Ta-Nehisi Coates, the race obsessive who suggested in 2020 that rioting was a "natural reaction" among black Americans, has joined David Corn of Mother Jones and other radicals in smearing Charlie Kirk after his assassination, allegedly by a leftist homosexual.
In his desperation to demonize Kirk, Coates — who penned hagiographies for Breonna Taylor and Michael Brown — provided the public with a reminder both of his own radicalism and the left's intolerance of common sense.
The critical race theorist was apparently prickled when some of his fellow travelers — namely Ezra Klein of the New York Times, Sally Jenkins of the Atlantic, and California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom — dared to say nice things about Charlie Kirk.
Coates evidently decided to compensate for his liberal peers' relatively decent remarks by penning an anti-Kirk polemic for Vanity Fair, thereby contributing further to the genre of conservative demonization that appears to have helped set the stage for the Turning Point USA founder's slaying.
In his Sept. 16 article, Coates, a Vanity Fair contributing editor, argued that Klein, Jenkins, Newsom, and other members of the "political class" were "sanitizing" Kirk's legacy by focusing on his numerous good-spirited campus engagements with people from different walks of life, instead of complaining about the murdered patriot's politics, which Coates claims "amounted to little more than a loathing of those whose mere existence provoked his ire."
Coates, who wrote in one of his books that the firefighters and police who died in the process of saving lives on 9/11 "were not human to me" but rather "menaces of nature," noted:
It is not just, for instance, that Kirk held disagreeable views — that he was pro-life, that he believed in public executions, or that he rejected the separation of church and state. It’s that Kirk reveled in open bigotry. Indeed, claims of Kirk’s "civility" are tough to square with his penchant for demeaning members of the LGBTQ+ community as "freaks" and referring to trans people with the slur "tranny."
Coates was clearly upset by Kirk's use of the term "freaks"; however, in context, it's clear that the TPUSA founder was being charitable, as more damning words may have been more appropriate.
Kirk stated on a Dec. 9, 2022, episode of "The Charlie Kirk Show" that the Biden administration was "being run by freaks. That's not an exaggeration; that's not hyperbole. At the highest stakes imaginable, people that have very deep-seated mental problems are running some of the most consequential government programs conceivable."
Kirk specifically referred to Demetre Daskalakis and Samuel Brinton, a pair of individuals who fit the bill.
Daskalakis is the sex-obsessed homosexual "activist physician" who until recently served as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and previously served as Joe Biden's monkeypox adviser.
'I want to be able to get married, buy a home, have kids, allow them to ride their bike till the sun goes down, send them to a good school, have a low-crime neighborhood, not to have my kid be taught the lesbian, gay, transgender garbage in their school.'
Blaze News previously reported that Daskalakis, an LGBT activist with a track record of pushing drugs to facilitate promiscuous sexual behavior among homosexuals, had a history of denigrating straight Americans, sharing satanic imagery on social media, and showing up in public in bondage gear.
Brinton, a mustachioed nuclear engineer who ran a "Physics of Kink" class and made a habit of dressing in women's clothing, served as deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy at the Energy Department. He pleaded guilty last year to petit larceny for stealing women's luggage.
Brinton's profile on CLAW Corp.'s website reportedly stated that he has "been active in the kink world since 2013, [hosted] monthly kink parties in their dungeon in Washington, DC, and estimate they have spanked over 2,000 cute butts."
In addition to suggesting Kirk was bigoted for calling sexual deviants "freaks," for criticizing racially motivated black-on-white crime, for expressing concern over Haiti's infestation by "demonic voodoo," and for suggesting the southern border was transformed under the previous administration into the "dumping ground of the planet," Coates faulted Kirk for another common-sense assertion, namely:
The American way of life is very simple. I want to be able to get married, buy a home, have kids, allow them to ride their bike till the sun goes down, send them to a good school, have a low-crime neighborhood, not to have my kid be taught the lesbian, gay, transgender garbage in their school while also not having them have to hear the Muslim call to prayer five times a day.
Just in case advocacy for homeownership and marriage didn't strike readers as bigoted, Coates — who reportedly likened the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks against Israel to the Nat Turner slave uprising in 1831 — insinuated that Kirk was anti-Semitic, even though days earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the fallen patriot was a "lion-hearted friend of Israel" who "fought the lies and stood tall for Judeo-Christian civilization."
RELATED: Jimmy Kimmel claims Charlie Kirk shooter is 'MAGA' during wildly unfunny monologue
After rattling off numerous mainstream American views Kirk espoused, Coates stated, "Kirk subscribed to some of the most disreputable and harmful beliefs that this country has ever known."
