Downingtown working hard for diversity, equity, inclusion

As a DASD board member, I have watched the controversy surrounding CRT grow into the frenzy that it is today. I understand the fear and concern of my constituents. However, the article entitled “Downingtown parents decry Critical Race Theory” does nothing to help with the fear and concern surrounding CRT and the work that the district is doing with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

My first concern is that constituents were quoted without further investigation into the validity of meaning of their words. For example, the student who said she was attending an Affinity group project where they were divided by their race, ethnicity and gender. Why were they separated? What was the point of the exercise? Was it actually Critical Race Theory? Who was in charge of the project? I could be naive to believe that part of journalism is research, but in this case I would certainly hope not.

My second concern is that the author felt the need to undermine the DASD Communications director and accuse her of either trying to cover up something or telling lies about CRT by quoting Shakespeare.

My last concern is the fact that, as someone who sat through the entire meeting in person, is that it was clearly biased toward those who were opposed to DEI initiatives. I can tell you that the people who were there opposing CRT/DEI were mostly loud and disrespectful. I am not discounting their fears, concerns, or even their statements.

However, by the end of the night, the room was only had people who recognize any DEI programing as a positive thing and continued to tell us stories of how DEI has impacted their lives, how the lack of DEI has impacted their lives, and mostly thanking the district for recognizing them and their differences. I know that there were more than double the people who were giving praise publicly, versus those who believe that the district has much more sinister plans.

Both myself and Director Wisdom spoke about what DEI means for the district, how and why it is important work. Instead of helping build a bridge to the community for the district, the paper effectively burned it down with rhetoric and eye catching phrases that fall in line with the fearmongering happening on a national level.

Without recognition from the media that they are doing nothing to help and in fact hurting the community by continually stoking the fire of CRT, we will never meet the goals of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.