she culturally appropriate Drake? Does she — heaven forbid — believe that ALL LIVES MATTER!? If so my friends, ya got trouble!
But $12K for an hour of my Enlightened Time and we will fix that sure as I’m sitting here…waiting for your credit card number, your expiration date, and that little code on the back (cash and money orders are also accepted). Also Krugerands.
Step right up! Tickets are going fast and Operators are standing by!
I see you have the LYRICS down pretty well . . . . .
Who will collaborate with you for the MUSIC ?
Thanks for a bit of the lighter side. Hilarious.
What won’t a little satire not fix?
As this growth industry staggers on down toward its date with destiny, one wonders –
When do the $50/hr union busters finally show up?
That could wind up putting an awful lot of unemployed people back to work.
An honorarium of $15,000 for a one-hour speech itself isn’t that outrageous, it’s actually quite reasonable in a world where people routinely get two or three times more, a world where someone like Barack Obama can get $400,000 for a speech. (See: https://www.ebony.com/news/obama-speech-cantor-fitzgerald/)
The left makes a LOT of money this way, with much of it being funneled back and forth between various nonprofits and academic centers, with some of it coming from wealthy donors but much of it coming from government grants and public expenditures such as this. What was once a cottage industry of idealistic leftists merely seeking to proselytize has evolved over the last 30 years into a highly lucrative field where people are quietly becoming very rich.
Left wing college professors are some of the worst perpetrators of this — almost all of them have their own (for profit) consulting agencies, and most charging far more than the $20,000 charged by Professor Kendi, although I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see bulk purchases of his book being made. Faculty consulting is so out of control that many professors run these personal businesses out of their faculty offices, on university time, and no one seems to mind.
Yes the conduct described is egregious, and the fact that *any* public money is being expended for this is outrageous, but in terms of the actual amounts — well, those actually are fairly reasonable by comparison. By comparison to what other people are paying, although I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see secondary funding lines (i.e. Federal or state grants) being used to also pay for these diatribes.
Fifty years ago, two young reporters were told to “follow the money” and that would be my advice here. We need a few good forensic accountants to follow the money down the rabbit hole (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CucncIEU1bg) — the scandal here is far deeper than just the outrageous indoctrination, as outrageous as that is.
It is a very telling thing, is it not?
That while adding up whatever sum total this bill comes to (some number of billions) a fraction of that amount adequately spent and competently disbursed would go a long way toward actually improving the prospects of so very many of the ‘marginalized’ children who fall by the wayside, for lack of the very resources that would allow them to achieve, compete, and succeed.
As if the nation ever actually cared about such a thing.