One of the great patriots in the House of Representatives is Congressman Bob Good from Virginia’s fifth congressional district. Congressman Good and other wise, patriotic members of the House and Senate ought to help rectify the injustices committed by Fairfax County Public Schools against Asian students. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Langley High School, and Westfields High School in Virginia in what appears to be an orchestrated action failed to give Asian students timely notice of Merit Awards, in service to their adopted, misguided anti-meritocratic “diversity, equity, and inclusion” agenda. Thomas Jefferson High also discriminates against Asians in its admissions policies, reducing by 20% the number of Asian admittees, despite their outstanding academic performance in the lower grades.
Asian students at Thomas Jefferson, Langley, and Westfields High in Virginia had their merit awards for exceptional academic achievement withheld by their schools until after early college registration had passed, preventing the award recipients from relying on the distinction in their early applications. This has led the Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares to expand his investigation into racial discrimination to include all Fairfax County public schools. The schools appear to have given out the award certificates unceremoniously, without the heretofore typical honors ceremonies at the schools, notices to parents, and press releases from the schools.
Those acts appear to be part of a major Fairfax County school-wide campaign to discriminate against Asian students, which includes the provision of hundreds of thousands of dollars to woke contractors to divine how the schools might employ discrimination against members of purportedly “privileged” groups as a means to combat prior discrimination against members of purportedly “underprivileged” groups. One of the foremost advocates for the resurgence of discrimination in education is Ibram X. Kendi, Director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, who argues in his book How to Be an Antiracist, that “the only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination.”
This way of thinking justifies all manner of discrimination by schools against children based on their race, precisely the antithesis of the law under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which rightly holds all acts of racism unconstitutional regardless of the reason for imposing the injustice. The irreducible evil of racism is exacerbated when the power of the state backs it, as we discovered repeatedly during the Civil Rights era. Now, racism is resurgent with schools discriminating against whites and those essentially deemed “white” due to privilege, such as Asians, who are presumed by class to be privileged and undeserving of credit for their achievements. In truth, this segregation of children into categories of favor based on presumed status is an old communist saw, it having characterized the Maoist treatment of students in the Cultural Revolution. Communist indoctrination is what “equity” is all about.
In her article in the Fairfax Times reporting on contracting by Ann Bonitatibus, the “equity” advocate principal at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Asra Q. Nomani explains that Bonitatibus has awarded a $455,000 contract for “equity” training to Mutiu Fagbayi of Performance Fact, Inc. to implement an Equity-Centered Strategic Plan, a plan to ensure “equal outcomes for every student without exception.” That systemic discrimination is constitutionally verboten under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Virginia Human Rights Act. Read Asra Q. Nomani and Heather Zwicker’s article on the re-emergence of racism in FCPS here. Equality of outcome is, of course, communism. It reduces everything above to that which is below, leveling at the mediocre level. Teaching children that avoiding inequality of outcome is the goal, not achieving individual excellence, is Marxist collectivism, a necessary precursor to Marx’s poisonous doctrine of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares is investigating to determine the extent to which the schools have violated the Virginia Human Rights Act. School administrators are circling the wagons in an effort to fend off legal challenges. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin has insisted on ridding the schools of racism and urged the Attorney General to perform his investigation. There will likely be a searching report issued upon completion of the Attorney General’s investigation and may well be litigation against the Fairfax County schools based on the Attorney General’s findings. For people who call themselves educators, the administrators involved in promoting these acts of discrimination against Asians appear woefully ignorant of the Constitution’s equal protection requirement, if not ignorant than they may fairly be equated with those who in prior years maliciously discriminated on the basis of race, Eugene “Bull” Connor and Governor George Wallace.
Congressman Good and other members of Congress can help with this matter if they so choose. They can shed light on the FCPS acts of discrimination and help reverse the harm caused to the students affected. They can help alleviate the effect delay may have had on student scholarship chances and admission opportunities. They can do so by sponsoring a joint resolution of Congress. In anticipation of the resolution, they could invite students in Virginia high schools who have suffered a discriminatory withholding of their Merit Awards to report to Congressman Good their names and evidence of that withholding.
Congressional staff could then assemble the names as a list of honor to be placed in a Congressional resolution. The resolution could explain the act of discrimination, condemn it, and call for an end to racism and a return to race blind meritocracy. It could list the Merit Scholars names and high schools, affording national recognition to their achievements, and urge all colleges, universities, and scholarship providers to make accommodations to allow those students who suffered discrimination to have their awards taken into account in early admissions and in scholarships, as if they were timely filed. The resolution could be sent to every college and university admissions office in the country and to every collegiate and university scholarship-sponsoring organization. These three prominent high schools, one of which was previously declared the best science and technology high school in the country, ought not be allowed to get away with sacrificing young scholars to support an inherently bigoted “diversity, equity, and inclusion” agenda.