Professional Documents
Culture Documents
UNDETERRED
& UNMANAGED Inside the obsession with ‘White Privilege’
that is roiling Edina’s public schools.
By Katherine Kersten
24 WINTER 2018 THINKING MINNESOTA
T he Fall 2017 issue of Thinking
Minnesota featured an article by
American Experiment Senior Policy
students in the form of public shaming
and lowered grades.
Now, however, one family has coura-
“enough.”
In the 2016-17 school year, his junior
year, Flores’ son took a required 11th-
Fellow Katherine Kersten that described geously stepped forward to tell its story. grade English class from a teacher who,
the egregious politicization of the Edina The account makes clear the Edina like others at EHS, regularly used class
Public Schools (EPS). The article was school district’s “racial equity” agenda time to “criticize politicians and political
entitled “Whose Values? Educational ex- is actually driving out some of the very principles” with which they disagreed,
cellence threatened by ideology in Edina students it is ostensibly designed to according to Flores. When assigned to
schools.” To say it stirred up a “Hornets’ benefit. give an oral report about a “modern-day
nest” would be putting it mildly. Orlando Flores is the father of a witch hunt,” Flores’ son and a classmate
The article showed how the ideology Hispanic student who left Edina High
of racial identity politics—which holds School (EHS) to pursue Postsecondary
that “white privilege” is to blame for Enrollment Options in Fall 2017, his
all problems minority groups face—now senior year, because of what Flores calls
dominates Edina’s schools. It included “the pervasive ‘viewpoint discrimination’
disturbing accounts by students and and closed-mindedness” being taught at
parents of classroom indoctrination, the school. The Flores family’s unique
and of the bullying of students who hold personal background gives the issue Students are instructed
non-conforming views on the ideological special urgency for them. in white supremacy and
trinity of “race, class, and gender.” Orlando Flores and his parents escaped
Since the article appeared, Kersten has a Marxist regime in Nicaragua in 1979.
“Whiteness as property;”
gathered troubling new information on “We became refugees to avoid the politi- encouraged to tell their
what’s happening in the Edina schools. cal indoctrination that is the hallmark of personal “racial awakening
We now have more details on what it absolutist regimes and intolerant philoso-
means—in district leaders’ minds—to phies,” he said in an interview. “We can’t stories;” and led to view
view all “teaching and learning ex- stand by silently now while any group— human beings, first and
periences” through the lens of racial from the right, left or wherever—moves foremost, as members of
“equity” as EPS’s “All for All” plan to squelch freedom of expression here
requires. The article that follows provides in America, in our children’s public racial and ethnic groups
an update. schools.” rather than unique
Kersten’s original article provided The Flores’ son was an outstanding
strong evidence that sweeping changes student at EHS, a National Merit semi-
individuals who transcend
must occur if the Edina schools are to finalist who scored at the highest level in their skin color.
return to the proper mission of public many Advanced Placement classes and
education. But many Edina residents exams, according to his father.
resisted this conclusion. In part, this His son experienced and witnessed
was because the families who described many instances of political indoctrination chose a topic “inconsistent with the
alarming classroom persecution to and viewpoint repression while at EHS, teacher’s political orientation”—the ac-
the Center were reluctant to speak out Flores says. Finally, one particularly tions of student protesters at the Univer-
publicly, fearing retaliation against their disturbing event led the family to say sity of Missouri following high-profile
racial incidents in Ferguson, Missouri.
The presentation was supposed to
take seven to 10 minutes. When the
About the Author: Katherine Kersten, a writer and boys were finished, however, the teacher
attorney, is a senior policy fellow at Center of the American forced them to stand in front of the class
Experiment. She served as a Metro columnist for the Star for about 40 minutes and endure relent-
Tribune from 2005 to 2008, and as an opinion columnist for less criticism from both the teacher and
the paper for 15 years between 1996 and 2013. She was a the “most liberal students in the class—
founding director of the Center, and served as its chair from all white,” Flores’ son wrote in an email
1996 to 1998. to me. (The teacher called this bringing
in “multiple perspectives,” he adds.)
A group calling itself the “Edina High School Anti-Fascists” posted a YouTube video
in which a student hid behind a Guy Fawkes mask and issued threats against the Hackman trainers—
YCC. A mechanical voice ominously intoned the threats, which included statements
like “we at EHS Anti-fascists have decided that your club cannot continue to exist in
astonishingly—asserted
its current form” and “[w]e will not stop until every tentacle of your evil monstrosity that white racism is
is sliced off at the nerve.”
biological in nature.
“White conditioning
begins when white bodies
Subsequently, in a public communication [they had] brought it upon themselves by
on November 13, EPS Superintendent John criticizing the protests” at the Veterans
are preverbal,” according
Schultz called the Antifa video “inflamma- Day program, according to the complaint. to the flyer for the session.
tory and creepy,” but dismissed the fears According to the complaint, on Novem-
of YCC members and their parents on ber 13 Principal Beaton called the president
grounds that an investigation had “uncov- of the YCC into his office, demanded to trict’s ideology of racial “equity.”
ered no credible or legal threat.” (Schultz’s examine his cell phone, looked at the club’s Trainers instructed district employees
reaction would likely have been very differ- GroupMe (a private group text messaging that “dismantl[ing] white privilege” is
ent if the YCC had issued threats like this app), and then ordered the president to “the core of our work as white folks.”
against EHS’s Black Student Union.) disband the club by deleting its GroupMe. This “work,” they maintained, will
Meanwhile, the Veterans Day protest- In addition, Beaton suspended four stu- “requir[e] a major paradigm shift in the
ers and their supporters continued to dents who had criticized the protesters on thinking of white people.” A paradigm
threaten and harass the conservative the private GroupMe. shift in one’s thinking is a lot to demand
students. Groups “as large as 30 students Yet EHS authorities apparently took no from individuals who simply want to
were daily surrounding club members and disciplinary action against the Veterans drive a bus for the Edina schools.
threatening to injure them if they did not Day protesters; the students who posted The “Edina School District Equity
change their political views,” according to insulting and disparaging messages about and Racial Justice Training” materials
the complaint. YCC members on social media; or those included a bizarre history lesson that
One of the student plaintiffs confirmed who physically threatened and harassed exemplifies their extremist nature. In
this in an interview: The protesters and the conservative students to the point of a lesson entitled “The Invention of the
their allies “crowded YCC members in the causing them to fear for their safety. White Race,” participants were taught
hall, pushed them into lockers, taunted “EPS’s policies suggest that ‘all are that the white race did not exist until the
them, threatened to beat them up, and welcome here,’” concludes the complaint, last several hundred years. According to
chased them,” she said. “Some of the kids “but what EPS really means is that all are the materials,
were afraid to come to school. They only welcome except conservatives.”
walked in the halls in groups, or tried to The YCC’s federal lawsuit asserts that The 18th and 19th centuries saw the
find alternative routes to class.” the Edina school district has violated the emergence of the ‘white race’ as a
But when the YCC students told Beaton student plaintiffs’ rights of freedom of deliberately constructed social group
they feared for their safety, he “responded speech and association under the First for the first time in U.S., and perhaps,
to their security concerns by saying that Amendment. • in world history. The reason for this
was two-fold: