Keystone Today

Certainly, the men who gathered at Independence Hall (then called the Pennsylvania State House) in the summer of 1775 and 1776, and later in 1787, were flawed men. They didn’t live up to their own ideals—the self-evident truth that all men are created equal. And yet the vision they hammered out with long debate and discourse was unique in all the world—and it called for a more perfect union, with the implication that the perfecting would be a continuing process.

Yet critical race theory (CRT) now roils our commonwealth, with its denial of all that our founders aspired to. Parents who object to the racial essentialism of CRT—the notion that our children are little more than the color of their skin, and that success or failure is largely predetermined—are mocked, belittled and told they don’t know what they’re talking about.

State Rep. Donna Bullock, D-Philadelphia tells the public, “Don’t Google it, since the definition of CRT has been hijacked and muddied by those who demonize it without even understanding what it truly is.”

Yet learning more about CRT is exactly what parents should do. They’ll learn some disturbing things about the discipline, despite Rep. Bullock claiming, somehow with a straight face, that “CRT is not, and has never been, taught in our K-12 schools.”

But in her own city, fifth graders were recently required to celebrate a Black communist and engage in a Black Power rally in honor of Angela Davis.

“At the conclusion of the unit, the teacher led the 10- and 11-year-old students into the school auditorium to ‘simulate’ a Black Power rally to ‘free Angela Davis’ from prison, where she had once been held while awaiting trial on charges of conspiracy, kidnapping, and murder,” City Journal reports. “The students marched on the stage, holding signs that read ‘Black Power,’ ‘Jail Trump,’ ‘Free Angela,’ and ‘Black Power Matters.’ They chanted about Africa and ancestral power, then shouted ‘Free Angela! Free Angela!’ as they stood at the front of the stage.”

This is par for the course in Philadelphia. In the birthplace of freedom, in the cradle of the grand experiment of self-governance, the local teachers union has described the “United States as a ‘settler colony built on white supremacy and capitalism’ that has created a ‘system that lifts up white people over everyone else.’ The solution, according to the union, is to overthrow the ‘racist structure of capitalism,’ provide ‘reparations for Black and Indigenous people,’ and ‘uproot white supremacy and plant the seeds for a new world.’”

There are more examples throughout the state. South Middleton School District officials have brought CRT into their schools masked as “Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.” Nearly 100 parents made local headlines at a school board meeting this year for questioning these materials.  

In the Lower Merion School District, located just outside of Philadelphia, school board officials voted to include a children’s book aptly titled “Not My Idea: A Book about Whiteness” in the curriculum of the district. What’s wrong with the book? It reinforces collective guilt and communicates to white children their very existence is problematic.

“Its final page is ‘a contract binding you to whiteness,’ telling white children that they’ve been permitted to ‘get stolen land, stolen riches, special favors’ and to ‘mess endlessly with the lives of your friends, neighbors, loved ones, and all fellow humans of COLOR for the purpose of profit $,’” City Journal explains.

But here’s the good news. The decisions to include or disallow these divisive materials are made at the school board level. And hundreds of school board elections will take place on Nov. 2. 

These boards hold great power and influence over the future of our children—all of our children. The time is now to learn about your local school board races, and to vote. 

Brooke Rollins is president and chief executive officer at the America First Policy Institute and previously served as an assistant to the president and Director of the Domestic Policy Council under the Trump administration.