CFER Foundation

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Alliance Building

We build diverse coalition across racial and political lines to promote equality!

CFER-Led Alliance Against Critical Ethnic Studies

CFER has partnered up with various organizations throughout California and nationwide to raise public awareness about the prevalence of divisive ideologies in the California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC). We hosted multiple seminars and organized a broad-based coalition of 29 partner groups to collectively voice dissent against the ethnic studies mandate AB101. CFER testified at the State Assembly and Senate on multiple occasions against the bill as a primary expert witness and sent joint letters to both the State Legislature and the Governor's office.

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Don't Divide Us!

Joint Statement Against Critical Race Theory Using Race to Divide Americans

We are a coalition of 26 organizations, representing a diverse group of civil rights leaders, academics, community activists and ordinary citizens. Coming from vastly different racial, ethnic and political backgrounds, we are united by our common values and shared identity as Americans. We are committed to promoting values of equal rights, equal citizenship, individual merit and liberty, against the divisive invasion of critical race theory in every aspect of our public life.

Critical race theory (CRT) is a contested and explicitly political theory that examines all social relations, economic governance and policy outcomes through the prism of race and prescribes race-centered solutions to all social problems. While CRT, with its academic sub-variants and derivatives, should be judged as a scholarly subject of inquiry, it has increasingly become a monolithic dogma that informs broader cultural and political trends attempting to reshape and reengineer our society toward illiberal group think, equal outcomes, and collectivism.

CRT and its pleasant-sounding derivatives --- diversity, equity and inclusion, anti-racism, racial sensitivity, racial healing, critical pedagogy, critical awareness, social emotional learning and so on, are underlined by a common thread of placing race, racism, and racial struggles at the center of our national dialogue and public institutions. The doctrine paints a grim, inaccurate, and discordant picture of our history and present, challenging the very foundations of the liberal order, distorting our basic virtues of equality and merit, and purporting to dismantle free markets. Perpetuating this bankrupt ideology in real life leads to perverse discrimination, disempowerment and victimhood by virtue of race.

As a broad-based coalition, we wholeheartedly support teaching cultures and history including slavery, racism and discrimination in a balanced, unabridged, nuanced and constructive fashion. We welcome meaningful efforts to build understanding and appreciation for different cultures and ethnicities in our diverse country. But we strongly oppose attempts to use race as a wedge to divide Americans and denigrate our great country. In this spirit, we stand firmly against CRT and its egregious manifestations in our schools, workplaces, and governments. We call upon you and all like-minded individuals to join our growing coalition for a genuine movement to safeguard democratic values of equality, liberty and unity.

Don't divide us!

Alliance to Protect Children

AMCHA Initiative

Better Milpitas

Californians For Equal Rights Foundation

Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater New York

Color Us United

Concerned Parents of San Diego

Educators for Quality and Equality

Eagle Forum of California

Equal Rights for All-Pac

Fair Education Santa Barbara

For Kids & Country

Free Black Thought

Informed Parents of California

Irvine Equal Education Association

Legal Insurrection Foundation

Moms for Liberty

National Association of Scholars

Parents Defending Education

Protect Our Kids

San Diego Asian Americans for Equality

Silicon Valley Chinese Association Foundation

TOC Foundation

US Asian Art & Culture Association

We Save America

Whittier and La Habra Precinct Patriots

Joint Statement Against Critical Race Theory Using Race to Divide Americans


CFER-Led Alliance Against ADL's CRT-Rooted Definition of Racism

In February 2022, CFER, along with 21 partner groups, sent a joint letter to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), condemning its re-definition of racism as “(t)he marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.”

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Joint Letter Opposing ADL's New Definition of “Racism”

RE: Rejecting Biased and Politically Motivated Re-definition of “Racism”

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and National Director

Anti-Defamation League

605 Third Avenue

New York, NY 10158-3650

February 2, 2022

Dear Mr. Greenblatt,

We are 22 organizations alarmed by your group’s redefinition of “racism” to bring it into compliance with the latest woke political trends. Gone is the impartial definition of racism that sets a neutral standard by which we can judge conduct and beliefs. This is replaced with “(t)he marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.” This inflammatory mischaracterization of an historically and contemporarily consequential concept sets a corrosive example for ADL supporters and the rest of the society. It is using language as a cudgel to beat up on one group rather than as means to promote truth and clear communication.

Changing the definition of “racism” from one that applied neutrally to a narrow and politicized new focus that seeks to stigmatize white people while falsely presenting all “people of color” as oppressed victims is an insult to our collective history and to reality itself. This redefinition categorically disregards the history of race- and ethnic-based inter-group conflicts and other examples of racism. It is a fatally limited and shortsighted account of numerous ethno-racial conflicts in different parts of the world throughout the long history of human civilizations.

The sad reality is that racism, along with judging, rewarding or punishing by identity grouping, has been a universal aspect of the human condition throughout history. There is no one group that owns the status of victim and no one group that owns the status of victimizer - and it is deeply offensive, illiberal, and un-American to ascribe guilt and innocence to individuals on the basis of their race. In fact, there is a word for doing that: Racism.

The ADL's new concept of “racism,” borrowed entirely from Marxist critical theory, undermines your group's long-standing mission “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.” How can the ADL advocate for fair treatment of Jews when the ADL now declares that whites - including those of Jewish descent - are privileged oppressors? It is sad that the ADL, an organization founded on the principle of equal treatment, is now embracing the principle of unequal treatment and collective race-based guilt and innocence.

We cannot save the ADL from making an enormous mistake that will remove your group from the ranks of organizations that advocate neutral, liberal policies, and place it instead firmly on the far-left fringes of the political spectrum, its reputation and credibility forever damaged. There is an elegant solution to the problem: The ADL can embrace a definition of racism that is accurate and non-political. We think ADL's previous definition is especially good: “Racism is the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, that a person's social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics.”

Sincerely,

Californians For Equal Rights Foundation

Alliance to Protect Children

America Strong

A Time to Stand

California Policy Center

Center of the American Experiment

Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater New York

Coalition for TJ

Fair Education Santa Barbara

Free Black Thought

For Kids & Country

I Choose Love Campaign

National Association of Scholars

National Society for the Advancement of Black Americans

No Left Turn in Education

Parents Defending Education

Protect Our Kids

San Diego Asian Americans for Equality

Silicon Valley Chinese Association Foundation

Stop Critical Race Theory

TOC Foundation

Joint Letter Opposing ADL's New Definition of "Racism"

CFER

Defend merit and advance equality.

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Tax ID Number: 85-2315151