Coates, who is the Sterling Brown chair in the English department of the federally funded Howard University, continued his bitter rant, insinuating that Kirk got a taste of his own medicine — writing that "Kirk endorsed hurting people to advance his preferred policy outcomes" — calling Kirk an "unreconstructed white supremacist," and suggesting that his public life was cancerous.
The Vanity Fair piece concludes by hinting that Kirk, a man who worked diligently to improve his country and promote civic engagement among American youth, was like the "men who sought to raise an empire of slavery."
Blaze News has reached out to Vanity Fair for comment.
While Coates appears to have moved on from writing comic books, his hateful article demonstrates that he's not finished writing fiction.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Former Obama adviser Van Jones and CNN talking head Abby Phillip attacked Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk on Monday for daring to suggest that racial animus may have been a factor in the savage Aug. 22 murder of a Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The liberal chatterboxes' eagerness to avoid the controversy over the murder becoming — as Phillip put it — "some sort of, like, reciprocal George Floyd situation" evidently had them overlook what the alleged murderer apparently says in the gruesome footage of the stabbing.
The liberal media appeared keen to overlook 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska's murder last month on the Lynx Blue Line in Charlotte, even in the wake of revelations about suspected killer Decarlos Brown's lengthy criminal history and the release of footage showing the stabbing.
When the horrific story and the reaction to it online became too big to ignore, some outfits belatedly attempted to cure the narrative on Monday.
The New York Times, for instance, concern-mongered about the unprovoked stabbing turning into "an accelerant for conservative arguments about the perceived failings of Democratic policies," suggesting it might be "successfully used" like Laken Riley's murder by an illegal alien.
CNN, among the liberal outfits that delayed covering the murder, similarly attempted to orient the public's focus away from what set the stage for Zarutska's murder and toward political implications of the backlash.
RELATED: Wikipedia editors are trying to scrub the record clean of Iryna Zarutska's slaughter by violent thug
The eponymous host of "NewsNight with Abby Phillip" kicked off the panel discussion Monday evening stating that she was "trying to understand why this has become such a flashpoint on the right."
Phillip, Van Jones, and other liberal panelists did not appear particularly receptive to the explanation offered early on by Republican strategist and commentator Brad Todd — that every murder is a tragedy but this one is particularly tragic because it was so avoidable.
"The man who committed this crime was out on cashless bail, which has been a crusade of the political left. He also has a repeat offender, career criminal, 14 times he was arrested," said Todd. "He clearly is someone who should not have been out on bail in January when he was released on bail."
After some of the panelists tried to center the conversation on the theme of mental illness, Phillip played a clip from Charlie Kirk where the conservative noted:
A white Ukrainian refugee was murdered just because she was white. Everybody knows that, obviously. ... If a random white person simply walked up to and stabbed a nice, law-abiding black person for no reason, it would be an apocalyptically huge national story used to impose national, sweeping political changes on the whole country.
"Van, they've been looking for opportunities to make this some sort of, like, reciprocal George Floyd situation," said Phillip. "And that's the part that I think he's almost giving away the game. It's sad to see a lot of people going along with it."
RELATED: Mainstream media turns a blind eye to vicious stabbing of young Ukrainian woman
Before suggesting that there were no "sweeping changes imposed on society" following the death of George Floyd, Jones first stated that "we don't know why that man did what he did."
"For Charlie Kirk to say, 'We know he did it because she's white,' when there's no evidence of that, is just pure race-mongering, hate-mongering. It's wrong," continued the former Obama adviser. "He should be ashamed of himself. No one mentioned the word 'race,' 'white, 'black,' or anything except him."
Contrary to Jones' suggestion, the violent thug who murdered Zarutska, an aspiring veterinarian assistant, appears to repeatedly say in the video as blood dropped from his knife, "I got that white girl."
Blaze News has reached out to Kirk for comment.
FBI Director Kash Patel indicated Monday evening that the "FBI has been investigating the Charlotte train murder from day one."
Decarlos Brown has been charged with first-degree murder. Blaze News has reached out to the DOJ about whether Brown might face federal hate crime charges as well.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Christopher Wolfe’s thoughtful essay at the American Mind on Booker T. Washington, leisure, and work stirred some fond memories from years ago of making a friend by reading a book.
He was an old black man, and I was an old white man. We were both native Angelenos and had been just about old enough to drive when the Watts riots broke out in 1965. But that was half a century and a lifetime ago, and we hadn’t known each another.
If you read ‘Up from Slavery,’ you will be reading an American classic and will be getting to know a man who ranks among the greatest Americans of all time.
Los Angeles is a big place, a home to many worlds. Now we were white-haired professors, reading a book together, and we became friends. His name was Kimasi, and he has since gone to a better world.
