In the national reckoning that followed the police killing of George Floyd three years ago, about 2,000 protesters took to the streets in a St. Louis suburb and urged the mostly white Francis Howell School District to address racial discrimination. The school board responded with a resolution promising to do better. Now the board, led by new conservative board members elected since last year, has revoked that anti-racism resolution and copies of it will be removed from school buildings. The Francis Howell district is among Missouri’s largest, with 17,000 students, about 87% of whom are white. In 2021, the PAC described the anti-racism resolution as “woke activism” and drafted an alternative resolution to oppose “all acts of racial discrimination, including the act of promoting tenets of the racially-divisive Critical Race Theory, labels of white privilege, enforced equity of outcomes, identity politics, intersectionalism, and Marxism.”

  • MasterOBee Master/King@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The board’s vice president, Randy Cook, said phrases in the resolution such as “systemic racism” aren’t defined and mean different things to different people. Another board member, Jane Puszkar, said the resolution served no purpose.

    “What has it really done,” she asked. “How effective has it really been?”

    The new board is right. Saying some buzzwords doesn’t really help anything.

    Treat students as equals, regardless of race. Provide resources to poor folk, black or white. Teach math to kids whether they’re black or white.

    Pretty simple.