Forsyth County Georgia Board of Education - Jere Krischel - 03/21/2023

First of all, Happy Black History month. Some people believe that we should segregate Black and White history, but I believe we can celebrate our shared Black History all year long. Just like we can celebrate our shared Caucasian History all year long, which, we now know, includes the famous Caucasian, Angela Davis, whose ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower.

Last month, one of the speakers seemed to be very upset at representation regarding "black" or "white" historical names, as if some kids turning down Hubbard Town Road will feel left out because William Merida Hubbard wasn't the same skin color as they are, but then they'll feel right at home on Dawson Forest Road since William Crosby Dawson shared their skin tone. Honestly, I had to look up both men - I had no idea if either William was white, or black - and apart from intensely dedicated history buffs, I'd bet fewer than one in ten thousand Forsyth County residents know who these Williams were.

The woke white obsession with racial representation, in things as mundane as street names, is founded on a pernicious racist principle - that we can be judged, and judge others, on their skin color. It insists that we must first and foremost, look at someone's skin color, and then decide if we can relate to them. It ignores character. It ignores culture. It centers race above all other considerations, and teaches our children to internalize a color-focused dehumanization.

The speaker who complained about racial representation looked like a white woman, but she seemed to relate perfectly fine to Otis Redding, despite not having his skin color. Ironically, it's quite likely, that she has some slave ancestry in her family tree, the same way Angela Davis has some Mayflower ancestry in hers. And this is true of all so-called "black" and "white" people - our skin color is not the sum total of our worth, and the assumption, that we have more in common with strangers with our skin tone, than our own family that might be lighter or darker, is denialism in its worst form.

We need to let all of our children know, that we are first and foremost fellow humans, and every example of human potential is a representation of our own potential, no matter what that human looks like, or what we look like.

It is the racist hyper focus on skin color that leads to the dreaded "white savior" complex, where the health problems of black women become something that can only be fixed by the beneficent interventions of woke white people. When you embrace a "disparate impact" theory, where black obesity, or black fatherlessness, can only be solved by white people, you take away agency from black people, and foist unearned virtue upon their woke white knights riding to their rescue.

Black people are not a monolith, and we don't need white people to solve our problems. Nothing stops a straight black girl from seeing herself in Elvis, and nothing stops a gay white boy from seeing himself in Aretha Franklin. The dire insistence that we need to measure, and track, and consider every little thing by skin color, makes more racism, not less.

So if you truly want equity amongst humans, stop measuring them by skin color, and treat them like the unique, diverse individuals that they are. Diversity is the natural state of being, no matter what your skin color is. And the ultimate inclusion, is to drop the artificial barriers that separate us from our common humanity.

And so on that note, thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.