January 2020

A parent in a small, southern Minnesota school district was recently shocked to find that his 7th grade daughter was being introduced to known Communist agitators, violent activist groups, and Islam through a reading assignment sympathetic to each. The assigned book, Brown Girl Dreaming, was an autobiographical poetic-style story of a girl growing up in the south during the civil rights era of the sixties. The teacher explained that in choosing that book, she was integrating history into literature – a teaching strategy educators call “integrated
learning”. She defended her book choice by describing it as ‘just history’, ignoring the obvious fact that one girl’s personal portrayal doesn’t constitute factual history and that most parents would consider many of the beliefs and values portrayed there as false and hostile to their own. While the book makes engaging reading, it’s a betrayal to use that story to represent genuine American history.

Brown Girl Dreaming is on the list of recommended ‘Social Justice’ books promoted by an ideologically driven movement of social activists committed to using schools to transform the beliefs and values of our nation.

Whether we call it ‘The Resistance’, ‘Social Justice’, or ‘Revolution’, a dangerous ideology is invading our nation’s classrooms through intentional literary choices. It needs to stop if we expect our children to grow up to love our country and defend the individual liberties it bequeaths to them.

The mission of Social Justice Books is to create schools where students learn to change the world. It’s a Teaching for Change Project. Even though Social Justice Books are often presented as merely multi-racial materials and diverse histories, the name tells us its prime focus is to transform our schools and our culture. **

Brown Girl Dreaming is typical of what Social Justice Books recommends for classroom literature. Its book list promotes virulent anti-American leaders.

Literature portraying America’s founders as heroes to emulate is conspicuously absent. Books teaching the values of our western heritage and the civilizing forces that defined it – hard work, honesty, private property, free speech, individual rights, respect, humility, service, and representative government – are often replaced with biased stories of oppression and victimization. The narrative is the same – America history is bad; overthrowing our past is good. That’s the ‘social justice’ agenda.

‘Social justice’ isn’t actually about true ‘justice’, either, as in ‘liberty and justice for all’. ‘Social Justice’ divides people into identity groups and then pits them against each other. These identity groups are then labeled either oppressors or victims. Social justice demands ‘equity’. Equity means equal outcomes, which is very different from equal opportunities. Social justice demands things be taken from individuals in one identity group and given to those in another in order to achieve equity. Individual achievement, character and responsibility do not matter.

The story lines of social justice books assume our nation is inherently racist, too – that whites, males, and heterosexuals are oppressors, while minorities, females, homosexuals, and multiple genders are victims. Our free enterprise system is portrayed as fundamentally oppressive and greedy; and individual students are judged according to their group identity.

‘Social Justice’ at its core is revolutionary, Marxist ideology. Through these stories, students are drawn in to become emotionally attached and sympathetic to the characters and their causes. This is a highly effective indoctrination strategy teaching our children to hate their heritage, their culture, their form of government, and their parents’ values.

Action Items

  • Check out your school’s reading assignments. Are they on the list of Social Justice Books?
    Parents have the legal right to review their children’s curriculum. Read through any social justice books available or assigned to your child and ask yourself if these are values you want for your child. If not, it’s time to speak up to your teachers, your principals, and, if necessary, to your school board members. Educate other parents and community members with content objections you find. And remember, school board elections can change the direction of your school district.
  • CPL Letter to a principal objecting to the use of ‘Social Justice Books’ (PDF)
    Sample letter that CPL sent to the principle and teacher of afore mentioned school district.
  • Public School or Not? Some parents may choose to remove their children from the public schools. If that is your choice, it should never stop you from opposing dangerous indoctrination taking place on our watch in our publicly funded institutions. We are in this to protect all children.

** Another example of social justice literature and it’s social justice goal.
The La Raza movement – the Mexican pro-illegal immigration, open-borders activists who claim their right to “Reconquista” (or reconquest) Aztlan as their own country – is well represented. La Raza (“The Race”) claims Aztlan as their supposed homeland before Europeans arrived in North America – a territory that includes Mexico, Colorado, California, Arizona, Texas, Utah, New Mexico, Oregon and parts of Washington State.

Under “American Indians in Children’s Literature” the Standing Rock pipeline protest is featured, drawing students into the “daily standoffs, racism of pipeline workers, attacks on water protectors by trained dogs, [and] the overly-enthusiastic destruction of the camps by law enforcement.” These books are one-sided, biased histories presented as factual.
Social Justice Books – American Indians