Implicit Bias training and Jedi mind tricks at WCPSS board retreat
The WCPSS board took part in training by the CRT & DEI organization WE ARE
Critical Race Theory (CRT) is back at Wake County Public Schools.
At its retreat last week, Wake County Public Schools Board of Education members did some training with Critical Race Theorist Ronda Taylor Bullock and her company WE ARE, which stands for "Working to Extend Anti-Racist Education."
The board’s mini-retreat agenda for Nov. 16 is here.
This past March, Bullock was named an "emerging Black leader" by Vice President Kamala Harris at a White House Black History Month event.
Wake County Public Schools (WCPSS) Chair Lindsay Mahaffey told the News & Observer that it was not Critical Race Theory training.
So did Bullock, telling the newspaper, “This was not a training on Critical Race Theory. This was a training on implicit biases. They’re very different."
Both women went with the Jedi mind trick, "These are not the droids you are looking for."
Implicit Bias draws from or is often based on race and directly to the tenets of CRT, which is why all DEI outfits offer it.
Implicit bias presupposes systemic racism and that all facets of privilege are truths but goes further by assuming various forms of prejudice not only exist in every person but those prejudices are ingrained in our subconscious, whether we acknowledge them or not.
In 2017, The Chronicle published findings indicating that researchers had scrutinized years of data on the Implicit Association Test (IAT), examining hundreds of studies involving nearly 100,000 participants.
The results of that study revealed that the link between implicit bias and discriminatory behavior may be weaker than previously assumed. Furthermore, the researchers observed scant evidence supporting the idea that alterations in implicit bias are closely tied to changes in an individual's behavior.
In other words, it's garbage science, and Implicit Bias training is CRT in practice. And Bullock knows this - if she is the expert she claims she is.
Actual scientists are skeptical of bias training and that it has no evidence it works but there is plenty of evidence, as we've seen with Wake County shelling out $3,038 to Bullock, that it is a cash cow that keeps on giving - right out of the Wake County taxpayers pockets.
Senator Phil Berger called out WE ARE and the WCPSS board pretty quick on X, pointing to a Facebook post by WE ARE on how the group applies CRT.
“Wake County tax dollars are hard at work,” Berger wrote. “We keep hearing that CRT isn’t in schools, yet this group hosts workshops for teachers about how to “apply a CRT & CRP framework” in education. #ncpol”
Last April, House Speaker Tim Moore also called out WCPSS for allowing teachers at Millbrook High to apply for grants for WE ARE training.
This isn't the first time Bullock has tried a Jedi mind trick.
In 2021, WE ARE hosted a town hall on CRT in which Bullock gave post-event commentary that CRT pushback from parents was "gaslighting" and it signaled a rise of a "white supremacy movement."
Additional comments by Bullock praised CRT use in K-12 schools
“While most teachers by and large are not explicitly teaching a Critical Race Theory in their schools; they are not explicitly teaching the theory,” Bullock said. “However, we do have educators who are embodying Critical Race Theory ideas and tenets in their classroom, in their curriculum, and what we want to say about that is this is a good thing.”
“If a school or an educator or a school system is utilizing a Critical Race Theory framework that is forward-thinking, it is rooted in truth,” said Bullock. “It is rooted in telling a holistic history of our country; it’s rooted in critical thinking.”
Bullock went on to say, “These are the things we want our schools to do," adding this has “not been the norm” because it has “traditionally made people uncomfortable” and “we tell them to lean into that discomfort.”
Read the whole rundown of the WE ARE town hall:
Mahaffey thanked Bullock for “beginning her anti-bias training with the board” during the Nov. 21 board meeting. Sounds like the board will be doing more of that training based on that statement. Watch her remarks here.
More To The Story
Mahaffey is also well aware of CRT, what it looks like, and what office in WCPSS is promulgating it.
For years, The Office of Equity Affairs (OEA) has systematically trained teachers across the district in Critical Race Theory with the goal of implementing it in the classroom and Implicit Bias included as a core component of that training.
Here are some of the receipts:
SERIES: Critical Race Theory-themed training in Wake County public schools
Critical Race Theory themed training in Wake County Public Schools: Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy
Critical Race Theory-themed training in Wake County public schools: Anti-Racist Education
Critical Race Theory-themed training in Wake County Public Schools: Antibias Education
It's worth noting that current Wake County NCAE President Christina Spears was one of the lead OEA trainers at the time I wrote those articles.
Teachers in the district have told me as recently as this past September that the OEA's training, and training like it, continues to be conducted across the district.
That's unsurprising if one considers that in 2021, the OEA submitted a course called Intro to Critical Race Theory into the WCPSS teacher professional development catalog offerings that year.
The payments for the course came from the OEA's budget and were tracked back to the group that would conduct the course; a DEI outfit out of Durham called The Equity Collaborative. That outfit is run by sitting NC General Assembly Senator Graig Meyer (D-Durham) and that organization in the past has raked in over $1.29 million from just seven school districts both in and outside North Carolina.
When I inquired about the course, then-WCPSS Communications Director Tim Simmons said “The course did not go through the normal approval process" and "we are currently reviewing how ‘intro to Critical Race Theory’ was inserted into the district catalog."
He also said “Critical Race Theory is not the basis for any curricula developed in WCPSS because it does not cleanly align with the district’s efforts to ensure equity for all staff and students," and that the class was dropped from the WCPSS catalog “as soon as the listing was discovered.”
Well, the listing was discovered because I asked. One has to ask, if that course didn't "align" with any curricula, then why does OEA's training of teachers to infuse CRT into classroom lessons exist?
Following the exposure of the Intro to Critical Race Theory course, the OEA's former chief presented the school board with talking points denying any use of CRT in the district despite ample evidence otherwise that included his own office conducting such training.
A Little More To The Story
During the Dec. 17 work session last year, the OEA also discussed its work on the district's Strategic Plan using a "lens of equity."
Watch it here:
Wait - Why is the OEA involved in the Strategic Plan?
N&O Reporter Keung Hui says the OEA explained their involvement at the Nov. 1 student achievement committee meeting.
Video of that committee meeting is below and the OEA’s remarks begin around the 1 hour mark:
Additionally, WE ARE was apparently audited, according to a post on X in May that in part said, "The state of NC hit @weare_org with a surprise audit that lasted about 6 months."
The post to X included a video link of Bullock talking about the audit.
During her comments, Bullock claims the audit was part of a bigger targeting of WE ARE.
Bullock said of the audit that it was hard for her as the executive director of WE ARE to "distance this current moment that took six, seven months to get through from the larger political moment that WE ARE has been over the course of the last year."
"We have been targeted by high-ranking politicians in our state, by some not so high-ranking people in our state, by white supremacists if you will, anti-truth tellers if you will," Bullock said. " And feeling like this audit was a target."
Bullock then went on to float a conspiracy theory that the audit was "maybe random and intentional, who knows." She then gave a "shout out to God" for her audit being "free" as opposed to costing possibly upwards of "$20,000."
Watch:
If such an audit was conducted, there is no report of it on the NC State Auditor's under non-profits or under the WE ARE name.
Related Reads:
Wake County School Office of Equity Affairs staff compensation tops $589,000