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VIDEO: Seattle-Area School Board Defends Segregating Meetings by Skin Color

VIDEO: Seattle-Area School Board Defends Segregating Meetings by Skin Color

Board president defended the decision from critics, saying that for “people of color,” being “surrounded by other people similar to them, makes it easier.”

At a February 10th meeting, the school board of this Seattle suburb defended tailoring invitations to a recent meeting by skin color. Board president Anne Moore defended the decision from critics, saying that for “people of color,” being “surrounded by other people similar to them, makes it easier.”

Lesha Engels, a spokesperson for the board, had claimed that invitations do not qualify as examples of racial segregation, saying “All parents are welcome to attend any of the 4 parent meetings, they are not segregated,” even though the invitations in a district bulletin are clearly tailored “for Parents/Guardians of Color”.

Excerpt from an Issaquah bulletin dated February 7th

Several parents who commented at the board meeting expressed their disapproval.

“By holding a separate meeting for people of color, it is the same as saying people of color are not welcome to attend the other meetings,” a former board candidate testified at the public comment portion of the meeting. “So we have created a separate one just for them. We are an integrated community, all wanting the same thing — to hire the person best qualified for the job as superintendent. The one who will care about raising up all of our students. Why are you trying to divide and separate us by color? Really? Is this the example you want to set for our students? Shame on all of you.”

Another recent article points out that racially coding their invitation places the school board on shaky legal ground.

They can’t legally discriminate against parents on the basis of race. But they can, they assume, title meetings in ways that force white parents to self-select out of the meetings. They may not be able to legally discriminate, and obviously won’t admit that’s their intent in writing, but they can strongly imply that white people aren’t welcome.

According to Issaquah’s Equity Advisory Group, “equity means giving special focus to certain groups” in the name of “targeted universalism,” a recent “progressive” trend in institutions that justifies disparate treatment of racialized groups, in the name of equality of outcome.

From the website of the “Othering and Belonging Institute”

In Fox News interview published after the scheduled meeting, Seattle radio host Jason Rantz added,

“Apparently that whole concept of separate but equal is not covered in critical race theory…Now, after hearing an earful from angry and offended parents at this last school board meeting, which by the way, included parents of color, they got called out. School board then defends the separate but equal meeting.”

It’s not yet known as of this writing if the Issaquah school board plans to continue to tailor invitations for future meetings to particular racialized groups.

[Headline changed shortly after publication]

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Comments

2smartforlibs | March 2, 2022 at 11:11 am

At least they stopped hiding behind their racism.

Alabama 1950s has come back! I’ll bet George Wallace wouldn’t be able to find it now.

    OldProf2 in reply to Whitewall. | March 2, 2022 at 12:18 pm

    Wallace would fit right in. He used to say “Colored folks are better off when they’re with their own kind.” He would approve of the segregated meetings, although the meetings for colored folks would be in the barn out back.

for “people of color,” being “surrounded by other people similar to them, makes it easier.”

Presumably the same applies to people of pallor, so why is there no meeting designated for them?

Issaquah is a wealthy, white suburb of Seattle just west of Redmond (think “Microsoft”) and nestled in the foothills of the Cascades. The median home price is over $900,000. Single-use plastic grocery bags are illegal. The town is, and has been for years, overrun with classic elitists who have never met a virtue signal they wouldn’t endorse. No matter how bad, evil, or counterproductive the signal makes them look.

    Andy in reply to Bartlett. | March 2, 2022 at 1:34 pm

    It’s Karen-town. If you are an angry childless women-in-tech type, this is where you live. I encountered many in my time as a contractor there. I think it’s where HOA board presidents are spawned.

      The Gentle Grizzly in reply to Andy. | March 2, 2022 at 1:54 pm

      Let me guess: more Subaru Foresters per square mile than Portland?

        Audi and BMW SUVs being driven badly. Issaquah residents mostly wouldn’t be caught dead in something as plebeian as a Subaru. The few I saw there, though, were appropriately festooned with political bumper stickers and heavy rust.

    Geez, when I was a young teen in the late 60’s, my Dad used to drive us through Mirrormont with dreams of living there and commuting to the Kent Space Center. Until one morning he decided to give the commute a try and concluded “you can’t get there from here”. So we kept our home in Slaughter through my graduation (homeboys will get the historical reference).

    The ONLY reason to go anywhere near Issaquah is for Gilman Village. If you want to see a parade of Subaru Foresters, check out Sequim. And for real fun of old people driving badly, pull up a chair in the round-about on River Road and Washington.

      tekovyahoser in reply to MrE. | March 4, 2022 at 10:57 am

      Oh, man, haven’t heard that one in a while! Maybe they should have kept the old name instead of renaming it Auburn. Maybe it would discourage the drug vagrants out of the Lowes parking lot and the railroad tracks behind Fred Meyer.

    randian in reply to Bartlett. | March 2, 2022 at 10:35 pm

    Issaquah has the Triple XXX Root Beer Drive-In!

