by WorldTribune Staff, May 5, 2021
“In bitterly divided election in Southlake, Texas, opponents of anti-racism education win big,” an NBC News headline groaned. The misleading nature of that narrative was immediately contradicted by the subheading right under it: “Candidates who opposed a local school diversity plan took about 70 percent of the vote.”
The decisive results show there wasn’t as much divergence of opinion among the town’s voters on the subject of critical race theory in their public schools as NBC would have its readers believe. Candidates opposed to the social justice indoctrination effort “won every race by about 70 percent to 30 percent, including those for two school board positions, two City Council seats and mayor,” the network glumly reported May 2. And turnout was brisk. “More than 9,000 voters cast ballots, three times as many as in similar contests in the past.”
"The voters have come together in record-breaking numbers to restore unity," Hannah Smith, one of the winning candidates, told NBC News in a statement. "By a landslide vote, they don't want racially divisive critical race theory taught to their children or forced on their teachers. Voters agreed with my positive vision of our community and its future."
“This landslide victory is from hundreds of volunteers and donors, thousands of hours and all of us having the spines to stand up to the rage mob,” Southlake Families, a political action committee that led the fight against the racial initiatives, posted in an email blast, The Dallas Morning News reports.
Progressive activists were devastated.
“It’s heartbreaking and devastating,” Anya Kushwaha, a founder of the Southlake Anti-Racism Coalition, a group “led by current and former students,” told The Morning News on May 4. “Now we know there’s no chance of school board-level change.”
The heart of the controversy surrounds an attempt to implement a “Cultural Competence Action Plan” at Carroll High School in Southlake in the wake of a 2018 video of some Southlake teens using a racial slur going public on social media. CCAP “is a five-year plan created by the District Diversity Council (DDC),” the Southlake Families PAC states on its website.
“Contrary to its name, the District Diversity Council supports very little diversity of thought,” Southlake Families says. “This biased committee came up with their 34-page document, containing a 153- point action plan, that includes some of the most extreme liberal positions in the history of Texas public education.”
“The election results appear to be a resounding dismissal of the Cultural Competency Plan,” The Morning News concluded in its May 4 report.
The paper included a tweet thread by one distraught leftist activist.
“My hometown of Southlake, Texas doubled down on racism and White supremacy in their local election,” Stephanie Drenka, who states in her Twitter bio that she is Communications Director of a group called Dallas Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation.
“I am livid and terrified, but mostly heartbroken that everything we experienced as students of color [in the Carroll School District] continues to have been in vain,” Drenka continued.
“I wanted to believe something good could come from our pain. The hours I spent in a dark closet cutting my ankles to cope with the racial slurs my [Carroll] classmates hurled against me. Instead, I witnessed parents claiming Christian values embrace harmful ideologies.”
This is the very mindset local voters were wary of.
“At a board meeting, a white father said he supported introducing children to different cultures but argued that the district's plan would instead teach students ‘how to be a victim’ and force them to adopt ‘a liberal ideology,’” NBC News reported. “Several parents said the plan would infringe on their Christian values by teaching children about issues affecting gay and transgender classmates. Others warned that the board had awakened Southlake's ‘silent majority.’”
