A Chinese woman who grew up during the years of Chairman Mao Zedong's communist reign and later immigrated to the U.S. condemned a progressive school board in Virginia for pushing critical race theory. The woman, a mother by the name of Xi Van Fleet likened the teachings to China's Cultural Revolution, during which Mao led a purge that killed millions of people between 1966 and 1976, details of which are still kept mostly secret to this day.
"Critical race theory has its roots in cultural Marxism-it should have no place in our schools," Van Fleet argued during a Tuesday meeting at the progressive Loudoun County School Board in Virginia, the New York Post reported. "You are now teaching, training our children, to be social justice warriors and to loathe our country and our history."
Van Fleet recounted how she grew up in Mao's China, where the communist regime "used the same critical theory to divide people." The only difference between China and America, however, is that the Chinese "used class instead of race."
The Virginia mom was concerned over how critical race theory is being taught to children, as she herself has a son who graduated from Loudoun High School in 2015. She likened the U.S.' communist CRT teachings to that of China's, in which "students and teachers turn against each other" and school names were changed "to be politically correct" and the youth were "taught to denounce our heritage," which is exactly what is happening in American classrooms today.
The Virginia mom also likened her experiences as a student during Mao's China to the kids in the U.S. today who are "encouraged to report on each other, just like the Student Equity Ambassador program and the bias reporting system," which other parents have filed cases against the school for.
Van Fleet recounted how at 26 years old, she was finally able to leave Mao's China, only to find out years later that the U.S. supports communist CRT and is teaching it at schools. When she first arrived in the U.S., the Virginia mom who survived Mao's China experienced freedoms she never did before. Now, she believes that those freedoms are slowly being taken away.
"To me, and to a lot of Chinese, it is heartbreaking that we escaped communism and now we experience communism here," Van Fleet argued, as reported by FOX News. "I just want Americans to know that their privilege is to be here living in America, that is just the biggest privilege."
The Virginia mom believes that Americans are misled into thinking they are doing the right thing, to "be against racism" but she argues that people are "basically breaking the system that is against racism."
Van Fleet is not alone in her campaign. Ian Prior, who is a father of two students who attend Loudoun schools, said that Van Fleet's arguments should serve as a "stark warning." He accused schools of teaching communist CRT without parents' knowledge and said that if it weren't for the pandemic and distance learning, most parents would likely not know that these teachings had already been going on.
The Loudoun County School Board was also in hot water recently for suspending a Christian teacher, Byron "Tanner" Cross, for rejecting the Loudoun County Public Schools' new transgender-affirming policies.
"I love all of my students but I will never lie to them regardless of the consequences. I'm a teacher but I serve God first and I will not affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa because it's against my religion," Cross declared. "It's lying to a child, it's abuse to a child, and it's sinning against our God."
A court sided with Cross and ordered his reinstatement.