If they said this meeting is for ‘white parents/guardians and parents/guardians of white students’ it would be decried, correctly, as racist. This is obviously racist as well.

I wonder if they would defend segregated neighborhoods the same way by saying “for people of color, being surrounded by other people similar to them makes it easier.” How about seating on public buses or trains? Would segregating those be okay, too?

    gonzotx in reply to Idonttweet. | March 2, 2022 at 2:55 pm

    Send them all back to Africa
    They will be surrounded by like skin color

    Why oh why couldn’t southern farmers pick their own cotton.,

This C You Next Tuesday Principal needed to send a note out to the district parents letting them know that it was HER choice to remove the BLM garbage from the fence and not the people in the neighborhood who are sick of her ramming her politics into elementary school kids.
——————-
Dear Boston Harbor Families,

I hope you all enjoyed a nice long weekend, despite the very cold weather! We have had a really great February here at BHES: celebrating Black History Month, demonstrating kindness and resilience, and learning and sharing. I am so proud of our school and community and the way that we always show up for one another.

On Monday, 2/28, as we culminate our celebration of Black History Month, we will be having a very intentional fence sign transition and invite students and families to join. Each class/grade level has chosen a word to put in the fence that holds meaning for their class. We will exchange our BLM sign for these words chosen by students. It is important that students don’t come to school on Tuesday thinking that our sign was once again destroyed and so I am excited to start this new and meaningful tradition. If you would like to join us, we will be meeting at the fence at 2:30 after dismissal.

Separate buses? Ban interracial marriage?

Segregation is okay as long as people of color get special treatment, special advantages and get to go places and do things white people can’t—being less qualified but having a trump card that is available only to their particular race.

While not giving a crap about your life, they wave a flag your face that says black lives matter. And since hate crimes against blacks are few and far between they have to be fabricated as racial hoaxes.

Anyone with eyes to see can see there is no white supremacy, but black supremacy is for real.

    The Gentle Grizzly in reply to Peabody. | March 2, 2022 at 1:56 pm

    “ Anyone with eyes to see can see there is no white supremacy, but black supremacy is for real.”

    Only because non-blacks knuckle under.

    Milhouse in reply to Peabody. | March 2, 2022 at 4:04 pm

    White supremacy is just as real as black supremacy. It’s just a little less common.

      Peabody in reply to Milhouse. | March 2, 2022 at 5:24 pm

      When I use the term “white supremacy” I am not speaking in terms of hate groups such as KKK. I am using it as Professor Jacobson does in his CRT data base on Legalinsurrection:

      “For at least a generation, many colleges and universities have taught students that America fundamentally is a white supremacist regime in need of deconstruction.”

      But what they’re teaching is not true.

      Peabody in reply to Milhouse. | March 2, 2022 at 6:02 pm

      Black supremacy is in high gear:

      Hannah-Smith, Kendi, and BLM see America as a cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and resources. Our history, even the constitution is racist—They call it WHITE SUPREMACY. The only solution for discrimination is reverse discrimination—they call that BLACK SUPREMACY.

      They seek to achieve black supremacy—black contro—through mayors, governors, police chiefs, DA’s senators, congress, president, VP and key positions in the government and military.

      They are getting close to their goal. Black supremacy is moving forward at lightning speed, But you say:

      “White supremacy is just as real as black supremacy. It’s just a little less common.”

      A lot of people feel like that. That is what is wrong.

    jb4 in reply to Peabody. | March 2, 2022 at 8:49 pm

    “trump card” …. I think these days it is called a Get Out Of Jail Free card.

Leftists have been in charge of public school education for a couple of generations. No one should be surprised by the results. Word meanings are malleable. Along the lines of speaking in tongues. Say anything, someone will be along to tell you what you just heard.

“Anne Moore defended the decision from critics, saying that for “people of color,” being “surrounded by other people similar to them, makes it easier.”

This has, in fact, been proven by years of research, as it applies to restrooms, restaurants, hotels, and water fountains.
Follow the science™, dammit!

Golly. If only there were laws passed by Congress to prohibit racial discrimination which were then enforced by some cabinet level department. If only…

Suppose a white couple adopted a child who was black. Which session or sessions would that couple attend? Suppose a black man married a white woman and they had children attending this school district. Do we apply the “one drop rule” to the chidren and do the parents have to attend separate meetings due to their race?

    OldProf2 in reply to lawgrad. | March 2, 2022 at 4:04 pm

    No problem! The School Board can just rely on the experts on racial classification:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_racial_theories

    Milhouse in reply to lawgrad. | March 2, 2022 at 4:12 pm

    The meeting being complained of here was designated for “Parents/guardians of color, and parents/guardians with students of color“. So yes, the meeting would be designated for them.

