Hello all, we made it through Hurricane Delta just fine — though that’s not the case for the poor folks to the west of us. Keep them in your thoughts and prayers.

Two readers have sent in shocking stories that indicate where we are going as a country. The first one is from the Wall Street Journal (paywalled) about an “antiracist” school system in Evanston, Illinois — that is, a school system whose superintendent, a black man, is proving that “antiracism” is in fact anti-white racism.

The reader who sent me the piece said:

The school superintendent in Evanston Illinois has stated that black, brown and LGBTQ students will be able to access in person learning during the pandemic (returning to the school campus) but no other students! So if your child is white, or Asian cisgendered and straight, they will be denied access.

One wonders if desperate parents will ask little Tommy to tell the school he is gay, if neither parent can work from home or so their child can have access to in person learning. And how might a desperate parent prove his/her child is gay or trans? Stick their sons in dresses so they can have access to an actual teacher?

The superintendent says this is a necessary step in the fight for equity. I think we have a very long and dark road ahead of us.

Excerpts:

This summer, school superintendent Devon Horton told the residents of this city north of Chicago that for “oppressed minorities,” the coronavirus was only the latest chapter in their long history of persecution—the pandemic of “inequity and racism and classism” had been holding them down for a lot longer.

In recognition of the impact of racism, Dr. Horton said, Evanston schools would give students from marginalized groups first priority for seats for in-person learning and all other students would be taught remotely. This is “about equity for Black and brown students, for special education students, for our LGBTQ students,” he said during a public meeting, held via Zoom.

The comment generated angry letters and death threats from both residents and nonresidents of Evanston, Dr. Horton said in subsequent interviews. He said he reported the threats to police and is considering getting a security detail for members of his staff. He also said that a disproportionate number of Black and Latino students are struggling in school and it is that struggle—not their race—which will get them priority.

Can you believe that? A separate and unequal public school system that privileges black and Latino students, solely because of the color of their skin. Look at this b.s. rationalization: “it is that struggle — not their race — which will get them priority.” This is how the Left manipulates language to justify embracing racism. He’s getting away with this in part because Evanston is a super-liberal town:

Evanston is a college town, home to many professors who work at Northwestern University, which hugs the shoreline of Lake Michigan. In 2016, voters supported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump here by more than 10 to 1. Last year, the city created a first-in-the-nation reparations fund for Black residents.

More:

After the slew of angry letters aimed at Dr. Horton, the school board responded with an open letter to the community.

“When you challenge policies and protocols established to ensure an equitable experience for Black and brown students,” the board said in its letter, “you are part of a continuum of resistance to equity and desire to maintain white supremacy.”

Do you see what’s going on here? If you opposed this radical, racist ideology, and speak out about it, you are a white supremacist. Comrade Horton tells the Journal that he is going to frog-march all his teachers through antiracist training. For those teachers who disagree with any of this, they can either live by the “antiracism” lie, or go find a job elsewhere. If Comrade Horton has his way, nobody will be able to teach in Illinois unless they swear allegiance to the new ideology:

Dr. Horton said he wouldn’t hire a teacher who didn’t support the district’s antiracist agenda and said he doesn’t believe teachers should be licensed by the state if they aren’t trained in antiracism.

“If you’re not antiracist, we can’t have you in front of our students,” he said.

Read the whole thing (with a WSJ subscription). I thank the reader who passed the story on to me.

Whenever you see the word “antiracism,” know that we are talking about leftist-approved anti-white racism, straight up. Know too that this is a totalitarian movement: dissent will not be tolerated. If these people get their way, you will not be able to work unless you capitulate to the ideology. This is done, you see, to protect the “safety” of BIPOC students.

Somebody will file a lawsuit against this — at least I hope they do. And it will be thrown out. Right? Maybe now — not necessarily in the future. Not if the law schools embrace Critical Race Theory, and the next generation of lawyers marinate in this ideology. Look at this: deans at five California law schools defend Critical Race Theory against Trump’s criticism.  This is capturing and in many cases has captured the elites. In Live Not By Lies:

In our populist era, politicians and talk-radio polemicists can rile up a crowd by denouncing elites. Nevertheless, in most societies, intellectual and cultural elites determine its long-term direction. “[T]he key actor in history is not individual genius but rather the network and the new institutions that are created out of those networks,” writes sociologist James Davison Hunter.Though a revolutionary idea might emerge from the masses, says Hunter, “it does not gain traction until it is embraced and propagated by elites” working through their “well-developed networks and powerful institutions.”

This is why it is critically important to keep an eye on intellectual discourse. Those who do not will leave the gates unguarded. As the Polish dissident and émigré Czesław Miłosz put it, “It was only toward the middle of the twentieth century that the inhabitants of many European countries came, in general unpleasantly, to the realization that their fate could be influenced directly by intricate and abstruse books of philosophy.”

Arendt warns that the twentieth-century totalitarian experience shows how a determined and skillful minority can come to rule over an indifferent and disengaged majority.

This is happening here. It’s happening right under our noses. You wake up one day and find that the superintendent of a public school system is using policy to privilege people of a particular race, and the school board, standing behind him, says that anybody who objects to this is defending white supremacy. How many lawyers would be willing to stand accused of defending white supremacy to file suit against the school board?

The reader is right: we really do have a long, dark road ahead of us. Are you ready to walk it with your head held high, not bending the knee?

The second story is about a Washington state agency forbidding great-grandparents from fostering their own one-year-old granddaughter because the great-grandparents, as Seventh Day Adventists, oppose homosexuality and transgenderism. Their own flesh and blood! Fortunately, as Eugene Volokh reports, a federal judge (an Obama appointee) ruled in favor of the great-grandparents. But it is insane that the great-grands literally had to make a federal case of it. This is what Social Justice Warriors in positions of institutional authority can do to religious believers and social conservatives: attempt to separate us from our own families. As you know, in Oregon, the age of medical consent is 15. If you are 15 and want to start injecting yourself with cross-sex hormones, and get your breasts or testicles removed, and you can find the money for it and a doctor willing to do it, your parents are powerless to stop you. The state will defend you.

I look for an underground network to form to protect children and families from the totalitarian social-justice state. I can’t imagine how it would work, especially in a society like ours, increasingly saturated with data-mining surveillance, but I hope that smart people are trying to think through this right now, while we have time.

UPDATE: A reader writes:

There may be a piece of the Evanston story being left out.  I read your article with interest; until last year, I lived in Evanston and I attended a presentation by the heads of Evanston’s high school regarding students’ performance.  The major takeaway I got from that talk was the results shown in a single chart whose image is still present in my head:  despite having equal access to all the school’s facilities and resources—despite receiving equal treatment and equal opportunity—non-white students were still persistently, significantly underperforming white students, year after year.  The most obvious inference was that white students were better supported at home.  It seems probable that this is what’s being referred to, regarding non-whites, with “it is that struggle—not their race”.  The school system is in the unenviable position of having to publicly acknowledge that underperformance in their school is attributable to racial identity, and the “anti-racist” business may be the most convenient and trendy way for them to address the issue (and deflect blame) without invoking The Bell Curve.  Whatever the nonsensical philosophical overlay may be, the Evanston school’s current policy is most likely a reflection of a simple, practical, data-driven reality:  in Evanston, white students are better equipped to handle remote schooling.