The California school district of El Rancho is dropping its geography requirement and replacing geography with an ethnic studies requirement.  As nearly everyone understands by now, ethnic studies programs amount to government-funded racial polarization.  Glenn Beck and Dana Loesch won’t be able to fix that problem with teddy bears.

As one brave teacher described the ethnic studies program he was part of: “The basic theme of the curriculum was that Mexican-Americans were and continue to be victims of a racist American society driven by the interests of middle and upper-class whites.”

These programs are problem enough already, and now a legitimate educational subject is being pushed aside in favor of ethnic separatism.  So much for assimilation, so much for educational standards, and so much for diversity: 98% of the students in El Rancho school district are Hispanic.

As I read the story about El Rancho, I was struck by how far we’ve gone down the wrong path, and what conservatives have done to offer an alternative.  The first thing that came to mind was Glenn Beck’s teddy bears.

If you’ll recall, Beck made a well-publicized production out of his good intentions toward illegal alien minors.  His “charity” act came at a crucial time during the national debate over rampant illegal entry by Central American “minors.”

Instead of unified opposition to this unwanted entry, conservatives failed to speak with one voice on a matter that should have been clear-cut.  As a result, our country shuffled through yet another policy disaster, seemingly incapable of protecting our own territorial integrity.

Beck’s teddy bears were a perfect example of the lamentable gap between hard reality and the conservative “nation of immigrants/they’re here to become capitalists” mythology.  Handing out door prizes for illegal immigrants, even granting amnesty, will do little to reliably appeal to Hispanics more than temporarily.  Which brings us to today.

After reading that an American school district is making ethnic resentment a mandatory course, I’m left to wonder how any conservative, libertarian, etc. is going to reach those young people to counterbalance the teaching of minority racial group pride and pro-government “social justice.”  There might not be any feasible counterbalance.  The likelihood is that ethnic studies programs will produce droves of activists bitter toward American society while educationally impairing the children who must unnecessarily suffer through the indoctrination.

No healthy culture should need the public schools to transmit ethnic pride or ethnic history.  No government committed to racial harmony would allow public schools to be used in such a manner.  Indeed, ethnic studies programs are teaching more than simply an ethnic culture.  These programs are the early wedge for Critical Race Theory (CRT), which I’ve described as a cult of anti-white resentment.

The late Derrick Bell, a law professor with close ties to the president, founded CRT.  As Bell asserted, the unifying theme of CRT is “that racial subordination maintains and perpetuates the American social order” [1].  Kimberle Crenshaw, a law professor and co-founder of the dogma, claims, “[T]he social experience of race creates both a primary group identity as well as a shared sense of being under collective assault” [1].  CRT treats Hispanics as sanctified “People of Color,” and there is even a branch of CRT called “Latina/o Critical Theory” or “LatCrit.”

The ethnic studies programs directed toward Hispanics teach that “the Southwestern United States was taken from Mexicans because of the insatiable greed of the Yankee who acquired his values from the corrupted ethos of Western civilization.”

If they weren’t bitter already, they will be after “learning” that.  After all, we stole the southwest from Mexico.  That won’t go over well among Americans who consider themselves Mexican.  Some California students were so incensed by American patriotism that they made it unsafe to display the American flag on Cinco de Mayo.

Now, imagine any form of pandering you can think of – the biggest teddy bear ever made.  No amount of pandering can bring radicalized, embittered young people into the conservative fold, especially not when they believe that their racial group loyalty demands allegiance to one political party.

The geography prerequisite must also suffer for our past sins, meaning the curriculum will be dumbed down on top of being radicalized.  There are a few potential consequences of removing rigorous coursework like geography.  First, those students affected by the new requirement will gravitate even more toward humanities majors.  As a result, they will earn less, and unequal outcomes for Hispanics will inevitably ensue.  It is not speculation to say that those inequalities will be deemed “society’s” fault.  And we all know whom “society” refers to.

Those students tutored in ethnic studies programs will turn to an aggressively redistributive state.  The better-educated will turn to the state out of a sense of “authentic” group identity and racial loyalty.  For their part, the low-wage, poorly educated segment will turn to the state because they lack what they feel entitled to.  This tangle of immigration pathology is completely predictable.

How any conservative or libertarian could be satisfied with current levels of immigration is beyond comprehension.  The largest group of immigrants are not social conservatives, and they’re not the biggest fans of capitalism.

Conservatives think mass immigration is a good idea thanks to self-serving messaging and sloppy theorizing.  I’m all for positive messaging, but let it be based in reality.  The fundamental challenge I would make to any conservative who supports amnesty, or mass immigration generally, is this: name a single city, state, or country anywhere on earth that has become more conservative because of third-world immigration.  If we can’t come up with a single example, then caution is probably in order.

Caution, especially when it protects our sovereignty, is usually seen as a conservative approach.  Yet several usually sensible pundits went so far as to openly advocate for amnesty.  Along with Beck and Loesch, pundits Matt Lewis, George Will, and Hugh Hewitt have all pushed amnesty in one form or another.

Beck and the rest thought they were making a gesture of goodwill.  The problem is that they essentially supplemented our current unsound immigration policy.  Today’s immigrants enter a society where assimilation is decimated, minority group membership carries tangible benefits from the state, and racial resentment (“Critical Race Theory”) are taught with messianic conviction.  Immigration policy has a profound impact on wages, the growth of the welfare state, and sometimes even the sense of community.

In response to the dogma of ethnic studies, we’re going to need something better than teddy bears and misguided compassion from the pundit class.

John Bennett is a writer whose work has appeared in The Daily Caller, Townhall.com, Newsmax, Human Events, World Net Daily, Liberty Unyielding, Accuracy in Media, and FrontPage Magazine, among others.  He has appeared as a featured guest on the Laura Ingraham, Jerry Doyle, and Lars Larson programs.  Follow @Jthomasbennett.

1. Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2005). The Derrick Bell Reader. New York, New York: University Press, 80.

2. Kimberle Crenshaw, Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race & Sex: Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, Antiracist Politics, U. Chi. Legal F. (1989) 140, 162.