    Also, “all parents are welcome to attend any of the 4 parent meetings”; this isn’t Jim Crow. That’s what the board spokesman meant in saying that they’re not segregated. If any white parents want to attend the black parents / parents of black students meeting they can, nobody will stop them. But that doesn’t make this legal; a commercial business that did the same thing would be sued by the government.

Nothing demonstrates an organization’s commitment to diversity and inclusion quite like good old fashioned segregation. Looks like these folks want to ‘turn back the clock’. /S

Notice their use of buzzwords like “inclusive”. They are totally out of context and are thus meaningless. It’s just “I’m good because I say inclusive”.

Africa-American (i.e. 1/2 American), People of Color (i.e. diversity class or color bloc). That said, Diversity, Inequity, and Exclusion is politically congruent (“=”) policy under the dogmatic faith of the established Pro-Choice religion of the Progressive Corporation. They are compliant with the ethics (i.e. relativistic principles) of liberal ideology.

nordic_prince | March 2, 2022 at 5:09 pm

So… the school board believes that POC are soooooo fragile that they will melt into a puddle of goo if they are merely in the presence of a melanin-challenged individual. Hence the need for segregated meetings.

Jim Crow would be proud. Can’t allow the races to engage in any mixing whatsoever, not even socially.

Absurd. The courts have let this dangerous nonsense go on way too long. And now we have a Supreme Court nominee that believes this illegal tripe.

e pluribus unum | March 2, 2022 at 5:56 pm

Doncha just love it when the scraggly old white lady tells them “people of color” what’s best for them? Lordy, Lordy. Pass the popcorn. This could get ugly.

George_Kaplan | March 2, 2022 at 7:57 pm

White is part of the spectrum so counts as PoC. What happens if White parents turn up for the GoCSoC meeting on the 15th? Will they be turned away?

    Milhouse in reply to George_Kaplan. | March 3, 2022 at 3:27 am

    Please read the article before commenting. The school board spokesman explicitly said that “All parents are welcome to attend any of the 4 parent meetings, they are not segregated”. So no, they will not be turned away. That doesn’t make this legal. If a business did this the government would haul it into court.

      Milhouse, you wrote, ” If a business did this the government would haul it into court.”

      You sure that the Biden government, that is literally allocating taxpayer money based on race, would do this? If it’s pushed by the racist “anti-racists”? I mean, of course they would do this if whites were segregating blacks, but that’s not what this is about, right?

      And it’s not just the Biden DOJ, the whole agency is infested with leftist lunacy and would not, even under a Republican president, file charges based on racist “anti-racist” discrimination (which is “good” discrimination because it is the “only answer” to past discrimination).

      I love your faith in our foundational Constitutional Republic, but as we’ve seen far too often, that faith is misplaced in regards to forwarding the leftist anti-American agenda.

        Milhouse in reply to Fuzzy Slippers. | March 3, 2022 at 8:32 pm

        Well of course some people are above the law, but if a private business advertised a meeting as being for white people, even while making it clear that all were welcome and nobody would be turned away, it would still be illegal and the government would still go after them.

        Ditto if a business owned by someone associated with the right were to advertise a meeting as being for black people; the government would claim that this was a means of keeping black people out of the regular meeting.

        Government entities are getting a pass, in the name of wokeness. But let’s be clear what is going on here, and not exaggerate the case by claiming that anyone would actually be excluded.

Same Zipcode…. Cancelled wearing red/white/blue on 9/11 because unnamed person at the district thought it “might” offend someone — somewhere.

https://mynorthwest.com/3141211/rantz-high-school-cancels-9-11-tribute-says-it-could-offend-some-students/

Think about what it costs to turn the lights on in that room; to operate the air conditioning; to rent the space; to clean it and keep up repairs; not to mention pay these freaks.

What a waste of money.

surrounded by other people similar to them, makes it easier

If a white person said that they’d be denounced as racist.

    artichoke in reply to randian. | March 3, 2022 at 1:21 am

    True, and they’ll say their reason is structural racism. Also legally they have protected class status and whites don’t.

    Saying the system is unfair won’t get anywhere. Sabotage may work. They’re clearly trying to diminish the education of “non-targeted” students so others can move ahead, and they already know it isn’t fair, nor is it supposed to be.

The purpose of “targeted universalism” is to define an end objective, and to hope that the groups targeted for help do at least that well, and the other groups such as whites don’t do better. It’s to slow down the whites so others can catch up.

If whites see that clearly, they should be able to climb over the stumbling blocks put in their way. But it requires seeing clearly and thinking strategically.

You can also act shocked, shocked, and mention what MLK would have supposedly said etc. etc., but I think that’s all wasted breath. Vote out the commies if possible (Dominion may have a say in that), but in the meantime, try to find angles of the system to propel yourself ahead.

It’s sad. Issaquah was once more centrist, even right thinking, but all the “progressives” who bashed suburbs while in college all moved out to the suburbs they so hated. Now they are ruining the suburbs they moved into with wokeness