During the course of my campaign, I have tried hard to avoid wading into state, national, and international controversies. I am running for our local New Hanover County school board, and I must remain laser focused on the great task of fixing our broken schools. Once elected, I will not be granted any power to affect state, federal, or international problems, and so it’s best to concentrate on transforming our local schools into the centers of academic excellence they should be. However, my Democrat opponent, Judy Justice, has made some revealing social media posts as of late and I feel they need to be addressed.
A Race-Driven View of Diversity
On August 6, 2024, Judy Justice re-posted this image on her Facebook Page with the comment, “Diversity also makes our public schools excellent.” I applaud all the members of the men’s and women’s Olympic gymnastics teams that recently participated and excelled at the Olympics in Paris. However, unlike Judy Justice, I applaud each individual gymnast for their hard work and dedication to their sport. I don’t applaud them for their skin color or for their ethnicity. Judy Justice does. She is happy that the men’s team had a black gymnast and another of Asian descent. She is ecstatic that the women’s team had 3 black gymnasts, and another of Asian descent. She mistakenly thinks that “diversity” means that we need to have a certain quota of people that “belong” to “marginalized” identity groups that Judy Justice and her leftist friends get to define. I believe in the diversity of individuals. We are all unique and equally made in the image of God. These teams could have been comprised of 10 white skinned people, 10 black skinned people, or 10 people of Asian descent, and yet each of them would have had a unique story to tell, and unique struggles they had to overcome. That’s real diversity – and not an artificially created diversity based on skin color or ethnic descent. That’s just plain racism.
A Skewed View of Civics
Later that same day, Judy Justice made another Facebook Post on her page. This time applauding the choice of Tim Walz as the Democratic nominee for Vice President. I am committed to staying neutral in our national elections, but it’s important to note that Judy Justice praised Walz because he was a former high school Civics teacher. Therefore, it’s important to look at what type of “Civics” Walz holds to, as an indicator of what Judy Justice is liable to implement in our school district.
Tim Walz was sworn into office as the Governor of Minnesota in January, 2019. One of the first actions he took as Governor was to create the “One Minnesota Council on Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity.” Upon its creation, Walz accused the United States of being systematically racist, and that the Council needed to develop strong “anti-racist” policies to combat “whiteness” in the state government. To that end, the Council established firm affirmative action quotas for participation within state and local government bodies. Equal Opportunity and choosing the best candidate regardless of race is not important to Walz. Instead, his Council often left important government board seats vacant, rather than filling them with qualified “white” participants. In the area of education, Walz’s fixation on DEI in the schools has led to a deterioration of actual learning by all students. Over 70% of black students in Minnesota are not proficient in reading.
Our country was founded upon the concept of individualism and individual rights, and not on collectivism and group quotas. Anyone who can recall even a small portion of the Declaration of Independence knows this to be true. Our Founders were flawed human beings. It took a Civil War and the 13th – 15th Amendments to extend the concept of equality to every man. It took until 1919 to pass the 19th Amendment and extend this equality to women. It was a rocky road, but we got there. But, according to the “Civics” of Tim Walz and Judy Justice, all that individual equality should be tossed aside in the name of racial quotas and “social justice.” This is the type of “Civics” that doesn’t belong in our school system.
The Better Way: A Color-Blind School System
Yes – there is a better way. It was proclaimed over 60 years ago by Dr. Martin Luther King in his famous I Have a Dream speech which was given at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!
This was not a “black dream.” It’s the “American Dream” fulfilled. Yet, we seem no closer to achieving it today than in 1963. I, for one, hope that my 8-year-old grandson Lucas will one day see that dream fulfilled. I hope that he can eventually live in a “Color Blind” country where equality of opportunity prevails for every citizen. I hope that one day citizens will never refer to each other as “Black Americans”, “White Americans”, or label people based on the color of their skin. We are all God’s children who are made in his image and equally valuable. I yearn for that day.
Conclusion
But the only way we are going to get there is to eradicate all the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), Social Emotional Learning (SEL), and Critical Race Theory (CRT) programming that is deeply entrenched in our schools. We need to get rid of all the identity politics that simply divide us and teach our children to do the same. And the fact is that the goal of all these programs is to divide us. Their proponents have the ultimate goal of an American Marxist revolution, and they are simply using our schools as their laboratory and our students as their pawns. When Judy Justice and her comrades are teaching our children that they are inherently “Privileged” or inherently “Victims” based solely on the color of their skin, actual academic progress falters and indoctrination is all that remains.
