Wellesley Public Schools Agree To End Racially Discriminatory “Affinity Spaces” For Kids After Being Exposed By Turtleboy And Sued By Parents Group

In March of last year we published an investigative story about the Wellesley Public Schools creating racially segregated support groups for students who wanted to grieve the deaths of 8 strangers who were killed by a gunman in Atlanta, 6 of whom were Asian. Despite the fact that the shooting itself had nothing to do with race, and that a disproportionate of anti-Asian hate crimes are committed by black men, the only racial group that was barred from attending these school sanctioned grieving sessions were white people.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CMj63kKDc_l/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=7ff0a9b6-3099-43a8-a803-ff44c1b3cc7e
After we blogged about it Wellesley Superintendent David Lussier and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Director Charmie Curry both stood by the racist and discriminatory practice.
The Boston Globe referred to our reporting as “a blog post criticizing the teacher and district,” without mentioning or linking the blog itself.
According to The Swellesley Report, the email and a blog post criticizing the teacher and district were quickly circulated widely.
But the blog acted as a catalyst for anti-racist change, and months after Turtleboy blew the whistle on this institutional racism a group called Parents Defending Education filed a federal civil rights complaint alleging racial discrimination.
The complaint, sent by Parents Defending Education President Nicole Neilly, alleges discrimination based on race, color, or national origin, and calls into question the district’s ability to receive federal funding.
“As the Department of Education is no doubt aware, segregation on the basis of race raises concerns that Wellesley Public Schools has received federal funds in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which declares that ‘no person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance,” she wrote.
According to the Globe the lawsuit would go nowhere, because a communist “civil rights” attorney named Lauren Sampson insisted that racial discrimination against white children is something that should be overlooked.
The complaint is likely to go nowhere, the Globe reports, because presidential administrations have broad discretion over which complaints are deeply investigated. Lauren Sampson, a staff attorney with Lawyers for Civil Rights in Boston, told the Globe that the complaint is the latest in a long tradition of some conservatives trying to use the tools of the civil rights movement against itself.
“To claim that what’s at stake here is an attack on white students is an affront to the civil rights laws they are quoting,” Sampson told the Globe. “We want districts and governments to innovate and to try to do better without having to think, ‘Gosh, now I’m going to be subject to this allegation that we’re not doing enough for the white students.’”
Translation – civil rights laws do not exist to protect white people from racism, and school systems should be allowed to implement racially discriminatory practices without regard to how it will affect white students. This is fully in line with critical race theorists who operate under the assumption that white people cannot be the victims of racism. There is something very wrong with a society where civil rights attorneys actively work to make sure powerful organizations have the right to violate the civil rights of children based on their race.
But as it turns out the Boston Globe’s legal experts were wrong, because yesterday the Wellesley Public Schools caved and agreed to end the practice of racial discrimination.
https://defendinged.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/52-Notice-of-Dismissal-Settlement-Agreement.pdf
The WPS agreed to end affinity group sessions that discriminated based on race, alert students that all groups were open to all students regardless of the color of their skin, and release a statement from Superintendent Lussier that he had caved.
“Parents Defending Education is thrilled that Wellesley Public Schools has agreed to respect both the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of its students going forward,” said Parents Defending Education president Nicole Neily. “This settlement sends a clear message that racially segregating students in public schools is wrong – and there will be consequences. We have spent decades teaching our kids that racial segregation was and will always be wrong. We will not tolerate a return to segregation in 2022.”
This is a landmark victory that sends a serious message to any school district seeking to implement critical race theory, that their policies will not be tolerated. You will not create more racism under the guise of anti-racism. We will not sit by and allow you to ban white children from school sanctioned events because you feel bad historical injustices committed by white people.
Thank you to the Wellesley parents who sent me this story tip. Without you doing that the practice would’ve been allowed to continue in darkness, and it would not have gotten national attention.
Thank you to Parents Defending Education and all the individual parents who joined the lawsuit for not accepting the practice of racism in their town.
But let’s be clear – none of this happens without Turtleboy Daily News. These are the kind of stories the Boston Globe would never expose. These kind of blogs are the reason so many people want to silence us – they know that we are effective. They know that people trust our reporting, that influential people of means read our work, and that it acts as a catalyst for social change. Outcomes like this are the reason I wake up every day and do what I do, and why I will continue to do that no matter how hard they try to censor us.
P.S. The fact that this IG post is still up is a violation of the settlement agreement terms.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CMj63kKDc_l/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=7ff0a9b6-3099-43a8-a803-ff44c1b3cc7e