We were spending a week with a dozen other academics reading Booker T. Washington’s autobiography, “Up from Slavery.” Washington was born a slave in Franklin County, Virginia, just a few years before the Civil War began. He gained his freedom through Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Union victory in the war. With heroic determination, he got himself an education and went on to found the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama, where he remained principal for the rest of his life.
After Frederick Douglass died in 1895, Washington became, without comparison, the most well-known and influential black American living. By the beginning of the 20th century, as John Hope Franklin would write, he was “one of the most powerful men in the United States.” “Up from Slavery,” published in 1901, sold 100,000 copies before Washington died in 1915.
It is a great American book. Modern Library ranks it third on its list of the best nonfiction books in the English language of the 20th century. But there was a reason why Kimasi and I were reading this great book when we were old men rather than when we were young men back in the riotous 1960s.
Even before Washington died, and while he was still the most famous and influential black man in America, other black leaders began to discredit him and question his way of dealing with the plight and aspirations of black Americans. These critics, whom Washington sometimes called “the intellectuals,” were led by W.E.B. Du Bois, the first black American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard and one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
So successful was this criticism that by the time Kimasi and I were in high school or heading off to college, the most fashionable opinion among intellectuals — black or white — was that Booker T. Washington was the worst of things for a black man. He was an “Uncle Tom.” (How “Uncle Tom” became a term of derision rather than the name of a heroic character is a story for another time.) And so, if Washington’s great book was mentioned at all to young Kimasi or me, it was mentioned in this negative light.
But fashions change, and, as Washington himself taught, merit is hard to resist. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Address were dismissed and scoffed at by some “intellectuals” in his day; they are now generally recognized by informed and intelligent people around the world as the great speeches they are.
“Huckleberry Finn” scandalized polite opinion when it came out, because it was about an illiterate vagrant and other lowlifes and contained a lot of ungrammatical talk and bad spelling. A couple of generations later, Ernest Hemingway himself declared that “all modern American literature comes from one book” — Huckleberry Finn.
A couple of generations later still, in our own times, skittish librarians started removing the book from their shelves because it used language too dangerous for children.
The study of the past should shed light on what deserves praise, what deserves blame, and the grounds on which such judgments should be made. Americans being as fallible as the rest of mankind, as long as we are free to air opinions, there will be different opinions among us. Some of them may actually be true. And they will change from time to time, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for no reason at all.
RELATED: Why can't Americans talk honestly about race? Blame the 'Civil Rights Baby Boomers'
In recent years, several scholars have helped bring back to light the greatness and goodness of Booker T. Washington. Even fashionable opinion is capable of justice, and no one wants to be deceived about what is truly good and great, so I hazard to predict that it will sometime become fashionable again to recognize Booker T. Washington as one of the greatest Americans ever.
Washington never held political office. But his life and work demonstrated that you don’t have to hold political office to be a statesman and that the noblest work of the statesman is to teach. The soul of what Washington sought to teach was that we, too, can rise up from slavery. It is an eternal possibility.
This was the central purpose of Booker T. Washington’s life and work: to liberate souls from enslavement to ignorance, prejudice, and degrading passions, the kind of slavery that makes us tyrants to those around us in the world we live in.
Washington saw that this freedom of the soul cannot be given to us by others. Good teachers and good parents and friends, through precept and example, can help us see this freedom and understand it, but we have to achieve it for ourselves. When we do, our souls are liberated to rule themselves by reflection and choice, with malice toward none, with charity for all.
If you read “Up from Slavery,” you will be reading an American classic. You will be getting to know a man who, in the quality of his mind and character, and in the significance of what he did in and with his life, ranks among the greatest Americans of all time — even with the man whose name he chose for himself. When we read this great book together in the ripeness of our years, Kimasi, who always winningly wore his heart on his sleeve, wept frequently and repeated, shaking his head, “I lived a life not knowing this man.”
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published at the American Mind.
A white male who slapped a black male in the face and then got severely beaten in Cincinnati's infamous mob attack late last month was charged with disorderly conduct, a fourth-degree misdemeanor.
The arraignment for Alex Tchervinski took place Tuesday, WLWT-TV reported.
'He was not only brutally beaten and robbed during the assault; he's now being prosecuted when he was attempting to defend himself and his friends.'
Tchervinski, 45, didn't appear in Hamilton County Municipal Court, but his attorney Douglas Brannon entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.
Brannon said his client acted in self-defense, WLWT noted.
A cellphone video shows a white male and several black males squaring off before the mob attack begins. The video shows light physical contact between the white male and two black males, while others of both races appear to try to break things up. Then amid verbal sparring, the white male lightly slaps the face of a black male — and then the mob attack commences.
