Academics and activists teamed up to create a guide to teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) to young children, arguing that kids exhibit racial bias from as young as three years old.
Titled “Reflections on Children’s Racial Learning,” the guide was created by a leftist organization called EmbraceRace, and shares strategies to effectively inculcate liberal beliefs on race among young children. It was written in part by professors at prominent universities such as the University of North Carolina and Wake Forest University, who urge parents to have “courageous conversations about race” with their toddlers.
“Children will ‘naturally’ grow up to be non-racist adults only when they live in a non-racist society. Until then, adults must guide children’s anti-racist development,” the guide argues, adding that “we have far to go before the US can be considered a ‘non-racist society.’” It also claimed that “by about 3-4 years old … white children generally show clear pro-White biases.”
EmbraceRace, the organization behind the guide, claims that “children’s racial sensibilities begin to form in infancy” and that kids “develop racial and other biases by kindergarten.” EmbraceRace bemoans that most “racial learning” doesn’t take place until middle or high school, and exists to provide resources for “early and elementary childhood educators.”
The guide was slammed by parent’s rights activists who oppose the politicization of education.
“Any individual or group trying to claim babies can be ‘racist’ has ceded any pretense to be taken seriously. At three-and four-years-old, children should be learning their numbers, letters, and basic social skills, not racially charged content that is being pushed on them by radical organizations looking to enrich themselves through race-baiting,” said Michele Exner, the Senior Adviser at Parents Defending Education, a grassroots organization opposed to Critical Race Theory and gender theory in America’s schools.
The push to teach Critical Race Theory (CRT) to young children comes amid a wider national battle over the ideology and its presence in American schools. The doctrine has been found in K-12 schools across the country, where educators have taught children that America is systematically racist, white people enjoy privilege on account of their race, and that differences in outcomes between groups can be attributed to bigotry and discrimination.
Conservative activists and politicians have mounted an opposition to the ideology, barring schools from teaching it in at least 18 different states.
The guide from EmbraceRace addresses the conservative pushback to CRT, characterizing it as a force of “racial regression” that has managed to successfully “capture the headlines” before saying that a “color-brave countercurrent is gathering momentum!”
The guide also doubles down on its support of CRT, stating that “recent eruptions about ‘critical race theory’ make clear that the work of educators to engage children in honest, constructive learning about race and racism is far from over — and more vital than ever.”
It goes on to offer specific ways in which parents and teachers alike can most effectively push CRT on young children. In a portion of the report subtitled, “‘They’re Not Too Young To Talk About Race:’ The Science of Early Racial Learning,” an activist with EmbraceRace argues that “racial biases are often formed by the preschool and kindergarten years,” going on to point to a development chart that went viral on the organization’s social media accounts and claims that “silence about race reinforces racism.”
Other activists shared their methods of inculcating CRT in children, with an organization called “We Are” discussing the “anti-racist summer camps” that they’ve held since 2016.
“One of our approaches to dismantling systemic racism in education is offering summer camps for children in rising 1st – 5th grade,” the guide reads. “In these camps we have trained anti-racist educators helping children build healthy racial identities by teaching them about race, racism, its impact on communities, and how to actively resist racism in our communities.”
An entry from Dr. Michael Rizzo, an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, argues that children should be taught about structural racism as part of a broader plan for parents to raise “anti-racist children.”
One portion of the guide, titled “New Directions for Anti-Racism Research: White Children’s Understanding of Structural Racism,” reads “research points toward teaching about structural racism as a way to promote more antiracist worldviews in early childhood.”
Another entry in the guide, called “Nurturing Children’s Racial Learning One Talk at a Time,” was written by academics at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Wake Forest University. The portion urges parents to prepare their children to “handle racialized moments and be change agents in their environments” by having “courageous conversations about race.”
EmbraceRace, the non-profit behind the guide, is funded by the Proteus Fund, a massive funding apparatus for leftist groups in pursuit of “racial, gender, queer, and disability justice” as well as “an inclusive, fully-representative democracy.” The Amherst, Massachusetts-based fund received a whopping $178 million in contributions from 2017 to 2021 and its president, a white man named Paul Di Donato, was paid more than $290,000 in 2021.
Di Donato is a prolific donor to Democrat candidates and causes, including the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Elizabeth Warren, as well as the campaigns of Senators John Fetterman, Raphael Warnock, and Jon Ossoff, among others.
Parents Defending Education’s Exner said the guide was “a joke” that “should not be taken seriously by any professional connected to children’s education.”
“Over the past three years, the proof we have seen is that DEI and CRT initiatives have been complete disasters and do not belong in schools,” Exner said.