Dear Editor,

Last week’s published letter from Clarkston Parents United (“Opinion: Parents seeking respect, questioning CCS curriculum“) represents another Trojan horse effort by the organization to undermine the local school district’s initiative to provide students with the critical thinking skills so necessary to ensure their success in an increasingly competitive and diverse global economy.
CPU uses right-wing, extremist talking points about Critical Race Theory to generate public angst and hostility, for largely political purposes. Notwithstanding the group’s name, it represents a relatively small group of politically oriented individuals, and not a large contingent of parents united against the school district.
The group maintains a Facebook presence, but membership is highly restricted, members’ names are not available there, and no public questions or comments are permitted. CPU’s operations are amazingly clandestine for an organization that purports to advocate and insist upon specificity, transparency, inclusion, and diversity from others. It utilizes the secretive, twisted approach preferred by authoritarian entities to manipulate public sympathy and policy.
CPU’s campaign reflects a tremendous ignorance about the social/economic theories, and the educational policies and officials it criticizes. The group’s strategy is to exaggerate and misrepresent components of Critical Race Theory (CRT), a collection of ideas about how race affects wealth accumulation and power, and how history is recorded. Many people, particularly those in more isolated, segregated or privileged political, racial, social and/or economic groups, find CRT to be highly threatening to a status quo the group members enjoy. Some groups, like CPU, have attempted to foment and weaponize misconceptions and fears about CRT to suit their own political purposes.
To be fair, a few CRT advocates have provided ammunition, twisting aspects of the theory to suit their own political and social agendas to redistribute wealth and political power, or to facilitate reparations and other race-based initiatives in ways many, if not most, Americans believe to be unfair or offensive. Groups like CPU have seized upon these anomalies, and twerked, misrepresented and weaponized them for their own purposes, ignoring the substance and possibilities that further study and discussion would yield.
The problem with CPU’s approach is that it reflects ignorance and bullying, with repetitive but vague and harmful attacks on ideas and school officials. The group’s rhetoric is rarely accompanied by detailed, specific examples of the horrific educational abuses they allege, and they simply refuse to entertain, publish, or address in any specific way any questions or criticisms about their operations or spewings.
They do not want students to be presented with scientific evidence produced by some of the nation’s most prestigious academic and business institutions that implicit bias affects virtually everyone from every racial, economic and social group.
Like politicos and religious scholars who centuries ago viciously persecuted scholars and other citizens who insisted with evidence that the earth was not flat, CPU is hampered by ignorance and politically-based fear that limit our potential. The group seeks to shield our children from scientific information and deny them the opportunity to scrutinize and discuss data and ideas among themselves to develop the critical thinking, communication, and advocacy skills they will need to have successful careers and keep America competitive.
Notwithstanding CPU’s campaign of ambiguous, fear mongering, blustering attacks, they have repeatedly failed to produce any evidence of any specific educational abuse by local school officials. The reality is that the group fears information, truth and dialogue. Its members cringe at the thought that their children might dare to confront them with questions or ideas the parents cannot defend or address with fact and logic.
Listen to CPU’s rhetoric but consider about it with an intellectual curiosity that requires specificity, transparency and responsiveness, and demand answers.
To do otherwise is dangerous.

Sincerely,
Mike Fetzer
Clarkston