Students in Prince George’s County, Maryland are participating in a “Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Schools,” which features lessons centered on the “13 guiding principles” of the divisive Black Lives Matter movement.
Members of the Prince George’s County School Board voted unanimously to dedicate a week to Black Lives Matter at a meeting last week, becoming one of the first districts to sign up with a national movement to infuse Black Lives Matter’s perspective in schools.
“I don’t believe it’s political,” student board member Amanya Paige told Fox 5. “I believe it is a movement to encourage minorities and African American students to be proud of who they are and to embrace who they are because we live it every day. I think that it is important to understand our culture and understand where we are coming from in order to be productive citizens.”
Board member Raaheela Ahmed believes Black Lives Matter belongs in the district’s schools because it’s “something that our students and our families see every day, especially being a largely minority population.”
“We have 60 percent of our students that are African American, 30 percent that (are) Latino, and this is something that they see and hear every day – on the news and day-to-day lives. It’s something that we felt was really needed and necessary at this time.”
The Black Lives Matter week comes as the district grapples with widespread grade tampering and changes to student absences that likely helped more than 1,000 students graduate who didn’t deserve to, WTOP reports. Emails obtained by Fox 5 allegedly show the district’s central office pressured schools to graduate students who didn’t meet requirements.
Currently about 28 percent of the district’s third-graders meet or exceed expectations in reading, and about 27 percent for math, according to WTOP.
Regardless, from February 5-10, 2018, students will focus instead on “injustices that exist at the intersections of race, class, and gender; including mass incarceration, police brutality, poverty, unaffordable housing, income disparity, homophobia, unjust immigration policies, gender inequality, and poor access to healthcare,” according to the board resolution.
The document states “the thirteen guiding principles of the Black Lives Matter movement highlighted during this week of action are a means of challenging the insidious legacy of institutionalized racism and oppression that has plagued the United States since its founding.”
The purpose of the week, which is endorsed by district’s employee unions, “will be to spark an ongoing movement of critical reflection and honest conversations in school communities for people of all ages to engage with critical issues of social justice.”
The resolution established no means for students to opt out or reject the Black Lives Matter events and curriculum, whether they believe in the BLM philosophy or not.
The Black Lives Matter website specifically cites the political nature of the movement.
“Organizers who call this network home have ousted anti-Black politicians, won critical legislation to benefit Black lives, and changed the terms of the debate on Blackness around the world. Through movement and relationship building, we have also helped catalyze other movements and shifted culture with an eye toward the dangerous impacts of anti-Blackness,” according to the website.
And the “13 guiding principles” offer a decidedly pro-LGBTQ, globalist, anti-white, pro-immigration perspective.
“We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence,” according to the website.
“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
“We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).”
Neither the website nor the resolution in Prince George’s address the large numbers of black and minority folks who rejected the group’s political and social tactics, and disavows the BLM worldview – one that promotes the idea of blacks as victims oppressed by overzealous whites.
“Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise,” according to the BLM Guiding Principles page. “It is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.”
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