An Indianapolis-based public school educator and education journalist has gone viral on social media after he pushed back on the narrative that critical race theory (CRT) isn’t being taught in schools, warning concerned parents to not be deceived and to “keep looking” for its presence.
“When we tell you that our schools aren’t teaching critical race theory, that it’s nowhere in our standards, that’s misdirection,”
Tony Kinnett said Tuesday in
a video he shared to Twitter. He explained that he works as a science coach and administrator at Indianapolis Public Schools, Indiana’s largest school district that serves about 23,000 students.
“I’m in dozens of classrooms a week, so I see exactly what we’re teaching our students,” Kinnett said, noting that while the schools “don’t have the quotes and theories as state standards,” the teachers are incorporating the concepts of CRT into their teaching of a variety of subjects.
“We tell our teachers to treat students differently based on color; we tell our students that every problem is a result of ‘white men’ and that ‘Everything Western Civilization built is racist,’ ‘Capitalism is a tool of white supremacy,’” he continued. “Those are straight out of Kimberle Crenshaw’s main points verbatim in ‘Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement.’ This is in math, history, science, English, the arts, and it’s not slowing down.”
In June 2020, amid the nationwide unrest sparked by the death of George Floyd, the IPS adopted a racial equity resolution (
pdf) to identify and correct practices and policies that may perpetuate racism, which is defined as “a white supremacy system” in which those considered white “oppress” those who are not. It also partly attributed the student achievement gaps to the district’s history of “privileging the prejudice of white parents over the interests of black and brown students.”
“If students of color have lower reading scores, it’s because of inequity,” Kinnett asserted. “Therefore, we take from the white students and give to the colored students. That’s Richard Delgado, straight out of ‘CRT: An Introduction.’”
“Parents, when we tell you critical race theory isn’t taught in our schools, we’re lying, keep looking,” he said at the end of the video.
Kinnett
posted along the video screenshots of an email, which appears to show the IPS instructing school principals to tell parents and community members that CRT is not taught in their schools. He also posted slides that are allegedly used in the ISP, including one that explains some of the tenets of CRT.
Kinnett’s call to action comes as controversies around K–12 education, including the teaching of CRT and COVID-19 restrictions on campus, took center stage in many of the state- and local-level elections across the country. In Virginia’s gubernatorial race, Republican Glenn Youngkin, running on a “Parents Matter” platform, defeated former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe who said
parents shouldn’t tell schools what to teach. In Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and other blue states,
school board seats are claimed by candidates who oppose the Marxist ideological indoctrination and support parents’ right to make medical decisions for their kids.
The Indianapolis Public Schools didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