The above video and a second clip show the mob repeatedly stomping, kicking, and punching the white male while he's lying in the street.
Tchervinski has been identified as one of the six victims in the mob attack.
WLWT said it remains unclear whether the slap led to Tchervinski's misdemeanor charge.
"I am not aware of what basis they made the disorderly conduct charge," Brannon said, according to the station. "It's not been explained to me by any prosecutor or any filing made by the prosecutor. So I'm very interested to learn from them why they felt it necessary to bring this charge under these circumstances."
Brannon also said Tchervinski was acting in self-defense and should not be charged, according to WLWT. "Alex himself sustained over 28 blows to his head, face area. He was brutally beaten in this instance. I think he is being victimized now for a second time. He was not only brutally beaten and robbed during the assault; he's now being prosecuted when he was attempting to defend himself and his friends."
However, leaders in the black community — including state Rep. Cecil Thomas (D-Cincinnati) — have been saying a disorderly conduct charge isn't enough, the station reported.
"An assault is an assault. When you put your hands on someone and use force, you have assaulted that individual, and that was an assault," Thomas told WLWT. "Disorderly conduct is a slap in my face."
Both sides are agreeing on one thing, however — that city leaders aren't being transparent, the station said.
Case in point: The city solicitor prosecuting Tchervinski's case is trying to seal the citation, WLWT reported.
"I can't explain why the city brings a charge and wants to try and conceal it at the same time," Brannon noted, according to the station. "I think this is something that needs to be aired to the public. The public needs to see what's going on and how wrong this prosecution is."
In addition, not all videos of the incident have been made public, WLWT reported.
"It's mind-boggling for us to have to get drips of this as we go along. The city should be just as transparent as everybody else involved," Thomas added to the station. "We need to move from this, and the only way we can is we need to allow the people to understand exactly what happened here, and then we begin a process of healing. We can't do that with this drip faucet of information coming out."
Prior to the charge against Tchervinski, seven others — all of them black — were charged in connection with the mob attack. Six of of the seven have been indicted on eight charges each: three counts of felonious assault, three counts of assault, and two counts of aggravated riot. Those six face nearly 30 years in jail if convicted on all charges.
A black male seen on a third cellphone video standing next to the face-slap victim appears to be the first individual to physically retaliate against the white male. As it happens, police are looking for another mob attack suspect, and the image cops released of this suspect appears to match the appearance of the male seen retaliating on video.
Chief Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Kip Guinan addressed the face slap, saying that it came after someone else was already beaten, not before, WXIX reported. Guinan also acknowledged that racial slurs are audible on some of the videos of the mob attack — however, he said the slurs were uttered "a minute and 47 seconds into the brutal beatdown," the station reported.
"Were there words said? Yes. Were they inappropriate? Absolutely," Guinan also noted, WXIX reported, before adding that "these poor people were being assaulted, stomped WWE-style, elbow-drops onto pavement. One woman was knocked out to the point her head hit the pavement. We could be here on a homicide."
That woman — who has come to be known as Holly — is seen on cellphone video (1:34 mark) apparently trying to intervene on behalf of a beaten-up man, but instead another female punches her from behind — and seconds later, a male punches her in the face, knocking her flat on her back on the street.
Republican U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio shared on X grisly images of Holly's face days after the mob attack.
"This is Holly," Moreno wrote in his post. "She wanted to have a nice evening out with friends. Instead, she got this."
The male accused of punching Holly has been identified as 38-year-old Patrick Rosemond. Prosecutors said that in addition to knocking out and nearly killing Holly, Rosemond “assaulted each and every single victim in brutal and vicious fashion," WXIX-TV reported earlier this month.
Rosemond is seen on video dancing, high-fiving spectators, and taunting victims following the “violent attack,” the prosecution added, according to WXIX. The prosecution added that Rosemond also has prior convictions — including 10 misdemeanors and three felonies, the station said. His bond was set at $500,000.
One of the more vocal advocates for the arrested black suspects has been Pastor Damon Lynch, and he recently stated that Holly wouldn't have gotten punched had the slap not occurred, WXIX noted in another recent story.
“We do not feel the violence was proportionate to the slap. We are not saying that,” Lynch stated, according to the station. “We’re saying if [the white man] had not slapped this black man in the face, Holly would not have gotten punched out, and the night would have ended.”
BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock has been commenting on the mob beatdown since it all unfolded late last month, and one of his recent video takes included Lynch altering the lyrics of a Jim Croce song for his own purposes as he spoke to a crowd at a church: "You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit in the wind, you don't pull the mask off the ol' Lone Ranger, and you don't slap a black man in the face."
