OPINION:
The Minneapolis public school system is so woke and progressive, that they are going to begin openly discriminating against teachers based on gender, sexual identity, and race beginning in the spring of 2023. But don’t worry, they are only discriminating against “over-represented teachers” (aka white heterosexual males and female teachers).
In fact, the school is simply implementing the practice of being anti-racist as put forward by author Ibram X. Kendi. In his bigoted New York Times best seller ‘How to Be an Anti-Racist’, Mr. Kendi wrote, “the remedy to past discrimination is current discrimination and the remedy to current discrimination is future discrimination.” After all, as Mr. Kendi often claims, “It’s not enough to not be racist, you must be anti-racist.” Confused? Let me break it down. If you are white and don’t want to be racist against non-white people, all you must do is support policies and practices that are racist against white people including yourself.
In March of 2022, I made a TikTok video talking about the strike by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers. I had just begun my journey of making conservative videos on TikTok. In my video, I was very critical of the narrative coming from the Teacher’s Union that the strike was “for the kids.” I was incensed by their narrative. Considering that “the kids” were just getting back to normalcy and structure after a two-year shutdown of in-person learning for virtual learning, which led to rampant truancy and an explosion of juvenile crime across the Twin Cities metro area. Shutdowns of in-person learning also further widened the already huge achievement gap between white and non-white students. My video resonated with some people and accumulated 30,000 views. Since then, I’ve gained almost 50,000 followers averaging over a million views a month from my videos.
One of my followers sent me an article written by local media company Alpha News and asked me “if I had read or heard about it?” And it jogged my memory. Back when I had made that video talking about the teacher’s strike, I had read a few articles that talked about the contract negotiations. A significant portion of those negotiations focused on “promoting the hiring and employment protections for teachers of color.” During those talks, a specific policy proposal was being pushed aggressively. A proposal that was born during the summer of 2017 based on a final report called the MPS Equity and Diversity Impact Assessment (EDIA) and Hiring Practices, which, if agreed to and implemented, would allow for open discrimination against “over-represented teachers” when it came to layoffs and job openings.
Like every public sector union, seniority instead of merit is a framework of policy for the union and the workers. This truth is exemplified by the last-in-first-out (LIFO) policy when it comes to layoffs and job openings. The last people to get hired are the first ones to get laid off if there’s going to be a layoff. The same philosophy goes for internal job openings. Seniority affords the first chance to apply for new openings. This has been standard operating policy for labor unions since well, labor unions became a thing. This practice is where the problem arose for the new proposal to significantly increase the number of teachers that aren’t from “over-represented” populations.
For years, there have been calls from some in the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers to address the perceived racial disparities in teaching. Which meant, hiring more teachers of color. With Minneapolis being the epicenter of the George Floyd killing and the catalyst for the international explosion of the BLM movement, a schism was created. This rift was between the socialist labor collectivist left against the socialist racial identitarian left. This divide led to a sort of conflict that played out on leftist forums and online media. It reached its climax during the Minneapolis strike with the socialist racial identitarian left claiming victory.
As a conservative, it is highly entertaining to watch the socialist labor collectivist left clash against the socialist racial identitarian left and eat their own. However, it is far more important to remember it’s the students in the Minneapolis public school system that are going to be most negatively impacted by this policy. If we are being real, the entire concept of seniority and tenure over meritocracy is a broken concept that leads to a stagnant education system—one that lacks innovation because the new innovative teachers are always the last in and first out.
The Minneapolis public school system continues to have huge disparities between Black students and white students. In 2021, only 19% of Black students were reading at grade level and only 9% were proficient in math whereas white students performed at 74% and 62% respectively. With the dollars per pupil at its highest level ever, the disparity persists. Adding this additional layer of discrimination and bigotry makes an already terrible policy even worse.
At this point, if you are a parent of a student in the Minneapolis public school system or any other school system that decides to adopt this bigoted policy, your options are limited. Pull your children out of public school and homeschool them. Or begin to truly advocate for school choice and vouchers that allow parents’ tax dollars to follow their child to a school of the parent’s choosing. Continuing what the Minneapolis public school system is doing is clearly not working.
• AK Kamara is a small business owner and member of the Project 21 Black leadership network. He can be found at TikTok @akkamara.
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