The minute "critical race theory" got flagged as a negative term, leftists played their usual words games and switched to whatever other terms they could hide their ideological garbage under.
Enter Gavin Newsom, the Lord and Emperor of the Californian Dystopia:
Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has signed legislation that makes California the first state to mandate public high school students pass an ethnic studies class as a graduation requirement.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported, "High school students in California will be required to learn about the contributions and oppression of people of color in America, under a measure Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Friday." According to the outlet, the new law "adds a one-semester ethnic studies course to the state's high school graduation requirements for public schools, starting with the 2029-30 academic year."
It also requires public schools to offer at least one ethnic studies course as an elective beginning in the 2025-26 school year.
In the past, I'd have no issues with ethnic studies courses.
It's important that people learn about the real history and culture of other civilizations, both past and present, so that they can learn from the lessons of the past and understand what ideas have led to human freedom and flourishing.
Learning about other languages and cultures also helps people better communicate and connect with and appreciate people who are different from them.
Today, however, "ethnic studies" means something completely different!
"America is shaped by our shared history, much of it painful and etched with woeful injustice," Newsom wrote in a signing statement. "Students deserve to see themselves in their studies, and they must understand our nation's full history if we expect them to one day build a more just society."
Did you catch it?
Newsom focuses on the "woeful injustice" of America, the refrain preached by CRT activists and efforts like the 1619 Project, that reframe the United States as evil and rotten from before its founding.
Like probably all of you, I learned about the good, the bad, and the ugly in American history growing up. What Newsom wants to do is take away the good and teach kids the popularized account of Howard Zimm, which was basically revised from Soviet history books that portrayed the capitalistic West as morally depraved.
Newsom vetoed a similar proposal last year.
The Los Angeles Times reported, "At that time, he called for a revised and completed state curriculum guide for ethnic studies – one that would be, he said, balanced, fair and ‘inclusive of all communities.'"
The California Board of Education approved those revisions in March.
Dr. Melina Abdullah, a prominent Black Lives Matter organizer who is also a professor of Pan-African Studies at Cal State LA, has been one of the lead proponents for mandating ethnic studies requirements for public high schools and colleges in the Golden State. She was instrumental in convincing the L.A. Unified School District to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement in 2014.
What is "fair" and "balanced" for all communities would be to tell history like it actually happened and present the ideological viewpoints of the various historical actors involved.
This includes the warring, violent Native American tribes, to the Christian reformers and missionaries who brought revolutionary ideas of justice, mercy, and freedom to the New World, to the opportunistic European settlers who sometimes used Christianity as a guise for greed, to the African captives sold into slavery by other warring African tribes, to the Democrat leaders who fought so hard to keep those black slaves.
There are plenty of good historical stories to be told – filled to the brim with broken people in a world of both depravity and redemption.
Newsom and his ideologues want to teach the opposite of that and make your kids more hateful and divided in the generation to come.
P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇
