A conservative activst, pastor and father in North Carolina is going viral after torching a woke school board’s equity initiative during a meeting earlier this month.
During his remarks before the Wake County School Board, John Amanchukwu slammed officials for worrying about a diversity office when achievement numbers for black students in core subjects were abysmal.
“We’re wasting taxpayer dollars putting money toward this diversity office that’s not benefiting those who need it the most,” he said.
However, it was the Bible verse he started his speech off with, Luke 17:2, which ought to provide parents a roadmap on how to shame liberal school boards.
The verse, which was paraphrased by Amanchukwu: “It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.”
“And so the question today to the school board is only you know whether or not your role — the policies, the curriculum and the things that you allow in this school system in Wake County — only you know whether or not a millstone is tied around your neck,” said Amanchukwu, who has campaigned against initiatives like critical race theory.
“God is going to judge every last one of you for decisions that are made on behalf of black children,” he continued.
“This past year, we spent one million dollars on a diversity office. And how did that benefit black children? How did it benefit children in general? Well, 78 percent of 3rd through 8th grade black students are not proficient in math in Wake County.”
He noted this meant that “we’re wasting taxpayer dollars putting money toward this diversity office that’s not benefiting those who need it the most.”
“If they’re not reading on grade level, they’re not performing mathematically, then they’re not going to be able to get jobs in the fields like STEM, but we’re wasting money on a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Office while we are failing black students in the name of diversity,” he added.
“As we talk about inclusion and making sure that the trans student feels comfortable and the queer student feels comfortable, what does that have to do with reading, writing and arithmetic?” Amanchukwu continued.
“As we are teaching cultural Marxism and grooming children to be the next pervert, we are damaging our kids in this public school system, and it needs to stop.”
He also urged for school choice for those who public education was failing: “In the Jim Crow era, Black students were locked out of the public school system, but today they are trapped in.”
Students for Trump founder Ryan Fournier brought the clip to wider attention, tweeting it on Wednesday.
“This pastor in NC nailed it while giving this speech to the woke Wake County school board,” he said. “God Bless this guy!”
This pastor in NC nailed it while giving this speech to the woke Wake County school board.
God Bless this guy! ? pic.twitter.com/j9d0yYGxvi
— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) October 20, 2022
You can see the entire board meeting below:
The left-leaning Charlotte News & Observer, meanwhile, referred to it as an “anti-LGBTQ speech denouncing the Wake County school system’s diversity efforts,” despite the fact that the portion of his remarks dealing with LGBT issues comprised a small part of his comment.
And, while the article itself reads like an anti-Amanchukwu screed, the paper acknowledged his statistics about test scores were correct — while trying to mitigate it by noting “scores dropped sharply in Wake County and nationally during the pandemic.”
Still: “The numbers improved slightly in the 2021-22 school year to 69% of Black students not proficient in math and 63% not proficient in reading. But Black students are still passing at much lower rates than white students in Wake and nationally.”
The paper also acknowledged that the clip went viral “as voters will decide Nov. 8 on who will lead the Wake County school board. Conservative school board candidates have made a campaign issue of questioning the kinds of books available in school libraries.”
These books include the controversial “Gender Queer” and “Lawn Boy” — LGBT-centric tomes which both feature thoroughly explicit portions, including pornographic images.
The father and pastor, meanwhile, told Fox News that, “[a]s a resident of Wake County for the past 30-plus years, after hearing about the failed test scores of all students, in particular black students, along with the intentional politicization of the classroom, I thought it necessary to attend the school board meeting and fight back against the cultural Marxism, critical race theory, gender theory, and queer theory that is dominating Wake County Public School System and many other schools around the country.”
“While whites are being demonized for whiteness, and blacks are made to feel as if they are inferior or victims(CRT), tax dollars are being wasted on a diversity office, while blacks, the group they claim to protect/support, are declining academically,” he continued.
“Wake County has become ‘Woke County’ and the intentional indoctrination of our children has become the school system’s chief goal, to the detriment of all students.”
But then, this is assuming the point is education, not indoctrination. To this and other school boards, there seems to be more interest in keeping up with diversity initiatives than there is in keeping up with test scores. Millstones, at a moment such as this, are very much in order.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
