Tennessee mother starts $5,000 GoFundMe for 1st grader ‘traumatised’ by critical race theory

The outrage is likely over the school’s “Civil Rights Heroes” unit, which teaches children about the history of segregation in the US

A crowd gathers at a rally against critical race theory in Virginia. (AFP via Getty Images)

A mother in Tennessee has set up a GoFundMe page claiming that her seven-year-old daughter was severely “traumatised” by learning “critical race theory” in school, and is seeking $5,000 to pay for counselling and treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) allegedly caused by the curriculum.

It’s the latest, somewhat dubious claim against the obscure academic discipline, which has become a nationwide rallying point for conservatives seeking to rid it from public schools, despite it usually not being taught anywhere outside of university.

“This curriculum has destroyed my daughter’s self-esteem and created a world in which she is fraught with anxiety and is now in treatment for OCD caused by the constant thoughts being represented by this material,” the page reads.

According to the post, the seven-year-old was exposed to critical race theory at a school in Williamson County, Tennessee, outside of Nashville, and began questioning her identity.

“My daughter started coming home asking very pointed questions about who she is and if she is a bad person,” the GoFundMe post continues, “She came home extremely upset. She told me, ‘Mom, I’m white. My friend is brown. I need to apologise to him for being white because white people have done bad things to people with brown skin.’”

Robin Steenman, head of the local chapter of the conservative group Moms for Liberty organised the page, and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The post does not identify the student or which materials allegedly caused such damage, and it’s unclear whether the story it describes is accurate.

The district does have a “Civil Rights Heroes” unit for second graders, not first graders, which features books for young readers about civil rights history like Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation, by Duncan Tonatiuh, and the autobiographical Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story, about one of the first Black children to integrate New Orleans’ all-white public schools.

The district, Williamson County Schools (WCS), which did not answer specific questions about the allegations in the GoFundMe, pointed to a post on its website where it lays out a detailed list of its reading materials under a newly approved curriculum called Wit and Wisdom.

“WCS curriculum leaders have found no efforts within Wit and Wisdom to teach critical race theory or any material that illegally teaches that an individual, by virtue of their race or sex is inherently privileged or that any individual by virtue of their race or sex bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex, etc.” it reads.

School officials have said that despite concern from some parents, the new curriculum is quite popular.

“Our teachers are reporting to us that our students are like they’ve never read before,” Dave Allen, assistant superintendent of teaching, learning, and assessment, said earlier this year. “I’ve received a flood of emails recently that said, ‘Don’t do anything with the curriculum. My kid’s loving.’”

Still, people like Ms Steenman and others charge that teaching young students about the more tragic aspects of US history is too divisive.

“On the surface, that all seems fine,” she told Tennessee Lookout. “But when you start going through the books and see there’s a definite slant, a constant drumming into the child that white people are bad, and that’s just day after day after day for nine weeks and there’s never a part about redemption, all the strides we have made since then.”

Since the final days of the Donald Trump administration, critical race theory has increasingly become a bogeyman on the right, with critics portraying it as a wide-reaching radical ideology permeating most US institutions.

Totalitarianism scholar Timothy Snyder recently argued in the New York Times Magazine that the right has embraced criticising critical race theory as a way justify its larger project of restricting voting access and other political liberties of minority groups, since many anti-critical race theory efforts make it more challenging for public officials to talk about US history.

Republican states around the country have passed laws ostensibly about preventing the teaching of critical race theory in schools, with terms broad enough that they make any teaching of US history on subjects like racism, segregation, and slavery difficult.