Posted on January 21, 2016

Students Boycott High School’s Required ‘Racial Identity’ Day

Joel B. Pollak, Breitbart, January 21, 2016

At least one thousand students skipped New Trier High School’s mandatory day of “racial identity” classes on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

The suburban Chicago high school, which ranks among the top public high schools in the country, held class on the public holiday, and scheduled seminars on “systemic racism” that sought to increase students’ awareness “of their own racial identities and the identities of others.”

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One parent, whose daughter is biracial, told Breitbart News that her daughter had deliberately avoided the program for fear of being singled out and forced to define herself by her skin color.

“She called me from school, about a month-and-a-half ago, and asked, ‘Mom, do I have to go? I’m black, and I’ll be a target.”

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Seminars included: “The Truth about Ferguson: The Investigation into the Death of Michael Brown,” “Why Do I Have to Feel Guilty for Being White?”, and “Western Bias in Science.” One poster hung inside the school (above) quoted author Toni Morrison: “In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.”

At a school board meeting Monday, district officials spun the day as a success, though they admitted that attendance had only been “between 66% and 70%” of the student body of 4,200. Breitbart News learned that students were later told the day would not count as a full day for attendance purposes, since participation had been “like 50%.”

One parent at the meeting, who described herself as Hispanic, said she became alarmed when her daughter brought home a list of seminars.

“When she showed me the list of classes, I was not only baffled, but also concerned,” she said, citing seminars with names such as “To Pimp a Butterfly,” and content including a “Pyramid of Hate” on anti-Muslim prejudice. “Out of all these options, I could discern no diversity of options,” she added. The point, she said, seemed to be “to instill more angst than need be” in children. She took her daughter to a community service project instead.

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