The Arizona Department of Education released an “equity toolkit” that calls on parents to address issues of racism “before their children can speak.”
In a resource graphic obtained by investigative journalist Christopher Rufo, parents were told to start discussing issues of race and racism with babies as young as three months old. The illustration is titled, “They’re not too young to talk about race!”
The Department of Education explicitly told parents that “silence about race reinforces racism by letting children draw their own conclusions based on what they see.”
The graphic shows the linear aging of a child and details how parents should talk about race and racism at each stage of their childhood. Parents are told to talk to their three-month-olds about racism because “babies look more at faces that match the race of their caregivers.”
At the age of two, the graphic claims that children use race “to reason about people’s behaviors” and, by 30 months, they allegedly use race to choose their friends. By ages four and five, children allegedly become racially prejudiced.
According to the graphic, by the time children reach kindergarten they can become full-blown racists. Kindergarteners allegedly “show many of the same racial attitudes that adults in our culture hold — they have already learned to associate some groups with higher status than others.” Parents are encouraged to have conversations with kindergarteners to discuss how interracial friendships can improve their racial attitudes.
via Christopher Rufo
The department also recommended a slew of “anti-racist” readings. One of the readings tells white parents — and only white parents — that avoiding talks about racism can make their kids racist.
“White parents can and should begin addressing issues of race and racism early, even before their children can speak. Studies have indicated that infants as young as three months old can recognize racial differences,” the book “How White Parents Can Talk To Their Kids About Race” reads. “Avoiding the topic, rather than actively countering it with anti-racist attitudes and actions, simply opens the door for children to absorb bias from the world around them.”
The second suggested reading was directed only at white parents as well. The article is entitled, “What White People Need to Know About Race” and advocates that schools should become hubs of anti-white socialization where students are taught to get rid of their “whiteness.”
“Silence is a racial message and a ‘tool of whiteness,’” the second reading claims. “In order to support the goals of their diversity mission statements and work toward a ‘racially just America,’ schools need to take a more proactive approach to teaching white students about race.”
The second reading proceeds to claim that being white is to be someone that disadvantages people of color because of their race. The reading suggests that schools can help foster awareness of this evil by teaching white students about systemic racism.
A third reading suggests that being white can be defined using three adjectives, “ignorant, color-blind, and racist.” The author suggests there may be a fourth way to be white and that includes adopting “the anti-racist white identity.”
The Department of Education’s reading list also suggests that parents read an article entitled, “You Can Have A Black Friend, Partner, Or Child And Still Be Racist.” The article calls “black-on-black crime” a “made-up term.”
“Too often, [white people] love to throw in terms that alleviate some of their white fragility. You’ve probably heard some of these including: the race card, black-on-black crime, reverse racism, and color blindness. These are made-up terms that some white people use to feel better about themselves.”
The article also claims that having any relationship with a person of color is not “a one-way ticket out of Racism Town.” It claims that white people who refute “anti-racism” activists only proves that they “cannot stand not to be at the center of every single conversation, policy, and action.”
Following the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the spring of 2020, schools have become a breeding ground for “anti-racist” activism. In New York City public schools, administrators sent out graphics to parents encouraging them to become “white traitors” and “white abolitionists” or risk being branded as a racist.
Higher education institutions have also fallen prey to “anti-racist audits,” wherein a school pays a diversity and equity group thousands of dollars to investigate the alleged racist nature of their policies. The University of Delaware and Binghamton University both announced that they will be conducting year-long “anti-racism talent management audits.”