How much “woke” is too much? To the Hayward Unified School District (HUSD) in northern California, the sky is the limit.
In these training sessions, conducted between September 2020 and January 2024, HUSD teachers and other district employees were compelled to study a “social identity wheel,” engage in “racial affinity groups,” identify themselves by race in breakout sessions, and denounce white supremacy. The system of white supremacy, according to the training slides, is a culture that normalizes “perfectionism, sense of urgency, defensiveness, quantity over quality, worship of the written word, only one right way, paternalism, either/or thinking, power hoarding, fear of open conflict, individualism, I’m the only one, progress is bigger/more, objectivity, right to comfort.”
The system is said to be sustained by “the hierarchy of the race construct,” shown in the graph below from one training session.
HUSD employees were not allowed to dispute these untested and contested propositions. If they were uncomfortable with the materials, they were told to check their “privileges and biases” and confront their “levels of oppression.”
After being subjugated to this continuous regimen of indoctrination, three HUSD employees provided me with all the training documents and asked me to help defend their constitutional rights to equal protection and free speech. They were fed-up, and rightfully so. To them and many of their coworkers who have not come forward in fear of retribution, these professional development programs created a hostile work environment consisting of unequal treatment based on race and attacks on their free speech.
- Immediately launch thorough and objective investigations into the racial discrimination
complained of herein. - Establish oversight committees to ensure the objectivity of the investigations, including delegates from the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation to represent discriminated-against HUSD employees.
- Require the Hayward Unified School District to immediately cease and desist from employing racial biases, negative stereotyping, race-based treatment and other discriminatory means in all of its employee training programs and initiatives.
- Require the Hayward Unified School District to immediately reevaluate its protocols of teaching and training Anti-bias/Anti-racism, to ensure that blatant race-based treatment and racial discrimination are eliminated from its training materials.
- Take all necessary measures to ensure that the Hayward Unified School District stop discriminating on the basis of race and imposing a hostile work environment based on race.
Ideologically focused professional development sessions, like HUSD’s AB/AR regimen, are deeply divisive and offensive to all teachers and staff and should not be implemented at taxpayers’ expense. We will continue to fight to put an end to these intrusive, illegal, and unconstitutional trainings.