Socrates is believed to have once said, “The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.”
Most people, including the editors of the Merriam-Webster, Oxford, and American Heritage dictionaries, would generally define racism as the belief that one race is superior to another, and anything that oppresses or elevates people based on their race.
But not the organization that has provided diversity training and programs to teachers and students in the Huntsville City Schools system.
The Anti-Defamation League, a once noble organization that has since fallen into partisan decay, had a contract with Huntsville City Schools to deliver anti-bias training to its teachers last year after having already provided its “No Place for Hate” program to the system’s students for more than a decade, according to records.
Visit adl.org/racism and you’ll see the extreme way the organization defines the term: “Racism: The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.”
Ironically, that definition is itself a good example of racism — assigning to one group of people exclusive ownership of a vile trait based solely on the color of their skin.
But if that’s too complicated for your second grader to understand, the Anti-Defamation League has an “elementary school version” of the definition: “The disrespect, harm and mistreatment of people of color based on made up ideas that white people deserve to be in charge and treated better.”
Records of the Huntsville City Schools Board of Education meeting on December 17, 2020 show a contract with the Anti-Defamation League to provide three training sessions in early 2021 from its “World of Difference Institute” program, as part of the system’s overall cultural diversity training effort.
“We do have a long-standing relationship with the Anti-Defamation League. This is the organization that sponsors our ‘No Place for Hate’ activities,” a system official said when describing the organization to the board. She added that it’s “a very important partnership that we want to maintain.”
Officials later told me that the system has been using the “No Place For Hate” program free-of-charge for more than a decade, though it “is not a curriculum.”
“Schools use it as a way to promote a bullying-free environment in the school,” the official explained.
Diversity training is a good thing, in principle. We could all learn to treat one another better, with dignity and courtesy, regardless of how we may look or speak or where we came from or how we worship.
But how can an organization that defines racism as a characteristic exclusively held by one group of people be the right provider of that training, or programs and content of any kind covering diversity, cultural awareness, or anti-bias to teachers and students?
Clearly, they cannot.
The specific problem here remains quite clear to me: schools feel a need to provide diversity training to teachers and students, yet the groups who have affordable, off-the-shelf solutions tend to be very political in nature, deeply invested in identity politics, and locked into a far left view of the issue. It’s reasonable to suspect that their personal political perspectives will seep into whatever training and programs they provide.
Part of the lasting solution should clearly be to avoid partnering with organizations that have overt political agendas. School systems, especially those the size of Huntsville City Schools, should create and implement their own, home-grown diversity training programs, created by the experienced educators they have in-house, and reflective of the community in which they serve.
History needs to be taught, unvarnished.
Current events should be discussed, openly.
People should learn to treat one another with the courtesy and dignity everyone deserves.
But starting from the definition that one group of Americans, today, is in the right, and the other in the wrong, is remarkably counterproductive.
And it should stop.
(J. Pepper Bryars is a conservative opinion writer from Mobile who lives in Hunstville. Readers can find him at https://jpepper.substack.com)
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