A 2021 workshop for educators encouraged attendees to read an article that equated supporters of former President Donald Trump to the Ku Klux Klan, calling them both “examples of white supremacy.”
The workshop, run by left-wing education company Panorama Education, was titled “SEL as Social Justice: Dismantling White Supremacy Within Systems and Self.” SEL stands for “Social-Emotional Learning,” and the company is not shy about explaining SEL is just a way to achieve its “equity” goals.
The Washington Examiner reported that the workshop included a slide that referenced a 2020 article from Altagracia Montilla, who describes herself as a “freedom-dreamer, facilitator, and strategist committed to dismantling oppressive systems” who works to build “antiracist” work spaces. The article, titled “How White Supremacy Lives in Our Schools,” equates those who attended Trump’s rallies to members of the KKK.
“The rise in images of overt white supremacy in the media feeds into the confusion about white supremacy,” Montilla wrote in the article. “While the Ku Klux Klan and MAGAs at half-empty Trump rallies (not that these are mutually exclusive groups) are in fact examples of white supremacy, they are not the only examples.”
Other examples of white supremacy highlighted in the article include “murderous police officers,” “perfectionism,” “worship of the written word,” “defensiveness,” and “right to comfort.” The article insisted that “Most of white supremacy is much more insidious: the school to prison pipeline, redlining, the opportunity gap, and voter suppression.”
The article continued: “White supremacy is everywhere, pertinent and pervasive, woven into the fabric of our society and reflected in every institution and organization in the U.S. including schools.”
As The Daily Wire previously reported, Panorama Education, which conducted the seminar, was co-founded by Xan Tanner, who is married to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s daughter. One of the main focuses of Panorama is to conduct and store “psychological profiles” of students while avoiding parental consent for such profiles. From The Daily Wire:
At least one district’s contract says all of the personal student data is sent to the company — which is funded by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg — under a loophole that circumvents a requirement for parental consent by counting the for-profit company as a “school official,” not an outside vendor.
Panorama, which focuses on “social-emotional learning” and surveys that gauge the feelings of parents, students, and staff, has among the broadest tentacles of any educational consultant. At least 22 of the nation’s largest 100 school districts have paid Panorama a combined $12 million in recent years, with a 23rd set to pay it millions more, a Daily Wire review found.
The link between Garland and Panorama was exposed in September. On October 1, the National School Boards Associations (NSBA) wrote a letter to Garland insisting that parents have become hostile at school board meetings and asking the Biden administration to do something. Following the letter, Garland raised the possibility of getting the FBI involved against parents who express anger over Critical Race Theory, mask mandates, and other education issues at school board meetings.