Charlotte Schools Paid $25k to CRT Keynote Speaker Who Said “The Only Remedy to Past Discrimination is Present Discrimination”

CMS Board of Education paid critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi $25,000 to speak at Summer Leadership Conference

Kendi: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.”

Kendi: “Capitalism is essentially racist; racism is essentially capitalist…they shall one day die together from unnatural causes.”

Raleigh, N.C. — The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board of Education, which manages North Carolina’s second-largest school district, paid prominent critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi $25,000 to speak at the district’s Summer Leadership Conference last week.

Kendi is perhaps the world’s most prominent critical race theorist.

Kendi advocates for racial discrimination. He wrote, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

Kendi also opposes capitalism. He advocates an overthrow (death by “unnatural causes”) of the economic system that has generated more wealth and progress than any in the history of the world. He wrote, “Capitalism is essentially racist; racism is essentially capitalist…they shall one day die together from unnatural causes.”

This is not some footnote to a school curriculum’s consideration of America’s racial past. This is the state’s second-largest school district embracing a discriminatory ideology by paying $25,000 to learn from the ideology’s most prominent adherent.

Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) said, “To those who say Critical Race Theory isn’t in North Carolina schools: The state’s second-largest school district paid $25,000 to leading Critical Race Theory proponent Ibram X. Kendi for an event just last week.”

Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson said, “This is clear and direct evidence that Critical Race Theory is being pushed in North Carolina. The fact that a public school district would pay someone who chooses to teach others that ‘the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination’ is unimaginable. This kind of thinking does not help us move forward from the days of Jim Crow, in fact, it is leading us back to them. This makes it clear that the left is working to bring back a racial divide and not unity. It is time that we all take a stand as Americans against Critical Race Theory.”

As further evidence of the public school system’s embrace of a doctrine that advocates “present discrimination,” as Kendi put it, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools encourages its public school students to read Kendi’s book, Stamped: Racism, Anti Racism, and You.

The public school system’s website describes the book this way: “The construct of race has always been used to gain and keep power, to create dynamics that separate and silence…Although most Americans claim they are ‘not racist’, it is clear that it is no longer enough to be passively ‘not racist’. We are called to be antiracists.”

This is not a public school system encouraging students to read a diversity of perspectives. It is a public school system embracing and endorsing the concepts contained in Kendi’s book.

It is indisputable that “antiracist” means engaging in “present discrimination.” After all, Kendi wrote the book titled “How to be an Antiracist,” and Kendi describes remedying past discrimination with “present discrimination.”

Berger continued, “To say I’m troubled by this insidious, discriminatory doctrine’s creep into North Carolina public schools is an understatement. Children must not be taught that it is appropriate to engage in ‘present discrimination,’ and public schools must be held to account for advancing this dangerous line of thinking.”