Striving for Excellence Is ‘Racist’
Washington Olympia School District voted last week to cut part of its music program for elementary students. The reason? Music classes are rooted in “white supremacy culture.”
The district, which needs to recover $11.5 million in its budget, is eliminating band and string instruments for fourth graders.
School board director Scott Clifthorne argued that it’s not the instruments themselves that are racist. Rather, it’s the institutions that “inculcate and allow white supremacy culture to continue to be propagated and cause significant institutional violence.”
He claimed that while the music courses might be beneficial, the way they were offered results in some students missing classes.
Clifthorne told the board: “There are other folks in the community that experience things like a tradition of excellence as exclusionary.”
The decision has sparked outrage among some parents, with one mom of three telling Fox News, “We have reached a level of absurdity in our school district, among our school board and our leadership that is just hard to ignore at this point.”
This is not the first time the school district has promoted its leftist agenda in the last few months. In October, it appointed an anti-police, Black Lives Matter activist to the school board. In February, a school in the district created a “safe space” club that banned white students.
To say that it is racist to strive for a “tradition of excellence” implies that striving for excellence is a white-person trait. To say that becoming cultured and skilled in an instrument is “exclusionary” is in itself a racist statement. By cutting the music program, the school district is sending the erroneous and diabolical message: Striving for excellence is only for white people.
In reality, this issue has nothing to do with race. It has nothing to do with music either. What possible motive is there for attacking the pursuit of perfection?
Our free booklet How God Values Music explains:
God wants humanity to savor the finest things, to have excellent standards, manners and tastes. Why? Because these qualities reflect the character of God.
The assault on striving for excellence is another angle of the assault on mankind’s purpose. To learn what that purpose is, request our free book The Incredible Human Potential.