Editor, The Smithfield Times:

Isle of Wight County Schools’ director of equity and Inclusion is actively promoting the 2022 Girls on the Run (GOTR) program and soliciting our division’s teachers with a stipend for participation.

The stated purpose found in an IWCS email is: “To empower female-identifying students in grades 3-8 in IWCS, we will partner with GOTR for a positive youth development program.” If that (inclusive language) statement doesn’t catch your attention, then I encourage you to visit www.girlsontherun.org/inclusion-diversity/ and read about the GOTR’s IDEA Commission (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, & Access). In the drop-down menu under “Equitable,” you’ll see GOTR “is a place where ‘systemic disparities’ associated with ‘societal advantages’ are acknowledged and addressed.”

Sound familiar?

These aforementioned systemic disparities and societal advantages are referring to the critical race ideology whereas we supposedly live in a systemically racist society where you’re either privileged or oppressed based on the color or your skin. This is the very language that Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Executive Order #1 defines as inherently divisive, and our schools are actively promoting a program based on this divisive ideology.

We should support inclusion, diversity and even equity as long as we’re not promoting the divisive ideas of critical race in the process. We should support girls-only programs that focus on team and confidence boosting as long as we’re not attempting to normalize declaring one’s gender identity as something opposite of one’s biological gender … especially in young children!

 

Jason P. Maresh

Windsor