Posted on 03/11/2005 5:52:12 PM PST by Libloather
Teachers Hear Racist Agenda
By Alan Bulluck
The Guilford County Schools invited the public to attend an anti-racism workshop held for teachers, parents and community leaders last week, but refused to allow a reporter to stay in the room once he was identified as such.
In fact, Crossroads Ministry, who held the seminar, has such clout that the second day, a reporter was thrown out after Guilford County School Superintendent Terry Grier had given permission for him to attend.
Considering what they were teaching at this seminar, which teachers from Southwest, Andrews and High Point Central high schools were required to attend, it is no wonder they didn’t want a reporter present.
The participant manual used by Crossroads Ministry is not only outdated, talking about understanding racism in the 1990s, but it also contains some pretty strong statements regarding racism and white people, such as, “Racism is the collective actions of a dominant racial group,” and “Every system and every institution in the US was created originally and structured legally and intentionally to serve white people exclusively.”
Crossroads Ministry also identifies ways in which racism “misuses power,” some of which are “Racism’s power over People of Color,” and “Racism’s power to preserve and maintain power and privilege for white society.”
According to Crossroads, white people are the only ones capable of being racist, which sounds pretty racist in its own right.
At one point during the workshop on Friday, the participants were placed in different rooms according to skin color – all the white people in one room and all the non-whites in another.
Rev. Charles Ruehle, executive co-director of Crossroads Ministry, who is white, met with the white participants and introduced them to “internalized racial superiority,” defined as a “process that teaches White people to believe, accept and/or live out superior societal definitions of self and to fit into and live out superior societal roles.” The ultimate outcome of this is, according to Ruehle, “white supremacy.”
Ruehle made a comment during the segregated discussion that blacks have more to fear from whites that don’t recognize their inherent racism than from neo-Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Anne Stewart, a trainer for Crossroads Ministry, who is black, met with the black participants and discussed what Crossroads calls “internalized racial oppression,” which is defined in the participant manual as a “process that teaches People of Color to believe, accept and/or live out negative, societal definitions of self to fit into and live out inferior societal roles.”
During the discussion, Stewart stated that many black families encourage their children to marry light-skinned mates to lighten their complexion, and she also blamed black-on-black crimes on white society instilling a sense of worthlessness in blacks.
Those were just a few things that Crossroads Ministry discussed with the participants at last week’s workshop. There are two more scheduled for this year.
The cost of these workshops is pretty high. Crossroads Ministry charges $6,000 for a two-and-a-half-day workshop, plus money for travel, lodging and meals for trainers, reproduction of training materials, a meeting area and a catered lunch both days. The cost of 10 workshops comes to $60,000, which doesn’t include the overhead costs.
Teachers attending the training workshop must find a substitute for the day of school they miss, as well as take a stipend or a flex day. With 300 teachers required to participate, those costs alone come to about $57,000.
Guilford County Schools refuses to provide accurate figures for the total cost of the program.
A statement on the Guilford County Schools website states that the mission of the anti-racism, or “racial healing,” workshop is “to provide an introductory process for participants from Guilford County Schools to explore and deepen their understanding of systemic racism and to begin to investigate ways to more effectively dismantle racism.”
Crossroads Ministry goes even further in the participant manual provided for attendees by describing the workshop as an occasion to “provide an opportunity for participants from the Guilford County Schools to explore an analysis of systemic racism and to begin to discern strategies for anti-racism initiatives within the Guilford County Schools.”
Expunging the supposed “systemic racism” in the school system is a mighty big task. Doing away with institutional racism, defined by Crossroads Ministry as “a process of developing and institutionalizing accountability to anti-racist people of color,” and subsequently putting new institutions in place is certainly worthy of coverage.
But Crossroads Ministry and the Guilford County Schools thought otherwise. “We’re creating an open environment where the teachers feel free to express their points of view,” said Derran Eaddy, program administrator of media relations for Guilford County Schools. “Not all business of the school system has to be open.”
But in this case, parents and county leaders were invited to attend. There didn’t appear to be a problem with someone observing a session until the consultants found out that someone was a reporter.
Part of the cost of the program is providing transportation for Crossroads Ministry and, according to one participant, that transportation came in the form of a rented Mercedes the last time. Maybe that’s one reason why the schools won’t release the budget figures.
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