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At Colleyville Heritage High, students rushed to defend James Whitfield, who has been accused of embracing critical race theory and is in danger of being fired.

These kids from a Texas high school [Collyville Heritage High] tried hard to get their school board to listen to their defense of their Black principal James Whitfield. But the board didn’t listen.

Whitfield’s problems started this past July when he was accused of “promoting critical race theory” (CRT). Whitfield denied the accusations (CRT is a complicated theory taught typically in law or graduate schools), but one cannot even use the terms “systemic racism” or “anti-racism” anymore in a Texas school without being accused of promoting CRT.

And yet that doesn’t mean that racism doesn’t exist in Collyville. Here are some of the stories told by these young people (all aged 17):

“Sunehra, who is Bangladeshi and Muslim ...thought back to her own time in a Colleyville middle school — the middle school just across the road — when classmates asked her why her father ‘did 9/11.’ She thought about how, until sophomore year of high school, one of her best friends spoke to Sunehra using a crude, sing-song approximation of a South Asian accent.”

“Samantha, who is Jewish...recalled how a classmate made her cry in middle school by entering ‘Heil Hitler’ into her calculator when she wasn’t looking. And later, when her older sister ran for the high school’s class council, she heard other students warn each other, ‘Don’t vote for the Jew.’”

“Sean and Grace, who are both of Vietnamese and Chinese descent, remembered how classmates used to ask if they were dating, just because they were the only two Asian kids in fifth grade. Grace said groups of popular White boys insisted her good grades didn’t count, because Asians always did well. Sean remembered these boys, too, and how they joked that Sean should be eating dogs and cats for lunch — or spoke to him in loud, crude imitations of an Asian accent, swapping l’s for r’s.

“Close to the 2016 presidential election...Sunehra checked her phone and saw that Colleyville Heritage students had hosted a football pep rally with the theme, ‘Make Colleyville Great Again.’ They’d painted a poster to look like a brick wall, evoking Trump’s election promise to ‘Build the Wall.’” [emphasis added]

It seems to me that the anti-CRT movement is to a large extent about silencing minority voices, in the hope that if no one talks about race, then White communities can pretend that racism isn’t happening.

[See more under the cut.]

A student from another high school (Grapevine High School) in Colleyville joined the protest and this is her story:

“For Sienna Scruggs, a 15-year-old sophomore...the disapproval was unsurprising. Sienna, whose mother is White and whose father is Black....cannot remember a time when trips to the grocery store did not lead to other adults asking if she was adopted. She and her 10-year-old sister Sophie faced so many questions at school, often from classmates who could not understand why a White woman was driving two Black girls, that their father played them a video of Sophie’s birth to prove it.” [emphasis added]

Here are some other comments from “an anonymous online form, created by [Colleyville Heritage High] alumni, to collect stories of harassment teens had experienced at school.”

“’Been called a monkey and have been said I resemble one cause of my skin color,’ one student wrote in a submission.”

“’They call a Jewish boy on the [wrestling] team ‘Anne Frank’ or ‘Jew,’’ wrote another. ‘The coaches know about this as well.’”

“’I was told to go back to my country,’ wrote a third. ‘Many people may think what did I do to deserve this. I got the highest test grade in my AP Human Geo class. Keep in mind, I was the only Mexican-American in my class.’” [emphasis added]

Before James Whitfield came to Colleyville Heritage High, people didn’t talk about race in the largely white community.

“The teens of color here had learned early on, from parents or older siblings: The way to get along in suburban Dallas-Fort Worth was to fit in with the dominant White culture. For years, that meant students of color, LGBTQ teens, those from low-income families and those of minority faiths kept quiet about their beliefs and traditions, the languages they spoke and food they ate at home and most of all about the racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia and homophobia that they experienced in school.” [emphasis added]

Whitfield tried to help minority students to find their voices:

“In the year he served as principal, the teens came to view him as a symbol of the change they hoped to see in their hometown. His removal would symbolize something else.” [emphasis added]

The students protested for two days in heat that was in the 90s. They faced consequences from the school for doing so. Most of the White students didn’t join them. Some who did were told by their parents not to join the protest the following day. Some of the White teachers were unsupportive.

All that effort didn’t pay off, although Whitfield is appealing the decision. [The school board maintains their action had nothing to do with CRT, but again, Whitfield’s problems with the board seemed to start with that accusation last summer.]

The anti-CRT movement is a dangerous one. The talking points employed by the anti-CRT folks are similar to ones used by white supremacists in the past. As I said previously, the anti-CRT movement appears to really be about silencing minority voices, in the hope that if no one talks about race, then White communities can pretend that racism isn’t happening.

[edited]

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