RELATED: 2 female suspects jailed over Cincinnati mob attack get big breaks from judge
Whitlock didn't take kindly to Lynch's words.
"Why is he racializing this? It's disrespectful to slap anyone, regardless of color, in the face. Is he saying ... if a black person slaps a black person in the face, it's OK? If a black gang member shoots a black man in the face, it's OK? If a black gang member accidentally shoots some young black child, it's OK?" Whitlock stated. "But everybody knows that you don't slap a black man in the face, I guess, unless you're black. He's in a church talking about common street thugs — and I'll include the white guy in that, because he ... seemed to be trying to fight with someone. ... [The reverend is] justifying to the people in that audience and other black people in Cincinnati that if you get slapped in the face by a white person, a gang of you all should jump on that man and beat up the woman. This is inside of a church! This is insanity; this is lack of humility."
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Jim Simons’ mathematical skills helped transform him from a prize-winning academic at Harvard and MIT into a legendary financier whose algorithmic models made Renaissance Technologies one of the most successful hedge funds in history. After his death last year, one of his consequential bequests went to his daughter, Liz, who oversees the Heising-Simons Foundation and its nearly billion-dollar endowment.
What Liz Simons has chosen to do with that inheritance might have surprised her father. Jim Simons devoted much of his charitable giving to basic research in mathematics and science, but his daughter’s foundation is moving in a very different direction. The Heising-Simons Foundation and similar organizations are supercharging a movement to remake K-12 mathematics education according to social justice principles.
Students are placed at a disadvantage when mathematical instruction is embedded in critical theory.
The revamp is profound. They reject well-established practices of math instruction while infusing lessons with racial and gender themes. The goal is to motivate disadvantaged students while dispensing with the traditional features of math — like numerical computation, which they struggle with on standardized tests — considered an oppressive feature of white supremacist culture.
In many quarters, including corporations and universities, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are in retreat due to pressure from the Trump administration and the courts. Not so in public education, with curricula that are locally controlled and largely insulated from the dictates of Washington.
That allows progressive foundations and like-minded charitable trusts to continue to pour millions of dollars into reshaping math education for black and Latino kids — including an $800,000 grant this year from the Heising-Simons Foundation — even though no credible research exists showing that the social justice approach improves their performance.
“Politicians and legislatures, even school boards,” are often too “hamstrung” to get things done, Bob Hughes, the director of K-12 education at the Gates Foundation, said at an online symposium on the need for racial equity policies in America's classrooms. Philanthropy, he added, faces fewer barriers in making rapid changes.
The Gates Foundation has been a leader in the promotion of anti-racist math instruction. It supported a project called “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction.” The project discards basic tenets of learning, like asking students to “show their work” and find the “right” answer as vestiges of “white supremacy culture.” The pathway is promoted by EdTrust West, which also receives support from the Spencer Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and other major donors.
The Gates and Heising-Simons foundations have both supported TODOS Mathematics for All, an Arizona-based organization that calls for elevating diversity, equity, and inclusion practices and anti-racist activism into all math instruction, with over $553,750 in grants in recent years. “We can no longer believe that a focus on curriculum, instruction, and assessment alone will be enough to prepare our children for survival in the world. We need anti-racist conversations for ourselves and for our children,” TODOS President Linda Fulmore announced in 2020.
Last year, the group hosted an hour-long webinar on “2SLGBTQIA+ identity in mathematics education.” During the event, a speaker expounded at length on various queer and indigenous identity groups while spending virtually no time on math-related curriculum or instruction.
At one point, the presenter erroneously claimed that there are “15.3 billion students in U.S. high schools” — a figure that would require the entire global population to be enrolled in American secondary education twice over. The speaker likely meant to say million.
The foundations similarly fund practical lessons that put race at the center of math instruction. In Alexandria, Virginia, for example, the Heising-Simons Foundation supported a public-school program that encouraged kindergartners through second-graders to count the characters in picture books by race. At the end of each session, teachers guided students in creating racial scorecards for each book, then voting to select those with the fewest white characters. The exercise was presented as mathematics education.
Jo Boaler, a controversial professor of education at Stanford University who championed the push to remove eighth-grade algebra from San Francisco’s public schools in the name of equity, traces her support to this network of foundations. The Gates Foundation and Valhalla Foundation, which was founded by Scott Cook, the co-founder of tech firm Intuit, have long funded her math education project called YouCubed.
These deep-pocket donors also fund Danny Bernard Martin, a professor of math education at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a leading voice of what critics call “woke math.”
Over the past six years, the Racial Justice in Early Mathematics Project, which Martin co-leads at the Erikson Institute in Chicago, has received nearly $2.5 million from the Heising-Simons Foundation. This year, the foundation announced an additional $800,000 grant to help the project develop tool kits for wider implementation among teachers, administrators, and researchers.
