Critical race theory (CRT) argues racism is systemic in the U.S.
That perhaps varies from place to place, but school officials in Douglas County, Colorado, leave no doubt it’s systemic in their schools, and they’re part of it.
“The racism experienced by a family in the Douglas County School District was so egregious that it drove a 14-year-old Black boy to finish his school year online and is forcing the biracial family to move out of Castle Rock altogether,” the Denver Post reported on Tuesday, May 2, 2023 (read story here).
Douglas County is no backwater populated by country bumpkins. Sandwiched between Denver and Colorado Springs, it’s one of America’s most affluent counties. The average household income breaks six figures. And it’s very white; blacks comprise >1% of the population. Trump comfortably carried the county in 2016 and 2020.
The Black youth’s name is Jeramiah Ganzy. He told the Post, “There had been a lot of bullying of people calling me a monkey and a cotton picker,” and believed teachers “unfairly targeted him for discipline,” so he wrote emailed a complaint to school district officials. It was ignored.
“Jeramiah also told his mother … about a Snapchat group chat with more than 80 Douglas County students, in which students repeatedly used racist slurs, called for the genocide of Black people, and threatened to shoot Black people and bring back the Holocaust,” the Post says. He’s not making this up; the Ganzy family’s lawyer has screenshots.
His mother says, “When students in the group learned Jeramiah had shared the messages, [they] talked about lynching him. He can never go back to these schools.” She learned of her son’s email because a staff member accused him of stealing his own water bottle. Jeremiah says the staffer “questioned where he bought the bottle … and how he could have obtained the money to buy it.”
Jeramiah wasn’t the only victim of racism in Douglas County’s schools. The Post says his sister “transferred to a charter school after a teacher … made students debate whether they were for or against Jim Crow laws enabling racial segregation — and put her on the side supporting the laws.” Their attorney says, “Douglas County School District has a racism problem … coming from the top down. It’s the school district, its leadership and parents and adults. Students don’t learn white supremacy in a vacuum.”
The Post, in February 2022, reported (here) that the district paid a legal settlement of $832,733 to a former superintendent fired by the rightwing school board “after he advocated for students with disabilities and youth of color.” In Douglas County, you don’t need an academic theory about systemic racism, because it’s right there in front of your eyes.
And in many states across America, Republican politicians are attacking diversity and equity programs, none more so than Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who wants to be our next president.
Today’s GOP is firmly in the grip of people who want to re-establish white supremacy, and re-introduce segregation and racial discrimination, in American society.