Equality for all over race-based discrimination.
Merit-based achievement over arbitrary racial quotas.
The freedom to pursue your own American Dream over the lie that America is only a land of opportunity for some.
Just in time for Independence Day, the U.S. Supreme Court this week reminded Americans of the significance of the nation’s most basic principle: that all men are created equal. And every American who holds our founding ideals dear should celebrate the court’s decision striking down race-based affirmative action admissions policies at universities. After all, while America’s founders were flawed, they championed the basic principle of equal protection under the law.
That’s why the Goldwater Institute is working around the country to enact reforms to end government-sanctioned racism in K-12 and higher education. Moreover, we just released a new children’s book, A Is for the American Dream, that inspires the next generation to pursue their own American Dream.
Read Goldwater Vice President for Legal Affairs Timothy Sandefur on the affirmative action ruling here, and read Goldwater Executive Vice President Christina Sandefur on July 4 here. And RSVP here for our free special webinar event July 11 on the ramifications of the affirmative action ruling.
“Latinx” or Lincoln—which is more important for students to learn about?
Arizona’s social studies standards push the activist term “Latinx”—the politically correct version of “Latino”—as a mandatory concept for 3rd-5th graders. But learning about Abraham Lincoln is only optional.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg: According to a new Goldwater Institute report, Arizona’s public school social studies standards do not promote basic knowledge of American civics or prepare students for citizenship.
The standards:
- Omit nearly all emphasis on core constitutional principles like federalism;
- Fail to educate students on the global, historical roots of institutions such as slavery and American actions to eliminate it;
- Fail to ensure students are exposed to the horrors of communism and related totalitarian regimes of the 20th century;
- Induce schools to incubate political activism among their students.
Goldwater’s universal expansion of Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program last year opened up school choice to every family in the state. Now, while recognizing the importance of choice in Arizona’s educational landscape, state leaders must reinvigorate civics literacy by ensuring public schools transmit to students at least basic knowledge of the fundamental principles of America’s constitutional republic.
The civic health of the next generation of Arizonans depends on it.
Read Goldwater’s new report here.
As Dr. Murray Feldstein watched a mandatory “implicit bias” training video for doctors make sweeping, inaccurate assumptions about Native American patients, one thought sprang into his mind:
“This is dangerous,” writes Dr. Feldstein, a Goldwater Institute Visiting Fellow, in the Orange County Register. Dr. Feldstein spent decades treating scores of indigenous patients. So he knows that every patient is unique, and that the current trend of lecturing doctors about their ingrained racism—and encouraging them to make medical decisions based on a patient’s race—is personally insulting, potentially harmful to patients’ health, and ultimately counterproductive.
Indoctrination programs that demean people are unlikely to persuade them, and objective data demonstrating benefits in outcomes from implicit bias training is inconsistent and sparse. Yet this divisive ideology, rooted in racial discrimination, is often being prioritized over the findings of science.
“I worry that the kind of implicit bias training promulgated by so-called ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ bureaucracies is playing into the hands of the small minority of bigots who can be found on both extremes of the political spectrum,” Dr. Feldstein concludes. “These trainings are only adding fuel to a fire that, if left alone, would eventually sputter out on its own.”
Read the rest here.