Martin’s views extend far beyond typical calls for educational equity. He regards mathematics instruction as fundamentally a “white supremacist construct” that inflicts “epistemological violence” on black students. In his estimation, even DEI programs are too conservative — mere accommodations “rooted in the fictions of white imaginaries” and designed to appease “white logics and sensibilities.”
The solution Martin proposes is radical: Black students should seek instruction exclusively from black teachers at “independent black institutions.” They should resist the temptation of “advanced coursework and mathematics-related employment” and instead engage in “walkouts and boycotts” to protest against mathematics education as it currently exists.
The very structure of math instruction, Martin contends, has dehumanized black students through low test scores and failing grades.
The ideas of the Racial Justice in Early Mathematics Project and its leaders have reverberated through America’s classrooms. California’s new mathematics curriculum framework, which guides K-12 education statewide, repeatedly cites Martin.
Educators have sharply criticized the framework for leaning heavily on politicized concepts of math. The document suggests, for instance, that teachers “take a justice-oriented perspective” when providing instruction and discourages the use of “tracking” — or the practice of separating students into different classrooms based on their abilities.
Williamson Evers, a former assistant secretary of education and a fellow at the conservative-leaning Independent Institute, has been monitoring what he calls the “woke math” movement for years. “It’s very important to have math skills,” he told RealClearInvestigations.
Evers rejects the identity-based claims made by Martin and others who have called for minority students to abandon math education over alleged racism. “There are mathematicians and scientists on every continent from every background, and this idea of boycotting education would harm black schoolchildren.”
Elizabeth Statmore, a math teacher at the elite Lowell High School in San Francisco and a critic of social justice math, says the way to improve the performance of black and Latino students lies in the nitty-gritty, such as better teaching, holding students accountable, and providing them with more academic and emotional support.
Critics say the emphasis on prose over calculation will exacerbate the very disparities that social justice advocates claim to address.
“But it’s not sexy; they’re not on the keynote circuit like Danny Bernard Martin and Jo Boaler,” Statmore said. “They’re building a brand, not doing the kind of math education research that is helping to improve outcomes for disadvantaged children.”
Representatives of the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Erikson Institute, and Martin did not respond to requests for comment.
The Heising-Simons Foundation’s focus on racializing math education reflects its broader ideological commitments. Like many progressive foundations, it uses its significant funds to advance a range of left-wing policies that might have a hard time establishing themselves without billionaire support.
The foundation has also donated to PolicyLink, the organization behind DefundPolice.org, and to the Anti-Police Terror Project, which advocates for abolishing police departments in high-crime cities like Oakland, California. Liz Simons was also among a small clique of California megadonors behind the push to elect progressive prosecutors such as George Gascón in Los Angeles and Chesa Boudin in San Francisco. They declined to pursue felony charges against a range of violent offenders over concerns about racial equity.
The attempt to reimagine mathematics through the lens of critical race theory isn’t new — scholars have been working along these lines since the 1980s. They argue that historical racial oppression continues to influence everything from geometry curricula to standardized testing. Traditional emphases on objectivity, rigorous standards, and subject-matter mastery should be replaced, the scholars argue, with ideological exercises designed to promote racial and social consciousness.
What is new is the scale and speed of adoption. As America has grappled with questions of racial justice in recent years, billionaire foundations have provided the resources to implement these ideas widely in both public and private schools.
The donors appear motivated by a deep sense of ideological commitment to righting past wrongs related to racial injustice.
At the 2020 education donor symposium, Liz Simons recalled her experience working briefly as a Spanish bilingual teacher in an impoverished community in Oakland. “The much larger systemic problems,” she witnessed, Simons said, guided her to the goal of shaping early childhood education.
Na’ilah Suad Nasir, president of the Spencer Foundation, noted that she previously worked as the vice chancellor of “equity and inclusion” at the University of California, Berkeley. Expanding racial equity in education, she said, has been her “life’s work.”
When it comes to math instruction, social justice means stripping it of basic features like numbers. In workshops hosted by the Racial Justice in Early Mathematics Project in 2023, the group promoted “numberless word problems” — mathematical exercises stripped of numerical computation. The method, instructors explain, is designed to counter “European ways of knowing and doing.”
Sisa Pon Renie, one presenter, spoke of wanting to challenge the “persistent myth that math is just abstract and without any cultural relevance.” The project champions this numberless approach as essential for “helping children understand how mathematics might be an important tool to understand social issues and promote justice.”
But critics say the emphasis on prose over calculation will exacerbate the very disparities that social justice advocates claim to address.
