GoKAR!—The University of Texas’ CRT Plan for Four-Year-Olds

For me and other alumni of the University of Texas, it has become less and less surprising how deeply the gospel of wokeness has permeated and corrupted the institution. Whether it is the dean of UT Law preemptively surrendering to the wokesters and neutering the newly endowed First Amendment Center before it even opened, or UT adopting an Orwellian DEI initiative that puts departmental diversity commissars in command of hiring, promotion, tenure, awards, and funding decisions, or having one of its noted scientists forced to withdraw his academic work because the enlightened feared it might undercut their social engineering efforts, those of us who have been paying attention have pretty much written the Forty Acres off as having gone around the bend. After all, how much worse can it get?

Once again, the administration of UT President Jay Hartzell responds, “hold my soy milk.” Not content to propagandize college students with CRT pseudo-scholarship, or to institutionalize its teachings as official UT policy, UT is now launching a program to “educate” four- and five-year-old children on “anti-racism”:

Making matters worse, participation in the program—which will be compensated by this state-funded institution—is restricted to “caregivers” (the concept of “parents” is now apparently verboten) and little children who both “self-identify as white.” Leaving aside the question of whether most four- and five-year-olds racially “self-identify” at all, the folks behind this project obviously forgot, or have intentionally ignored, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which provides that “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” But, of course, such racial discrimination is precisely what GoKAR! does, apparently based on a belief that discrimination in the name of “anti-racism” is somehow legal. As Judge James Ho of the United States Court of Appeals has cogently observed, that is simply not the case.

Professor Mark Perry is a veteran foe of university programs that engage in blatant racial or sex discrimination in favor of the “right” groups, and his efforts have led to many such programs being discontinued or curtailed. Indeed, his complaints against UT have already led to the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights opening numerous investigations into UT’s activities. He has now filed a request with the OCR to investigate GoKAR! as well.

I have served public records requests on UT, which should yield all the “program materials” that these academics plan to use to indoctrinate pre-school children, as well as the background and stated objectives of this program. Those should make for interesting reading—stay tuned to this channel for more details.

Additionally, I have requested comment on these issues from the UT press office. As with my previous requests for comment on UT’s embrace of CRT principles (as well as similar requests by UT faculty), neither UT nor President Hartzell responded. (Brave Sir Robin would be proud.)

I also requested comment from Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s press officer about GoKAR!, as well as Gov. Abbott’s apparent unwillingness to take any action against CRT being institutionalized as official policy at state universities like UT. I received no response.

Former Texas Senator Don Huffines, who is running against Gov. Abbott in the GOP primary, had this to say about GoKAR!:

The University of Texas, subsidized by Texas taxpayer dollars, is funding racist programs for preschool-aged kids who “identify as white.” Governor Greg Abbott could put an end to this racist garbage, but has chosen not to do so either because he agrees with the programs or is afraid of being criticized by the left-wing media. Texas needs a governor who isn’t afraid to fight back against the left’s poisonous agenda that uses race to pit people against each other. When I am governor, race essentialism–including Critical Race Theory–will immediately be banned from all public schools, including at the college level.

I suspect that the publicity GoKAR! has generated will eventually force UT to say something—most likely some word salad in the vein of MTC’s initial Lysenko Award winner’s protestations that quoting her own words accurately makes her a besieged victim. We’ll see. But for the moment, whenever you are told that CRT is just a rarefied academic theory that would never, ever, be taught to impressionable youngsters, GoKAR! shows that such is precisely what many of its collegiate proponents want to do.

Image: Sonya Lynne, Public Domain