Guilford County Schools and ‘white science’

Guilford County Schools has cut ties with a PhD. “professional development presenter” over her controversial tweets. Alt-weekly Triad City Beat broke the story while the Greensboro News & Record follows up.

At issue are tweets by Kimya Dennis, who conducted a three-day training on gender discrimination for Guilford County principals and assistant principals earlier this month. Dennis’ Twitter account is inactive, but both TCB and the N&R report she tweeted on Jan. 8:

“This week I have nine (9) trainings-presentations for school assistant principals and school principals,” Dennis tweeted. “My trainings-presentations include a request that most books used in schools be burned.

“Stop using white history, white mathematics and white science as the foundation.”

While I steer from relativity politics, this has to be said–if a conservative mentioned ‘burning books’ in any context, liberals would be (figuratively speaking) calling for his/her head. The liberal TCB, of course, calls outrage over Dennis’ ties with GCS a “conservative backlash,” especially after Rep. Jon Hardister, R-Guilford, weighed in:

By Jan. 13, Hardister had results to report to the conservative constituents.

“Over the weekend I spoke with Superintendent Sharon Contreras to express my concern about the racially charged tweet that was sent out by Dr. Dennis, who did mental health, gender discrimination, and Title IX training for GCS,” Hardister wrote.

Hardister reported that Contreras told him in response: “When I received this, I directed staff to end our relationship with her even though it was not in reference to our district.”

Hardister also told TCB “I don’t see how race conflates with science and math.” Right on. Math is universal–as Furious Styles told Tre and Ricky after they took college aptitude tests in the movie “Boyz in the Hood.” But science? I agree that science is more subjective than any of us might think. The problem is subjective science undercuts liberals’ biggest issue these days—climate change. The science is settled, they say–the earth is in danger and we’re all going to die. But what if—just what if—climate change turns out to be another example of white science?