‘Roots and Wings’: How an American Mother’s Cuban Heritage Empowers Her in Fight Against CRT

Patti Hidalgo Menders (C) with father Alberto and Mother Matilde in April 2021. Courtesy of Patti Menders

Patti Hidalgo Menders, a mother of six in northern Virginia’s Loudoun County, has written her own story of resilience.

Since the summer of 2020, she has been fighting on the front line against the transmission of critical race theory (CRT) in the county’s public school system, an ongoing battle that has drawn national headlines. Parents from across the country have protested CRT, a quasi-Marxist analytical framework, on the grounds that it classifies children as “oppressors” or “oppressed” on the basis of their skin color.