When James Whitfield, the Black principal at Colleyville Heritage High School in Texas, wrote a letter to the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District in the days after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, he received only positive feedback. “Education is the key to stomping out ignorance, hate, and systemic racism,” he wrote.
One year later, he would be out of a job.
In July 2021, Stetson Clark, a candidate running for school board, accused Whitfield of teaching critical race theory using that same letter at a contentious board meeting. Clark said that Whitfield had “divisive ideologies” and was “encouraging the disruption and destruction of our district.”
The now-former principal received a disciplinary letter from the district and was placed on paid administrative leave a few weeks after that. “When asked to provide evidence of CRT being taught, they don’t have a single shred of evidence to support their case,” Whitfield said. In September of last year, he chose to resign and came to an agreement with the school district in which he would be on paid leave until officially resigning next year.
“What happened to me is really about far-right fringe groups popping up all over the country,” Whitfield told HuffPost.
“These groups accusing me of teaching CRT are so absurd,” Whitfield said. “They would take anything we were doing with diversity, equity and inclusion, repackage it and just fearmonger.” But the accusations about CRT, a college-level academic theory, and “indoctrination of students” kept coming.
Whitfield’s ordeal is a part of a worrisome effort by right-wing extremists, leaders and warriors to discredit public educators. And it’s not unique to Texas. Kim Morrison, a high school teacher in Missouri, was told her contract wasn’t being renewed after she assigned a worksheet titled “How Racially Privileged Are You?” to her high school students. In Tennessee, Matthew Hawn was let go for teaching his students about white privilege.
“They would take anything we were doing with diversity, equity and inclusion, repackage it and just fearmonger.”
– former Texas principal James Whitfield
But as the culture warriors target teachers and other educators for teaching students about racial justice or being inclusive of the LGBTQ community, another crisis is unfolding.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 300,000 teachers have left the profession between February 2020 and May 2022. There is a…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Education…