We Are is an organizaing working to expand anti-racist education in North Carolina. We Are offers grants to schools who wish to provide an anti-racist education to students. Rhonda Taylor Bullock, the Executive Director of We Are said, “We, as an organization, have the capacity to financially support the effort of educators, because oftentimes they do this work anyway and there’s no compensation for it.”
Millbrook High School is currently seeking a grant from We Are to send staff members to a conference on disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline. The move has been met by criticism by parents who are concerned with We Are’s support of Critical Race Theory.
Despite the fact that Critical Race Theory is not being taught in North Carolina schools and the grant would be used to educated Millbrook staff on institutionalized racism, House Speaker Tim Moore tweeted, “no North Carolina school should be teaching anti-American Critical Race Theory in our classrooms, much less competing for a grant from an organization focused on promoting CRT.”
News & Observer opinion writer Sara Pequeno wrote: “The attack on Critical Race Theory boils down to hardline conservatives not wanting children to know the realities of our country’s history […] we have, to this point, failed to call out racism for what it is, and that “CRT debates” have made Black and brown people vulnerable for doing civil rights work.”
Despite opposition from parents and Republican lawmakers, the Wake County school board voted to allow Millbrook to apply for the grant. Bullock said that she and other activists are not discouraged by the pushback. Bullock said, “If anything, this type of reaction fires us up. It lets us know that we’re getting into good trouble, and that we’re doing what we’re supposed to do.”
