This is very scary

This week the House Education and House College and Workforce Development Committees is moving to vote three mandatory training bills, SB 5044, SB 5227, SB 5228, out of committee, another step in the process of becoming adopted as state law.  The bills are,

SB 5044 would require Critical Race Training for K-12 school staff;

SB 5227 would require Critical Race Training for staff in our public colleges and universities;

SB 5228 would require Critical Race Training for students in public medical schools, and establish quotas for admission to medical school based on race.

At a public hearing, lawmakers received the following analysis about these bills.

• Prominent black, Hispanic and Jewish leaders are speaking out against this racial training curriculum as harmful to their children.
• The bills violate the Washington Civil Rights Act, which provides: “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”
• The bills violate the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection of the laws” to all citizens, regardless of race, ethnicity or national origin.
• The bills violate workers’ First Amendment rights by compelling speech in mandatory training sessions, or by suppressing their legitimate views and opinions.
• The bills would create a hostile work environment in Washington’s public universities and medical schools.
• The bills would promote feelings of fear, alienation and rejection in students and teachers, because official policy would judge them based on appearance rather than their work experience or abilities.

The purpose of Critical Race Training is to divide people into oppressors and victims, based on their race, gender, sexuality and religion. The curriculum lists the institutions in society allegedly responsible for creating oppression: families, religions, schools, the economy and government.

The bills provide a lesson plan that all white heterosexual men are “oppressors” and certain minority groups are “oppressed.” In particular Critical Race Training has attacked Jews as privileged, and part of this system of alleged oppression, and by belittling their experience as victims of the Holocaust.

People required to attend Race Critical Training are required to publicly profess their race identities, and then be labelled as either “oppressors” or “oppressed”.  No account is taken of people of mixed ethnicity, or those who don’t want to be labeled based on government policy.

Critical Race Training includes messages that are hostile to capitalism, claiming capitalism is part of this “system of oppression.” Families and religion are also condemned.  Race trainers tell students they must “undo and unlearn” what they were taught by “institutions of oppression.”

Much of the curriculum required by Critical Race Training is untrue, false and destructive.  Critical Race Training does not eliminate racism. It does, however, tend to divide society, create suspicion among students and co-workers, lower educator morale, create threats and hostility in the workplace, and make the problem of racism worse.

What is most problematic, though, is that Critical Race Training violates core civil rights protections and undermines friendship and trust that make a caring and tolerant society possible.

Analysis and the experience of other states shows that SB 5044, SB 5227 and SB 5228 would not reduce racial tensions or calm people’s fear of threats, bullying or being cancelled.  Instead, the bills would impose a harmful ideology on students that would violate core civil rights protections against hate, inequality and workplace discrimination.