Unlike Republicans elsewhere who have recently advocated for the removal of books about Anti-Racism from school curricula, Christina Fink is calling for the addition of some books to the reading lists of Lower Merion School District students.
Fink is one of four Republican candidates running for the Lower Merion School Board. While participating in a candidates forum, via Zoom on Tuesday night (October 5), she said –
Indoctrination and politicizing the classroom ruins our children’s environment to learn with joy and peace. I am for a 360 degree education, teaching all perspectives and opinions, with no bias. That means if you’re reading popular African American author Kendi, then you’d better be reading African American authors Shelby Steele or John McWhorter.
Fink was referring to Ibram X. Kindi who just this week was named as a recipient of a $625,000 MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant.” Kendi is best known as the author of “How to Be an Anti-Racist.” He also wrote “Stamped”, which is part of the LMSD secondary school curriculum.
According to Kendi, there is a difference between “not racist,” and being Anti-Racist. Anti-Racist means proactively dedicating oneself to opposing racism. Anything other than being Anti-Racist is seen as being complicit with racism.
Steele wrote “White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era,” which was published in 2006. Steele describes “White Guilt” as a state of mind that occurs when whites “acknowledge historical racism to show themselves redeemed of it.”
McWhorter is the author of, “Winning the Race – Beyond the crisis in Black America.”
Manhattan Institute wrote about “Winning the Race.” McWhorter argues that black America’s current problems began with an unintended byproduct of the Civil Rights revolution, a crippling mindset of “therapeutic alienation.” This wary stance toward mainstream American culture, although it is a legacy of racism in the past, continues to hold blacks back, and McWhorter traces all the poisonous effects of this defeatist attitude. In an in-depth case study of the Indianapolis inner city, he analyzes how a vibrant black neighborhood declined into slums, despite ample work opportunities in an American urban center where manufacturing jobs were plentiful. McWhorter takes a hard look at the legacy of the Great Society social assistance programs, lamenting their teaching people to live permanently on welfare, as well as educational failures, too often occurring because of an intellectual climate in which a successful black person must be faced with charges of “acting white.” He attacks the sorry state of black popular culture, where indignation for its own sake has been enshrined in everything from the halls of academia to the deleterious policy decisions of community leaders to the disaffected lyrics of hip-hop, particularly rap’s glorification of irresponsibility and violence as “protest.” In a stirring conclusion, McWhorter puts forth a new vision of black political and intellectual leadership, arguing that both blacks and whites must abolish the culture of victimhood, as this alone can improve the future of black America, and outlines steps that can be taken to ensure hope for the future.
