Utah film produced by North Ogden lawmaker targets critical race theory | News, Sports, Jobs

Screenshot from Identity Marxism: The Rise of Critical Race Theory

NORTH OGDEN — A conservative contingent worried that critical race theory being embedded in Utah schools, potentially tainting the minds of young people, has released a film meant to serve as a cautionary tale about the theoretical framework.

“Children fall prey to an alluring upbringing under the guise of diversity, equity and inclusion,” the narrator intones in the film, Identity Marxism: The Rise of Critical Race Theory. “This nation’s history is challenged and prosecuted for being systematically racist.”

Utah Senator John Johnsona Republican from North Ogden, played a key role in the film as executive producer, second in credits, and Utah serves as the main backdrop. Brandon Beckama Utah Senate candidate from Orem, is the director and it was made by Vox Populi Films.

The film hits Weber State University and the Granite School District while featuring an array of Utah parents and others expressing concern about critical race theory, fearing that notions of white people as racial oppressors infiltrate the school curriculum. It also features a video from last August of a Lehi High School teacher expressing concern over the spread of COVID-19 and lambasting former President Donald Trump, a video that made headlines across the state. .

“Our schools should be safe places of learning, not battlegrounds for divisive tribal warfare,” Johnson says in the film.

Screenshot from Identity Marxism: The Rise of Critical Race Theory

He mulls introducing legislation in the Utah Senate targeting Critical Race Theory, though the session is coming to an end, and in the film he alludes to it. “It is time for us as a legislature to step up and pass meaningful legislation that brings us back to a point where we are united as a community rather than divided against each other,” Johnson said.

The film premiered to a packed house Friday at a Salt Lake City theater, Johnson said Monday. As Monday is a federal holiday, representatives from Weber State University and a group of teachers, the Utah Education Association, were not immediately available for comment.

Many, however, have issued their own criticisms of those, largely on the right, who have taken aim at critical race theory as a subversive educators’ agenda creeps into the classroom. Enemies of critical race theory argue that the framework has the effect of portraying white people as oppressors, regardless of their personal feelings, and people of color as oppressed victims, among other things.

“Critical race theory — usually the buzzwords are diversity, equity, and inclusion,” Christina Boggess, identified as a Utah public school teacher, says in the film.

the American Bar Associationin contrast, asserts that critical race theory is not a means of training “but a practice of questioning the role of race and racism in society that emerged in the legal academy and spread to other areas of research.

It is not a school curriculum, but rather a way of looking at the evolution of race and racial issues by scholars and scholars. “The CRT recognizes that racism is not a bygone relic of the past. Instead, he recognizes that the legacy of slavery, segregation and the imposition of second-class citizenship on black Americans and other people of color continues to permeate the social fabric of this nation. writes Janel George on the ABA’s website.

Johnson, in an interview with the Standard-Examiner, argues that critical race theory has seeped into schools, despite cries to the contrary.

“Instead of looking at kids for character content, we judge based on other characteristics of whether you’re an oppressor or an underdog and I just don’t think that’s fair,” Johnson said. “I think it’s a culture war, and oppressed versus oppressor or proletariat versus bourgeoisie – there’s not much difference between those. It’s about power, it’s not about making us better as a society,” Johnson said.

The film alludes to Weber State, among other references, to make its point. “At Weber State, CRT teaching is unmistakably indoctrination,” says the narrator.

The video cuts to Maude Beckman, identified as a Weber State student, who says critical race theory was introduced in an education class she took in the fall of 2020. The class teacher said had the students read about white privilege, she said, “and when we discussed it in class, he said that white privilege was one thing and there would be no discussion otherwise. He did, however, allow a discussion that agreed with his arguments.

The film alludes to an apparent case in the Granite School District when a white student was called to the front of the class as part of some sort of educational exercise.

“The teacher tells the whole class that this white student is harmful to everyone based on the color of his skin alone,” the narrator says, as a re-enactment of the incident plays out on screen. . “The professor proclaims that it doesn’t matter what character he is. It only matters that it is white. Therefore, he is an oppressor, planted on nothing more than the color of his skin.”

There is no counterpoint to the critical concerns of race theory put forward in the film. Johnson said opinions contrary to concerns like hers on critical race theory have played a lot in the media before.

“I think there is already enough in the press. It was just kind of countering what the story has been for quite a while,” Johnson said.

The movie is available on Youtube. “Right now, we want people to see it and wake up to it,” Johnson said.

Newsletter

Join thousands of people who already receive our daily newsletter.