In my last column, I asked, “Can Fayette County’s families remain immune to the negative cultural impacts into the foreseeable future?” It’s a question that worries a significant number of people across our nation.

We are now witnessing in Fayette County and across the state a growing number of people gaining access to positions of influence who do not recognize certain standards of right and wrong, instead relying on a “truth” based on how they feel. These woke elitists are contemptuous of their fellow citizens.

Painful thoughts and words

My column discussed how newly minted young teachers could bring divisive philosophies into our school system from the ground up. Many of our young, far-left political activists in the community were not pleased.

After reading my column on Facebook, local commentator Chris Donnelley snarled: “How. Fu[redacted]. Ridiculous. I TRIED to read it, but it’s just so moronic that my eyes began to bleed. Steve is a bigot. Steve is a fear monger. Steve thinks he’s much smarter than he is. And Steve is a sad, pathetic, little man …”

Donnelley was one of the nicer far-left millennials. Here is the previous column. Read it if you dare.

Clear political objectives

Let’s be honest, no one should be surprised that local left-leaning millennials who according to their own doctrine are white privileged, inherently racist, and oppressive would have a meltdown over my column. They are easily confused when condemning people of similar demographics without trying to implicate themselves.

Digital magazine Salon cited a poll that found 70% of millennials said they would be somewhat or extremely likely to vote for a socialist candidate (“New poll finds 70% of millennials say they’re ‘likely’ to vote for a socialist,” Salon, Oct. 29, 2019). Bernie Sanders received more primary votes from Americans under age 30 than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump combined proving the point.

I highly recommend the book “Race to the Bottom,” by Luke Rosiak. You will find it amazing how few people it takes to overturn a local political system.

Even voters in San Francisco are rebelling over too much focus on race and intersectionality, recalling their school board members and the district attorney, but that’s crazy California, right?

The collapse of the Republican high achievers

Luke Rosiak dedicated an entire chapter to Loudoun County, Virginia. In 2015, the county had the highest median income in the nation, and the county board was totally Republican. Black families in Loudoun making up around eight percent of the population had an estimated median income of $112,000 in 2019.

By 2020, Loudoun school Superintendent Eric Williams was pressured by a small group of parents with unsubstantiated claims and began spending hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to “engage in the disruption and dismantling of white supremacy” to appease this active and vocal group. He hired the consulting firm Equity Collaborative, LLC out of California. The methods used by the consultants are well documented in the book.

The school district began generating reports and programs using the CRT philosophy of evaluating fairness in the system based on “outcomes.” There was no presumption of innocence for students, parents, or teachers of any race other than black using the core premise of CRT that people who accept “Anglo-American norms” should be considered white, and thus oppressors.

Loudoun schools were essentially controlled by a handful of parents in a lopsided committee created by the school superintendent that encouraged schools to create racially segregated clubs, punished and purged those with opposing views, pre and post-tested individual school board members on racial literacy and consciousness, mandated racial literacy training for all school employees, and dropped the entrance standards to the new prized science magnet school to students with a “C” average.

No one could prove the school system was beginning to fail because the basic performance standards were declared inherently racist. It took a massive rebellion from parents to finally dismantle what a few disruptive people in the community created.

The situation was so alarming that it shaped the election for Virginia governor, catapulting a Republican candidate who had no chance of winning to a stunning victory.

Superintendent Williams left a school system that was once the envy of all others for a small school district in Texas. He received no help from the band of radical parents he aided because they believed the basic tenet in CRT, “interest convergence, the belief that when a white ‘ally’ like Williams does everything a CRT practitioner could be expected to, he must be doing so only out of self-interest, thereby demonstrating his continued racism.”

Denial is a terrible thing. Please do not think that a similar situation could not occur in our community.

Schools can and should teach about the history of racism, but not indoctrinate children into the cult of race essentialism, collective guilt, and racial superiority theory. Leave that debate to the universities.

The new breed of local elected officials who “feel their truth” and have no system of principles or values to fall back on can ruin a community very quickly.

The heartbreak of destruction

The new young socialists believe they have advanced opinions and that we need them to provide direction because the rest of us are either too stupid or too evil. As an example, here is a product of an American college of education, this 20-something history teacher offered her personal teaching philosophy on social media (TikTok), and it was rebroadcast by The Quartering.

In this context, “anti-racism” is a Kafka trap, a rhetorical device, where the more you deny your personal racism, the more it’s proof of your guilt as a racist. The teacher gets the children to admit they are racists based merely on their race.

History teacher: ‘So, yes, teaching is political’

The teacher explains, “The education system, the curriculum, school zoning, funding, standardized testing, all of these things can create and further lead to class and racial inequalities and impact life chances for our students. Especially as a history teacher, my students deserve somebody who is going to confront and challenge the injustices and untruths that are in our history that have led to discrimination. So, yes, teaching is political because as we develop curriculum and have conversations with our students, equity and anti-racism need to be in the forefronts of our minds as well as giving our kid’s the means to gather factual information and form their own opinion.” (The video is here.)

That’s more than indoctrination, it’s oppression, authority figures within the school system convincing young children they are inherently racist, evil, and not worthy of positive recognition. Just as wicked, those same authorities are telling black children they are incapable of learning or experiencing success.

At some point, you will need to take a stand.

[Brown is a former mayor of Peachtree City and served two terms on the Fayette County Board of Commissioners.]