“Imagine you’re a Cambodian refugee, and you get some math problem that’s loaded with prose,” Evers, of the Independent Institute, said. “Maybe you’re very good at the figures part, the calculating part, the mathematical part.”
Such students, he argued, are placed at a disadvantage when mathematical instruction is embedded in critical-theory frameworks and dense with English text. “They unnecessarily load these things down, make it harder, and it’s not even math. It’s an inadequate mode of teaching.”
The real-world consequences of these approaches have played out most dramatically in San Francisco. A decade ago, officials removed Algebra 1 from middle schools, arguing that the change would give black and Latino students, who were underrepresented in the math class, more time to prepare while avoiding placing them in lower-level tracks.
David Margulies, a parent involved with the San Francisco community, observed that families wanting their children to take Algebra 1 in eighth grade shifted away from public to private schools, online learning, and homeschooling. Students who don’t take the math class in middle school find it more difficult to take calculus in high school.
RELATED: Major university caught in new DEI cover-up
“Families figured out how important this is, and they are looking elsewhere,” he noted.
A 2023 Stanford study found that San Francisco’s Algebra 1 experiment did little to close racial achievement gaps. Black enrollment in Advanced Placement math classes remained unchanged, while Latino participation increased by 1%.
Meanwhile, education systems that have increased rather than decreased academic rigor have seen notable improvements in black student performance. In 2019, Dallas public schools began automatically enrolling students who performed well on state exams in middle-school algebra. The program increased black participation in advanced mathematics from 17% in 2018 to 43% in 2023.
Last year, during a Racial Justice in Early Mathematics Project webinar titled “Who Is Labeled Smart?” Martin addressed the backlash against San Francisco’s push for educational equity. He toned down his scathing critique of merit-based advanced education programs that he believes harm black and Latino students and made a surprising statement about his own son’s schooling.
“I’m guilty, I’m guilty,” Martin said, almost sheepishly. “My son is, quote unquote, in one of those tracks.”
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.
A few days ago, a high school sophomore in Frisco, Texas, was stabbed while walking his dog. Thankfully the wound wasn’t fatal, and doctors expect him to recover quickly. Unfortunately, the assailant ran away and remains at large.
On its own, this incident might seem like a minor local crime. But the context makes it impossible to dismiss. If the story sounds familiar, that’s because another Frisco high schooler, Austin Metcalf, was stabbed to death just months ago by fellow student Karmelo Anthony, an attack that ignited a national scandal.
The Austin Metcalf stabbing should have been a wake-up call. The latest stabbing is another warning.
Now it’s happened again. And once again, the details being withheld tell us almost as much as the details that make print. Local news outlets have carefully avoided naming or describing the attacker.
In today’s media environment, that omission most likely means the suspect is a young black man. This fits the larger pattern: When a violent criminal is white, his race leads every headline. When he belongs to a “protected” group, reporters bury the fact or omit it entirely.
Progressives claim this kind of censorship promotes civic harmony. In reality, it deepens mistrust and resentment. Citizens notice the double standard. They conclude that certain groups face no real accountability, while others are scrutinized and vilified. What grows out of that perception isn’t harmony — it’s more division, more resentment, and more dysfunction.
When ordinary people can’t get the facts, they’re left chasing phantoms — scanning middle schools for “radicalized” white kids because that’s what the media tells them to fear. Meanwhile, the far more common culprits keep wreaking havoc with little pushback.
Suburbs like Frisco are uniquely vulnerable. For most of its history, Frisco was insulated from big-city crime. That isolation allowed residents to cultivate what writer Rob Henderson calls “luxury beliefs” — progressive slogans and ideals that sound noble when crime feels remote, but collapse the moment violence arrives on your own street.
Confronted with the reality of a young black male’s role in a stabbing at the park or a brawl in the school hallway, many residents simply prefer to deny or ignore the facts of the matter. They downplay what happened or cover it up so they can keep pretending their suburb remains as safe as it always was.
The problem is that denial doesn’t work. It seeps into institutions. Instead of suspending, expelling, or even jailing dangerous offenders, school districts now embrace “restorative justice.” That means therapy sessions, dialogue circles, and endless second chances. Predictably, violent students stay in class, disrupt learning, and in the worst cases attack their peers.
This weak approach produces young men who never face consequences. They grow up with low expectations, no skills, no self-control, and plenty of resentment. Eventually they end up roaming the streets, harassing strangers, and preying on the weak. Ordinary families, once told that all this would promote “civic harmony,” now cross the street or lock their doors when they see these young men coming.
What’s happening in Frisco is happening across Texas. Suburbs once imagined as quiet havens have become crowded, diverse cities in their own right. Migration from blue states, foreign immigration, subsidized housing, and zoning changes have accelerated the transformation.
