What can we say about Colin Powell that hasn’t already been said? The son of immigrants, he grew up in Harlem and the Bronx (that’s 1940s Harlem and 1940s Bronx, not the gentrified areas we know today), and thanks to his inner resolve, became a four-star general and a secretary of state.
The same goes for Condoleezza Rice. Born in 1954 in Birmingham, AL, she rose to become a national security advisor and a secretary of state. During her speech at the 2012 Republican National Convention, she said:
I think my father thought I might be president of the United States. I think he would’ve been satisfied with secretary of state. I’m a foreign policy person and to have a chance to serve my country as the nation’s chief diplomat at a time of peril and consequence, that was enough.
Compare these great Americans’ accomplishments with that of Kimberly Griffin, Dean of UMD’s College of Education. All of her publications invoke one theme: victim. Blacks are the victims, women are the victims, whites are privileged, and men are privileged. Take a look at the titles of her publications on Google Scholar: every single one of them promotes invective and victim. In Surveillance and Sacrifice: Gender Differences in the Mentoring Patterns of Black Professors at Predominantly White Research Universities she writes;
Scholars have documented the multiple stereotypes, racist beliefs, and microaggressions Black male students face within educational contexts, highlighting beliefs about their limited academic abilities, lack of motivation, need for extra assistance and support, and likelihood of engaging in dangerous or criminal activity
This is nonsense. You can tell this is nonsense because Powell, Rice, and many other African Americans, liberal and conservative, have accomplished so much more than Griffin and myself put together. None of them buy into the DEI eugenics that Griffin and her colleagues have been promoting for decades. Those of us who don’t buy into the DEI narrative are the ones who are truly color blind, and we will never tell a child he cannot achieve something because of his color. On the contrary, like Condi Rice’s father, we will tell her that she can become the president.
Griffin’s DEI narrative isn’t all negative—not for her personally. She was appointed the Dean of the College of Education. She now has a staff of 79 administrators whose salaries suck the life out of students and parents paying tuition, many of them taking out loans to do so.
Griffin is under scrutiny because she hired Monifa McKnight, the previous superintendent of MCPS who covered up sexual harassment by one of her principals. McKnight also buys into the DEI narrative. In her dissertation Examining the Self-Efficacy Beliefs and Leadership Practices of Middle School Principals with High Success Rates of Minority Students in Algebra I, she writes:
Examining the self-efficacy beliefs of successful middle school principals who have high minority student success in Algebra supports a compelling way to learn about how school leaders are addressing ways to close the achievement gap between African American and Latino students in comparison to their Asian and White peers.
Nowhere near as inflammatory as Griffin, but close enough to get hired in a cush job after getting $1.3 million in severance pay—all after scandalous job performance.
Are you a parent? Which would you rather have mentor your child: someone who provides inspiration and a path forward, or someone who preaches congenital misery? I’ll go with Colin Powell any time.
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