Nonprofit Associated With The Cancellation Of Dr. Seuss Teams Up With Google To Create “Anti-Racist” Book List For K-12 Teachers
Nonprofit organisation The Conscious Kid has teamed up with Google’s charity arm in an attempt to provide K-12 teachers with an “anti-racist” book list as aid for their lectures, reports The Daily Wire‘s Chrissy Clark.
Related: eBay Delists Recently Cancelled Dr. Seuss Books For Violating “Offensive Material Policy”
Founded by Katie Ishizuka and Ramón Stephens, The Conscious Kid is self-described as “an education, research, and policy organisation dedicated to equity and promoting healthy racial identity development in youth”.
The organisation is perhaps best-known for their study “The Cat is Out of the Bag: Orientalism, Anti-Blackness, and White Supremacy in Dr. Seuss’s Children’s Books.”
This study is often attributed to the recent cancellation of Dr. Seuss, as on 2nd of March this year — on Dr. Seuss’ birthday and annual Read Across America Day, no less — Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced that six books would be removed from publication over “harmful and racist” imagery, in what can only be described as a tasteless act.
Related: Dr. Seuss Enterprises To End Publication of Six Titles Over “Hurtful and Wrong” Imagery
To add insult to injury, The Conscious Kid hosted Douglas Emhoff, that same day, with the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris reading “I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark” instead of the traditional reading of Dr. Seuss’ beloved “The Cat in the Hat.”
As per the books that can be found on the organisation’s website we find “Woke Baby,” “All Because You Matter,” “Not Quite Snow White,” Black Panther actor Lupita Nyong’o’s “Sulwe,” and even “Miles Morales: Spider-Man” by Jason Reynolds — to name only but a few.
The Daily Wire also points out that The Conscious Child’s website also features a book titled “Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea,” which is a book that was written by United States Vice President Kamala Harris’ niece Meena Harris.
According to a press release issued by Google’s charity, Google.org, in June of 2020, the company announced that they had partnered up with The Conscious Kid in order to provide teachers with reading materials that aim to push the idea that America is racist.
Google’s statement reads, “We’ve also teamed up with experts at The Conscious Kid to curate a list of teacher-facing reading materials as well as evaluation criteria to consider when bringing new resources into the classroom.”
“The Conscious Kid’s selections are informed by intersectional race-center approaches including Critical Race Theory and Critical Race Media Literacy, which examine representation in the content, as well as the power dynamics behind the ownership, production, and creation of it,” it continued.
As per The Conscious Kid’s book guide, this organisation also seeks to re-evaluate classic books that may be feature outdated values that don’t line up with their stance on social justice, and that they flat out consider to be outdated.
“Re-evaluate ‘classic’ books or stories which can convey and reinforce outdated values and messaging of sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, ableism, or colonialism. Choose social justice books to help push back against embedded biases and reinforcing values of sexism, racism, or ableism,” reads one of the guidelines.
One of the guidelines even suggests that teachers should encourage their students to “counter whiteness.” The best part is that said guideline falls under the “healthy racial identity” category.
“Counter whiteness as the norm or definition of success and avoid books where characters of color only succeed when conforming to white values or norms,” the guideline states.
For an organisation that promotes “critical race theory” and that claims to see things through a “critical race lens,” The Conscious Kid doesn’t seem to be too welcoming of people with lower melanin levels than their own. Isn’t that kind of intentional discrimination called racism?
Removing literature that does not conform with their idea of “critical race theory,” and willingly opting to “counter whiteness” by choosing books that push their woke narrative is actually the opposite of condemning racism; it helps push the idea even further. Does censorship via book burning ring a bell?
The Daily Wire’s investigative report also points out some rather interesting facts about the self-proclaimed nonprofit organisation, revealing that though The Conscious Kid has been financially supported by quite a number of donors, the organisation has seemingly kept valuable information from the Internal Revenue Service.
As per the investigation conducted by Clark, many of the donations received by the organisation are actually within the IRS’ guidelines for charities with less than $50,000 annual revenue, such as a donation of $20,000 made by jewellery designer Kendra Scott to help The Conscious Kid provide “anti-racist” books to schools and libraries.
The nonprofit has also boasted of having sent over $1.3 million to families and communities across the country and the world as part of their COVID-19 GoFundMe campaign — with black families receiving $700,000 of that sum, and $50,000 going to the “Black Trans community.”
In addition to the over 16 thousand members of the general public who have donated as of the 1st of April, 2020, names like actress Kristen Bell ($50,000) and journalist Mona Chalabi ($20,000) have also contributed to the non-profit’s campaign via GoFundMe.
This is where things take an interesting turn — albeit rather expected, all things considered — as The Daily Wire sheds light on the information that the nonprofit may have been hiding from the IRS.
“In the four years preceding July 2018, the most recent period covered in tax filings, it told the Internal Revenue Service it had less than $50,000 in revenue,” reports Chrissy Clark.
This means that The Conscious Kid had filed Form 990-N — which, according to the guidelines on the Internal Revenue Service’s website, only applies to “small tax-exempt organisations whose gross receipts are normally $50,000 or less.”
Clark also brings up that the partnership between The Conscious Kid and Google.org is part of a campaign to “amplify diversity in public education.”
This campaign has already donated $6 million to platforms like DonorsChoose ($5M) and #ISeeMe ($1M), the former a platform that allows teachers to crowdsource funds for classroom projects, and the latter an initiative that highlights projects that have been submitted by teachers who are members of the black and “Latinx” communities.
As of this writing, The Conscious Kid has yet to respond to The Daily Wire’s Chrissy Clark’s request for comment on the irregularities presented in the investigation she has thoroughly conducted.
What do you make of The Conscious Kid’s efforts to provide more classrooms with ‘anti-racist’ books? Let us know your thoughts on social media or in the comments down below!
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