Antiracism and gender ideology are all the rage in public schools.

But until recently the movement bubbled up from below, as the new generation of teachers steeped in gender ideology and antiracism gobbledygook pushed it into the classrooms. DEI bureaucrats were similarly committed, but it was a district-by-district movement.

Soon enough that will no longer be the case, at least in Minnesota. The Democrat-controlled legislature and our radical governor are poised to require “antiracist” curriculums in all subjects in new statewide standards.

And as states run by Democrats are apparently competing to implement the most radical policies, you can expect this sort of thing to come to a state near you–or your own, if you are unlucky enough to live in a Democrat-dominated state.

My friend Katherine Kersten explains the changes in an Op/Ed published in our local leftist rag The StarTribune. The tale is appalling if not unexpected. After all, we just became a gender transition tourist state, complete with protections for parents who kidnap their children and cross state lines.

Under the radar, a package of bills is ramming through sweeping changes that will reorient our public schools around a new paradigm — subordinating academic basics to an obsessive, politicized preoccupation with race and social justice activism.

“Critical Social Justice” ideology (CSJ) — the vehicle for manipulating our young people into adopting this worldview — is laced strategically through a variety of bills, including “ethnic studies” (HF 1502), “Teachers of Color” (HF 320) and now the House and Senate omnibus education bills (HF 2497/SF 2684).

Together these bills amount to sweeping curriculum reforms that would warm the cockles of Ibrim X Kendi’s heart. At least I think so, although I am not quite sure what cockles are and where they reside. The only cockles I know are these:

Whatever cockles are in this context, the Antiracists are going to have some very warm ones, because Minnesota’s legislators are going to upend our education system in the service of racial equity. And equity, in this case, means equal outcomes.

Given Minnesota’s persistent inability to close the achievement gap despite billions of dollars of investment over the decades–our state has the worst achievement gap between White and non-White students in the country–that will likely mean reducing the educational achievement of high-performing students.

This is no guess. School districts across the country are eliminating programs and classes based on the claim that their existence gives White students a leg up. Schools for gifted students are now using racial tests for admittance, and race (and gender ideology) have been put at the center of the public school curricula.

Consider what awaits your kindergartner in the brave new world just over the horizon. The House Omnibus Education bill requires that, going forward, all curriculum and instruction in our state’s K-12 public schools will be “antiracist.”

Does “antiracism” have its common-sense meaning: A belief that it’s wrong to treat people differently because of their race? Far from it. The startling new definition is buried in the 316-page bill: “‘Antiracist’ means actively working to eliminate racism in all forms so that power and resources are redistributed and shared equitably among racial groups.”

If this bill passes, starting in 2024, every school district would be required to review and revise all classroom materials — in every subject, including math and science — to inject this full-throated call to change our political and economic system.

Antiracism is essentially racialized anticapitalism and, to a great extent, anti-democratic. It creates a racial hierarchy within which the “privileged” races are subordinated to the “oppressed.” Think Marxism with a racial focus.

It is this ideology that the Democrats in Minnesota are going to put at the center of the public school curriculum. I suspect that many are merely utterly ignorant of the actual contents of what will be taught–they really don’t care, except for getting the virtue signal credit–but most of them are well aware of what they are doing, and approve.

They are, essentially, communists. Minnesota has a $17.5 billion dollar surplus, and they are busily RAISING taxes here anyway. It would be insane until one understands that they are anti-capitalists as well as “anti-racists.”

The propaganda behind anti-racism focuses on a term they call “equity,” and the propaganda seems pleasant enough. A common meme sums it up pretty well.

Capitalism is an oppressive system that systematically excludes anybody with privilege, especially White privilege. This is why the term “anti-racism” is, as Kendi says, essentially anti-capitalism. The only way to truly liberate people is to eliminate the current order and replace it with one where there is no fence at all, and everybody has equal access to everything.

All “privilege” is unearned–having to pay with money you “earned” is oppressive, because “earned” is simply a reflection of privilege in capitalist societies.

Equity doesn’t work that way in reality, because many inequalities reflect real-world differences that can’t easily be eradicated. This is the reason why Minnesota’s constant attempts to close the achievement gap have been utterly ineffective. They haven’t moved the needle, despite huge investments in resources. In fact, we spend vastly more in our urban school districts than anywhere else in the state, yet student performance is vastly worse.

We spend the money and mouth the right words, but other variables such as broken homes and insufficient parental support are the real culprits and government programs can’t undo the damage. .

So in reality equity looks like this:

If you can’t bring everybody up to the same standards, then you change the standards until everybody is equal. Just as, time and again, getting rid of capitalism in order to liberate the masses results only in poverty and immiseration for the masses.

This is the future of the Blue states, with the exception that wealthier parents will simply opt out of the public schools and take their children elsewhere. Wealthy people already have school choice because they can afford it.

The practical result of what the legislature is doing will be lowering the standards, perverting the curriculum, indoctrinating middle-class students who can’t escape public schools, and eventually turning the state into Portland.

Portland, by the way, has been a favorite of the Left here in Minnesota for decades. I wonder what they think of the results of Portland’s policies now?

Apparently well enough to follow suit. That is where Minnesota is headed at breakneck speed.

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