When Critical Race Theory Turns Deadly

An Open Letter to Lawrence and Topeka School Board Members:

You’ve heard of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. However, it is unlikely that you have heard of Nkosi Thandiwe, Brittany Watts, Tiffany Ferenczy, or Lauren Garcia.

Just eight months before Zimmerman shot and killed Martin, Thandiwe, a 21-year-old black man, shot and killed Watts, stole her car, and ran over her body. He later shot Ferenczy and Garcia, who was left paralyzed. Why did Thandiwe shoot three white women?

"In terms of slavery and race, it was something that needed to be answered for,” Thandiwe said during his trial. “I saw it as something that the black community hasn't recovered from so my initial way to handle that was to spread information to help combat some of the ignorance that was in the black community about our history.”

Thandiwe, a recent graduate of the University of West Georgia with a degree in anthropology and a minor in history, also said his history studies changed his thoughts about how some white people treated black people.

Of course, Watts, Ferenczy, and Garcia had never owned slaves, and Thandiwe had never been a slave. In fact, given that his mother is an attorney, it appears that he came from a relatively well-to-do background.

The Thandiwe case never made the national headlines, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton never held rallies for Brittany Watts, and President Obama never said that if he had a son he would look like Nkosi Thandiwe. The case came and went with very little notice. However, I would urge school board members and administrators of USD 497 and USD 501 to give the case some consideration.

Thandiwe said that he was motivated to shoot three white women because he learned about how some white people treated black people in his history studies. "In terms of slavery and race, it was something that needed to be answered for,” he said in an attempt to justify the shootings.

Given that you have spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars on no-bid contracts with Pacific Educational Group (PEG) to promote “critical race theory” in your schools, I hope that you have taken the time to read Courageous Conversations About Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools by PEG founder Glenn E. Singleton and Curtis Linton. The contents of this book appear to be little different from Thandiwe’s history studies. Here is Julian Weissplass explaining one of the reasons why racism persists in the United States: “White people lack information about the history and nature of the oppression that people of color have endured. They learn little, for example, about the genocide of indigenous people, the kidnappings and slavery of Africans and the oppression of their descendants, the military seizure of the Southwestern U.S. territory from Mexico, or the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II. The media promote stereotypes and neglect peoples’ real lives. Given the lack of information and the spread of misinformation, it is not surprising that white people do not always understand the feelings of Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, or Asian Americans.”

What Weissplass wrote in true. However, he and other multiculturalists fail to tell the other side of history. “Whatever the particular crimes of Europe, that continent is also the source—the unique source—of those liberating ideas of individual liberty, political democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and cultural freedom that constitute our previous legacy and to which most of the world today aspires,” liberal historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. wrote in The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (1991). “These are European ideas, not Asian, nor African, nor Middle Eastern ideas, except by adoption.” Further, “The West needs no lectures on the superior virtue of those ‘sun people’ who sustained slavery until Western imperialism abolished it (and, it is reported, sustain it to this day in Mauritania and the Sudan)....”

While Weissplass decries the promotion of stereotypes in the media, Courageous Conversations doesn’t shy away from stereotypes, although they claim they are “patterns” instead of “stereotypes.” “From the work of Elise Trumbull, Carrie Rothstein-Fisch, Patricia M. Greenfield, and Blanca Quiroz (2000), we have learned that White culture is characterized by individualism whereas cultures of color are more often characterized by collectivism,” Singleton and Linton write. “White Individualism” supposedly fosters independence and individual achievement, promotes self-expression, individual thinking, and personal choice, understands the physical world as knowable apart from its meaning for human life, is associated with egalitarian relationships and flexibility in roles (e.g., upward mobility), and is associated with private property, individual ownership.

Meanwhile, “Color Group Collectivism” fosters interdependence and group success, promotes adherence to norms, respect for authority/elders, and group consensus, understands the physical world in the context of its meaning for human life, is associated with stable, hierarchical roles, and is associated with shared property, group ownership.

As you can see, in Singleton and Linton’s world, White culture and cultures of color are very, very different. They reject Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of a colorblind society, and instead promote “color-vision,” i.e., which emphasizes our racial differences.

“To make a human hive, you want to make everyone feel like a family,” wrote psychologist Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012). “So don’t call attention to racial and ethnic differences; make them less relevant by ramping up similarity and celebrating the group’s shared values and common identity.” According to Haidt, “Emphasizing differences makes many people more racist, not less.”

I experienced a “human hive” while serving in the Marines. While in boot camp, Staff Sergeant L. K. White, a black man, was the senior drill instructor of our platoon. He, along with Sergeant J. Black (ironically, a white man) and Sergeant F. J. Childs, III, was responsible for taking 75 recruits (which had dwindled down to 41 at the time of graduation) and molding us into Marines. Like every other platoon, ours was racially mixed, with whites, blacks, Hispanics, an Asian, and a Native American. However, White instructed us to put aside our racial differences. “There are no white Marines,” he said. “There are no black Marines. There are only green Marines.” By “green,” he was referring to the color of our uniforms. For three months, we ate together, marched together, did PT (physical training) together, and slept together in a large squad bay. We also had to use the “head” (bathroom) and shower together. There were no doors on the toilet stalls and no shower curtains, so privacy was out of the question. After three months of living like that, you learn to trust and rely on others regardless of their race. You also become a close-knit family with shared values and a common identity.

I believe the Marines’ approach concerning race is far superior to Singleton and Linton’s. It’s also far less likely to produce another Nkosi Thandiwe.