Southeastern Legal Foundation submitted a formal comment to the Department of Education regarding its proposed rule entitled “Proposed Priorities: American History and Civics Education,” warning that implementation of critical race theory in the classroom results in treating students differently because of their race and thus, violates the law. SLF General Counsel Kim Hermann explains: “The Department of Education must reconsider the proposed priorities and instead of prioritizing funding for illegal and unconstitutional programs, protect all students from racial discrimination through its power to enforce the Civil Rights Act.”
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As SLF explains in its letter:
Today, we find ourselves on multiple battlegrounds fighting to save the American Republic. One of the most important battlegrounds is the fight against illegal and unconstitutional curriculum in our K-12 schools that treat our children differently based on race. It divides our country. It is not healthy. It erases decades of progress. And it pits our children against each other, teaching them to hate one another. For the reasons explained in this letter, we urge the Department to reconsider the proposed priorities.
In its proposed priorities, the Department of Education proposes prioritizing federal taxdollars for K-12 schools that replace traditional education, specifically history and civics, with“culturally responsive teaching and learning” – more commonly referred to as critical race theory.The Department picks up where it left off in 2016, breathing new life into the decades-long effort to control local schools and press a progressive indoctrination agenda on our children. With the power of taxpayer-funded purse strings, the proposed priorities send a message to public schools throughout our nation that if they want financial aid, they must “teach” critical race theory and prioritize its ideologically anti-American, anti-traditional over traditional (and accurate) education
it is both illegal and unconstitutional to treat people differently because of their race. First, the Constitution forbids discrimination by the government against any citizen because of his race. U.S. Const. amend. XIV § 1. Second, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance— including our nation’s 50 state education agencies—from discriminating based on race, color, or national origin. 42 U.S.C. § 2000(d) et seq. And third, the Department’s own regulations implementing Title VI also prohibit race-based discrimination. 34 C.F.R. Part 100. These protections apply to all persons, without exclusion.
SLF continues, with a warning to parents to stay alert:
But even more, we urge parents to stay alert because these proposed priorities are just the beginning of the federal government’s aggressive attempt to control our nation’s K-12 classrooms and replace history (and objective truth) with identity politics and a warped view of American civics and institutions. In many cases, teachers are told to hide the racially divisive curriculum from parents. In others, students are encouraged to report the words and views of their parents and caretakers as examples of institutional racism. The initial goal is the indoctrination of young minds, but the long view is to aggregate power behind an alien political worldview that fed the dehumanizing machines of the Soviet Union and communist China.