Dori: Highline College equity event identifies facilitators by race first

You may remember that about six weeks ago there was a 30-year Tacoma teacher who wrote a Tacoma News-Tribune op-ed about diversity curriculum being divisiveness curriculum. As a parent and as someone who has worked in the schools, I have quite a bit of experience with these diversity lessons, and I can say for certain that they do not bring people together. They are incredibly divisive.

This is why my eyes perked up when a listener sent me a tip about an event this Friday that you and I get to help pay for, because it’s at a community college. Highline College in Des Moines is having its “Equity Development Institute.”

It is so bizarre because all of this diversity and equity talk — and you can’t have a soundbyte from any city council members without them dropping one of these buzzwords — is really all about dividing us. And look, I get why the Left is obsessed with race. They must divide people into warring factions in order to have a constituency. They must tell people that they are victims. They must tell people that government is the only way that all of our ills can be solved.

RELATED: Affirmative action measure passed last weekend turns people into victims 

I have always approached life with the attitude that skin color doesn’t matter. People should be judged by the content of their character.

If you look at the description of this Highline College event, the first facilitator’s bio begins, “Marlon Brown is a black man with Equity and Social Justice specializing in leadership coaching, change agent mentoring, and organizational development.”

The second facilitator’s bio begins, “Fran Partridge is a white woman with 20 years of racial equity experience.”

The third facilitator’s bio begins, “Naho Shioya, M.F.A. is an Asian woman with over 20 years of professional experience working in nonprofit, public, and private sectors as an educator, artist, and executive administrator.”

The fourth facilitator’s bio begins, “Abraham Rodriguez-Hernandez self identifies as a LatinX man.” I don’t know what that means. Is that a superhero?

I won’t list the rest. You get the picture.

It’s just so odd to me that the further Left on the spectrum you get, the more race becomes an identifier. That’s the first identifier for every person — their skin color. This has become mainstream normalcy for the Left. Instead of talking about who the person is and what they’re about and what’s in their heart, the first line for everyone at this Highline College conference is what color these people are. They divide us by making sure everyone is in their own little race compartment, instead of bringing us together.

I’ve had a lot of experience working with kids, bringing incredibly diverse groups of them together for a shared purpose. We’ve had great success that way, not because of focusing on what divides and separates us, but by finding commonalities and striving toward a goal about which we all were passionate. The more you focus on tribalism, the more you divide people. This whole push for diversity and equity at place like Highline College is not really about diversity and equity.

Need more examples?

A high school in California is going to remove a historic mural painted in the halls 90 years ago. Why? It features George Washington. Students have decided that an image of George Washington is demeaning to African-American and Native American students. That is another example of what diversity is about — not just dividing people, but also teaching people to hate a national heritage.

The people trying to save the mural pointed out that the artist was a communist and that he intended to show the complexity of Washington’s life, as he is depicted pointing to slaves and Native Americans. But the kids are just saying that we have to take it down because it’s offensive.

Here’s another example — students at Hofstra University on Long Island are protesting a statue of Thomas Jefferson at their second annual “Jefferson Has Gotta Go” event. They have defaced the statue, writing “Black Lives Matter” and “Decolonize” on it.

What is never taught in the name of equity and diversity is that, yeah, our Founding Fathers by 2019 standards had a very different life and worldview. But to judge somebody in 1780 by today’s standards is bizarre. Diversity and equity curriculum is about hating our forefathers. It’s not about realizing that while they were flawed individuals, especially by today’s standards, they also created the greatest nation in the history of mankind. Diversity enthusiasts don’t say that because it has to be all about hate.

Give your race in the first line of your bio, because that is the most important thing about you. It’s all nonsense. That’s not how you galvanize people, it’s not how you bring them together. You find commonality and you strive toward mutually achievable and desirous goals. But that is certainly not what we’re seeing in this push by the Left today.

Follow @http://www.twitter.com/dorimonson