North Carolina teacher fired for stating harsh truth

Photo by Robert L. on Unsplash

We’ve all heard the old phrase, “The truth hurts.”

I’m sure we’ve all experienced examples of it in our lives, but usually, we take our lumps and roll with the punches.

Sometimes, though, some people don’t do that. They get all upset and demand people’s heads.

That’s apparently what happened to one North Carolina teacher, and he’s filed a lawsuit in an effort to fight back.

A North Carolina professor has claimed that he was fired from a prestigious high school for criticizing critical race theory in a Friday lawsuit, according to a report from Fox 17 WZTV.

In the suit, filed by legal the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal advocacy group, Dr. David Phillips alleges that the Governor’s School of North Carolina (NCGS), a publicly funded summer program, fired him without explanation after he criticized the school’s embrace of “racially divisive ideology.”

Philips claims that NCGS adopted a social approach that views members of society “through the lens of characteristics like race, sex, and religion” and labels them as “perpetual oppressors or victims” based on group membership.

The professor, who taught at the school for eight years, held three optional programs over the summer where he critiqued critical race theory, as well as a lack of diversity in viewpoints in higher education. He also urged attendees to examine speech through a lens of “speech-act theory,” which asserts that the meaning of a linguistic expression can be explained in terms of rules governing their use in performing various speech acts, such as commanding and warning. 

The lawsuit states that Phillips was met with “open hostility” following the conclusion of each lecture by both students and staff. It also claims that audience members “attacked whiteness, maleness, heterosexuality and Christianity” when making comments and asking questions at the seminars. 

So much for academic freedom, right?

The problem with “perpetual oppressors or victims” is that no one is a perpetual oppressor. Especially in a public school. Those students haven’t had much of a chance to oppress people, even if they were inclined.

Sure, there are jerks who pick on kids, but that knows no race.

Phillips made a stand based not on emotion or what is popular, but on hard reality. This idea of treating some as oppressors doesn’t do much of anything except require the mistreatment of children who have done nothing wrong.

We generally call that child abuse.

I’m glad he filed a lawsuit, but he shouldn’t have had to.

Unfortunately, this is par for the course for our educational system. Meanwhile, if you call it out, you’re told CRT isn’t taught in schools. That may even be true. But teachers are taught this nonsense and it informs their teaching. Even if they don’t call it CRT, they’re still practicing it.

So while we sit here and watch, generations of kids are being taught they’re either victims or oppressors, not masters of their own destinies. That’s a shame, too, because while things may not always be perfect with regard to how race relations actually work, they still work better when people believe they can achieve their dreams if they work hard enough.

I don’t know if Phillips ascribes to that belief or not, but I’m glad he’s pushing back.

I only wish it weren’t necessary.