Indiana Educator Who Blows Whistle on CRT Teaching Now Banned From School Buildings

Indiana Educator Who Blows Whistle on CRT Teaching Now Banned From School Buildings
Stock image of a classroom. (Wokandapix/Pixabay)
Bill Pan
11/26/2021
Updated:
11/26/2021

Tony Kinnett, an Indianapolis-based educator who went viral on social media for exposing how critical race theory (CRT) is being implemented at his school district, says he has now been placed on leave and denied access to school email and buildings.

In a Twitter thread, the award-winning science coach revealed that he has been locked out of his school email and Google Drive by Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS), Indiana’s largest school district serving about 23,000 students.

According to Kinnett, the IPS required him to “work from home the last two weeks,” because staff reportedly have “clinical anxiety” over working with him to the point that phone calls had to be made to each team member before he entered the office so they could avoid seeing him. Finally, Kinnett said he has been “banned from going to any IPS school building or hosting any professional developments.”

The restrictions came weeks after Kinnett shared on a video on Twitter, in which he pushed back on the narrative that CRT isn’t being taught in schools, warning concerned parents to not be deceived and to “keep looking” for its presence.

“When we tell you that our schools aren’t teaching critical race theory, that it’s nowhere in our standards, that’s misdirection,” Kinnett told his audience in the Nov. 4 video.

“I’m in dozens of classrooms a week, so I see exactly what we’re teaching our students,” he said, noting that while the schools “don’t have the quotes and theories as state standards,” the teachers are incorporating the concepts of CRT into their teaching of a variety of subjects.

Speaking on Nov. 26 on “Fox & Friends,” Kinnett said “every single class” being taught at IPS were founded with two priorities—the official academic priority and a CRT-inspired “racial equity priority” that “pits our students against each other based on color.”

“It suggests to all of our students who aren’t black or brown that they are responsible for centuries of horrible oppression that the United States has built. And no matter what class you’re in, you are required to look through that lens, and that’s really quite horrifying,” he explained.

The IPS didn’t immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

An outgrowth of Marxism, the CRT interprets society through a Marxist dichotomy between “oppressors” and “oppressed,” but replacing the class categories with racial identity groups. Proponents of CRT see deeply embedded racism in all aspects of U.S. society, including in neutral systems such as constitutional law and standardized tests, and deem it to be the root cause of “racial inequity,” or different outcomes for different races.

It would require active discrimination against racial groups that are deemed “oppressors” to address the perceived inequity, according to CRT advocates. As explained in the 2019 book “How to Be an Antiracist” by Boston University professor Ibram X. Kendi, discrimination should be considered “antiracist” so long it is “creating equity.”

“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,” wrote Kendi.