RELATED:The stabbing in Frisco was a tragedy everyone saw coming
That doesn’t have to be a bad thing — but only if leaders face the new reality. Too many still cling to the illusion that Frisco is a charming, homogeneous refuge for upper-middle-class families. That era is gone. Frisco today has heavy traffic, a diverse population, and rising crime. Pretending otherwise is not an option.
If Frisco wants to survive and thrive, it needs leaders willing to tell the truth. That means dropping the “luxury beliefs” and embracing real accountability. It means removing violent kids from classrooms, enforcing laws against vagrancy and harassment, and raising the bar for behavior in public spaces.
Yes, some kids will end up in the so-called school-to-prison pipeline. Yes, some groups will show up in crime statistics more than others. But equal enforcement of the law is the only fair system. Lowering standards to avoid “disproportionality” is not compassion — it’s sabotage.
If the city refuses to act, it will suffer the same fate as America’s hollowed-out urban cores: neighbors who no longer trust one another, ethnic groups retreating into separate enclaves, and public spaces dominated by thugs who drive law-abiding families away. Once that spiral begins, families who can afford to leave will move — to Arkansas, Oklahoma, or anywhere else they can find safety and space.
Frisco still has time. It remains prosperous, attractive, and full of promise. But that won’t last if residents continue looking the other way. The Austin Metcalf stabbing should have been a wake-up call. The latest stabbing is another warning.
The longer this community clings to denial, the worse the problem will grow — and the harder it will be to fix.
Cracker Barrel could be headed for the Bud Light treatment after the brand unveiled changes that have Americans fuming.
The bad news for the company was delivered by around 500,000 posts made about the brand on X alone, with many calling for a boycott.
One call to avoid the brand had over 410,000 views and pointed out one specific change that has consumers outraged.
'I think what's important is that we are listening to our guests. We're doing this all for them.'
Customers quickly noticed a change to the iconic logo, which removed the country man sitting on a chair next to a barrel. In fact, the barrel was also removed, and so was the text "Old Country Store," leaving just black and yellow "Cracker Barrel" text.
The Cracker Barrel website reflects the design change and is now more reminiscent of the new store interior design that has also become a sore spot for potential visitors.
One man's satirical review of an allegedly newly designed location showed many of the beloved knickknacks and clutter removed from the store, replaced with bleak, white walls. Gone were the tools and historical signs of previous locations, along with any stained wood paneling.
As customers kept searching, many pointed to CEO Julie Felss Masino as responsible for the rebrand — and many more disturbing discoveries.
In an interview with "Good Morning America," Felss Masino said all the right things.
"I think what's important is that we are listening to our guests. We're doing this all for them," the CEO told host Michael Strahan. "What's important is things that people love about Cracker Barrel, the soul of Cracker Barrel, is not changing. The rocking chairs are still there, the fireplace is there, the peg game, all the things that make Cracker Barrel Cracker Barrel, the vintage decor — it's still there and it's working"
Despite the kind words, consumers did not have to dig too deep to find issues with the brand.
On Cracker Barrel's "culture and inclusion" page, the brand celebrates multiple race-based initiatives, along with other bizarre ones.
The company's "Advancing Modern Professionals for Tomorrow" program boasts promoting "inclusive, ambitious, and diverse members."
The "Be Bold" program has a mission to develop "Black Leaders" through "allyship, mentorship, and education."
The "Hola!" initiative promotes "Hispanic and Latino culture through hiring, developing, and retaining talent" within the company.
At the same time, Cracker Barrel also has a program about "empowering" women and another regarding "strengthening Cracker Barrel's relationship to the LGBTQ+ community."
Felss Masino became CEO of Cracker Barrel in 2023, which means she was also at the helm when the brand sponsored the Nashville gay Pride event in 2024, as reported by brand investigator Robby Starbuck.
Even first son Donald Trump Jr. asked, "WTF is wrong with [Cracker Barrel]??!"
The rejection of these simple changes shows once again that not only are retro and simple the preferred branding style of most consumers these days, but removing iconic mascots and logos in the name of woke ideology is still upsetting consumers to a demonstrable degree.
Cracker Barrel did not respond to Blaze News' request for comment.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
It was just four years ago that Bravo’s Real Housewives of Potomac cast member Wendy Osefo was running around blabbing to whoever would listen about how “unfair” it was that “black parents have to break their children’s innocence.” By which she meant exposing them to the myth that black men are gleefully gunned down by […]
The rot in the so-called data pushed by leftist scholars studying political violence gets worse the deeper you dig.
'Race-based redistricting in the name of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) should be no exception' to the notion that the Constitution is 'color blind.'
www.theblaze.com