A Virginia mother is suing her son’s school district over its implementation of a critical race theory curriculum that she says radically changed his outlook on race and his own identity, Fox News reported.
Melissa Riley is suing the Albemarle County School Board over its “anti-racism” policy that she believes completely shifted her biracial son’s outlook on race, she told “Jesse Watters Primetime” on Monday.
“We didn’t have issues before,” Riley told Watters. “He is in eighth grade. He’s seeing himself just as a black man. He’s seeing things that don’t go his way as racism. And he is finding safety in numbers now.”
Critical race theory holds that America is fundamentally racist, yet it teaches people to view every social interaction and person in terms of race. Its adherents pursue “anti-racism” through the end of merit, objective truth, and the adoption of race-based policies.
Riley is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against Albemarle County School Board by Alliance Defending Freedom in December over the critical race theory and “anti-racism” ideology. She said her son started using “racism” as an “excuse because they (school district) have told him that that’s how people see him, as a black man, that the world is against and [he] sees it as a negative now.”
“I asked him to clean the house, [he said] ‘racism,’” she told Watters. “They have totally changed his perspective. They have put him in a box.”
Riley’s attorney, Ryan Bangert, told Watters that the school district is fighting back, but is not denying what it is teaching students because “they simply think it’s fine.”
“It’s never right for a school to teach kids that they are determined by their race,” he added. “It’s never OK for a school to tell kids that bigotry should be fought with bigotry and racism should be fought by doubling down on racism. Those things are not OK. They’re a violation of students’ civil rights.”
Riley said that after she confronted school leaders about the impact the racially-focused curriculum was having on her son, they told her that her son could be a “black spokesman for the black community.”
“When I told them I didn’t think that that would be appropriate, they told me that if he was uncomfortable with the conversations, he and other children of color could go to a safe place during these conversations,” she added. “And that’s segregation.”
The Albemarle County School District did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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