TEACHERS in San Diego are reportedly being required to attend compulsory “white privilege” training in which they are told “you are racist”.
They will be forced to do the course on the “hidden history of violence” where they will have to discuss how they would feel if they are called racist and to commit to becoming anti-racism campaigners.
The San Diego Unified School District will begin the sessions with teachers being told they will experience “guilt, anger, apathy [and] closed-mindedness” because of their “white fragility,” according to leaked documents obtained by journalist Christopher F. Rufo.
During the training, staff are instructed about “land acknowledgment” and asked to accept that the US was established on stolen Native American land, the report said.
They will be instructed on the teachings of “White Fragility” author Robin DiAngelo as well as “Be Anti-racist: A Journal for Awareness, Reflection and Action” by Ibram X Kend.
After watching clips of the two authors, the trainers then tell the group that “you are racist” and “upholding racist ideas, structures, and policies”.
But the group will also be challenged to become “anti-racist” in the classroom as well as to “confront and examine [their] white privilege” and “teach others to see their privilege,” according to the report.
The school district has yet to comment.
The training sessions come after the district vowed to become “anti-racist” amid nationwide Black Lives Matter, which unfolded in the wake of the police killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor.
Earlier this year, the district underwent a major overhaul to its grading system to stamp out racial discrimination, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
Donald Trump condemned such trainings in September and wanted to end racial sensitivity training for federal government employees, claiming it is “divisive, anti-American propaganda”.
The teachers are told to discuss how they would feel if they were told: ‘You are racist’
Data had revealed white students made up 7 percent of all D or F grades, black students accounted for about 20 percent and Hispanic students received about 23 percent of them, the paper reported.
In an effort to prevent discrimination, the school board voted to eliminate non-academic factors like late work and classroom behavior in a student’s grade.
“This is part of our honest reckoning as a school district,” said Richard Barrera, who is the district’s vice president, NBC San Diego reported.
“If we’re actually going to be an anti-racist school district, we have to confront practices like this that have gone on for years and years.”
