Post by addisona on Feb 23, 2022 10:45:13 GMT
‘Our job is to present the truth’: the Texas principal caught in a ‘critical race theory’ firestorm
It was at 4.30am on 3 June 2020 that Dr James Whitfield sent the email that would detonate his career. Like many Americans, Whitfield had stayed up late that night, seething over the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. Barely a month into the promotion to principal of Colleyville Heritage High, he wrestled with how to reassure his 1,974 students as scores of protesters took to the streets in cities all over the world. He had seen the virtue signals from Fortune 500 companies, the black squares on social media, but they seemed lacking. As Colleyville’s first Black principal, he felt like he should say more. Emboldened by friends, he decided to make a teachable moment out of this summer of unrest.
“I wanted to give people a message of hope and encouragement,” he says, still sounding stunned over the phone.
The email he wrote declared systemic racism to be “alive and well” and encouraged the community to band together. Education, he told them, is “a necessary conduit to get liberty and justice for all”.
Initially, the responses were overwhelmingly positive. Grateful, even. But over the course of five months they slowly gave way to freedom of information requests for his email, text messages and social media posts from members of rightwing extremist groups. “Nobody in the community was calling me or anything,” he says. “But I started to hear word that, ‘Hey. these people are talking about you and they’re saying you’re doing critical race theory.’”
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/13/our-job-is-to-present-the-truth-the-texas-principal-caught-in-a-critical-race-theory-firestorm
It was at 4.30am on 3 June 2020 that Dr James Whitfield sent the email that would detonate his career. Like many Americans, Whitfield had stayed up late that night, seething over the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. Barely a month into the promotion to principal of Colleyville Heritage High, he wrestled with how to reassure his 1,974 students as scores of protesters took to the streets in cities all over the world. He had seen the virtue signals from Fortune 500 companies, the black squares on social media, but they seemed lacking. As Colleyville’s first Black principal, he felt like he should say more. Emboldened by friends, he decided to make a teachable moment out of this summer of unrest.
“I wanted to give people a message of hope and encouragement,” he says, still sounding stunned over the phone.
The email he wrote declared systemic racism to be “alive and well” and encouraged the community to band together. Education, he told them, is “a necessary conduit to get liberty and justice for all”.
Initially, the responses were overwhelmingly positive. Grateful, even. But over the course of five months they slowly gave way to freedom of information requests for his email, text messages and social media posts from members of rightwing extremist groups. “Nobody in the community was calling me or anything,” he says. “But I started to hear word that, ‘Hey. these people are talking about you and they’re saying you’re doing critical race theory.’”
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/13/our-job-is-to-present-the-truth-the-texas-principal-caught-in-a-critical-race-theory-firestorm