Fred Taylor has been a Manhattan Beach resident for over 45 years. He owns his own business and had two children in Manhattan Beach Unified Schools District (MBUSD). One of these daughters has graduated.
Taylor’s daughters are both Hispanic, and he asked the one who graduated a few years back, whether she had experienced any racism in her time at school. His daughter said, no, and told him: “We hardly had any Black students there.”
Taylor thought it was strange that Taylor’s daughter didn’t immediately identify himself with racial injustice – even though Taylor is a member of a minority. This shows that racist views and racism are not as widespread and prevalent, but more attitudes can be taught.
In terms of the City of Manhattan Beach and race relations, aside from the Bruce’s Beach controversy, Taylor talked about the 2015 incident involving Ron and Malissia Clinton, a Black family who are a part of the Manhattan Beach community. An evil individual threw a flaming tire on the Clinton’s porch, setting the front of the house ablaze. Taylor knew of the family because his daughter played AYSO soccer with the Clinton’s daughter.
Malissia gave a talk to TEDxManhattanBeach on the horrible incident and how her family decided to remain in Manhattan Beach despite everything they had experienced. She was most proud of the way that they were able to unite as a community.
Ron and Malissia spoke to the Los Angeles TimesSoon after, the community organized a vigil for them.
They had blamed the community at first, he said. They changed their mind after seeing the outpouring of support.
Mr Clinton added: ‘I have to admit, initially, we considered it, but you know, this community is just too amazing for us to let one individual force us to leave.’
As a gesture of support for the family and as an expression against violence, the vigil was created. Taylor continued to reflect:
“I went down with my daughter two nights later, ’cause one of the City Council people called a vigil,” Taylor remembered
“And we had hundreds stand there with candles, and walking around, and people were hugging each other, and I had an opportunity to actually talk with the daughter and express my condolences, you know.
“So, if you want to see a racist city, I guess that’s what a racist city looks like.”
However, in a recent interview with CBS News about the return of the Bruce’s Beach land back to the original family, Malissia Clinton, whose three Black children were part of the public school system, alleged that the reason Manhattan Beach is less than one percent Black is due to racism.
Malissia has lived in Manhattan Beach for over 20 years and stated that she considers Manhattan Beach a racist place.
“So we are less than 1% African American. That defines racism to me,” Clinton said.
Back in 2015, she said someone threw a burning tire at her family’s front door early one morning. Although everyone survived, the trauma is still felt.
“What it reminded me is that things haven’t changed that much. It is not over. People like me get terrorized. We aren’t entitled to the comfort of security,” Clinton said.
It is amazing. A Black couple who through hard work, sacrifice, and some good fortune, can afford to live in a community, own their own home and business where the home prices range from 1.35 million to 12 million, but because other Blacks cannot—or do not choose—to do the same, it is due to racism?
My colleague Jeff Charles would call this “Sesame Street” thinking.
It is exceptionally sad that Malissia Clinton’s trauma is such where she has lived in one of the most comfortable cities in Los Angeles County for decades, yet still feels she is not “entitled to the comfort of security.”
From this Black woman’s perspective, this is a more tragic state than combatting actual racism. Clinton’s thought process appears to be no different than a Black woman in central Los Angeles who rents from a slumlord and has to dodge bullets, and step over the homeless. But this has little to do with environment, and everything to do with a mindset—one that CRT seeks to not only exacerbate, but embed into young minds.
Clinton, if it is representative of the emotions of less than one-percent of Blacks living in Manhattan Beach and the MBUSD Board, then one can easily see how Woke activists who have an agenda, can get on a white horse pretending to be able to solve the problem. This way of thinking leads to a terrible lifestyle and it is not healthy or grounded in reality. These so-called educators and leaders are criminals. wantTo enslave others to live, think and relate in the same way.
Taylor said that he made his first public comments on the school board’s agenda in March of this year, and has been commenting ever since. Not only has he done extensive research on the MBUSD Board EDSJI Initiatives and the Board members, Taylor met Jason Boxer (a new member of the board) to get to know him.
These are just some of the opinions expressed in Manhattan Beach’s local paper on stalking and gender-policing.
Taylor did express concern that Boxer’s associations might color his leadership on the board.
“I have met with Jason Boxer. Jason is an extremely pleasant and pleasant young man. Age 28. I say this, he’s a member of Diversify Your Narrative, which is a hard, hard left.”
The MBUSD Board president Jen Fenton has also come under Taylor’s scrutiny, and in a recent school board meeting, Fenton made it known that she did not appreciate it. This 7-minute video, which launched the Oct 8 Board meeting, brought up Taylor’s statement (outlined in Part 1), and Fenton stated that she had the Manhattan Beach Police Department present at the meeting as a reinforcement to her opening speech.
Taylor provided this context for the video:
“The hateful letter is the WEPMB email I released to you about ‘Sexual Improprieties.’
“She talked about getting threatening emails and personal email attacks conflating them with our parent group with no evidence…and had MBPD in the Board room for that 10/6 meeting [Two days after the DOJ labeling us as ‘domestic terrorists.’]
“We actually don’t have a domain, just an email address [redacted]
“She labeled us as “DISSENTERS” while endorsing ‘free speech’ since she’s a lawyer.”
This video contains not-so-veiled threats to WeTheParents and any Manhattan Beach USD parent that doesn’t agree with the work of the MBUSD Board.
You heard it straight from Fenton’s own mouth.
The National Association of School Boards has already walked back its involvement in Attorney General Merrick Garland’s contentious letter, and there has been another incident reported in Indiana where a school board member physically attacked a parent who disagreed with him.
Just from Board President Fenton’s performance on October 8, and the behavior of the member in Indiana, the actual evidence shows the label “domestic terrorist” may have been applied to the wrong parties.
CLEAR, the Center for Leadership, Equity, and Research, is an organization that has conducted the MBUSD Equity Audit since 2011.
It’s stated mission from its LinkedIn page:
The Center for Leadership, Equity, and Research is committed to eliminating social and educational disparities that hinder equitable outcomes for students and communities. The Center for Leadership, Equity and Research (CLEAR) is responsible to advocate on behalf of its members. This involves empowering educators through professional learning and political action.
From posts about the January 6 “insurrection” and this post expressing approval of General Mark Milley trumpeting his incorporation of CRT into the military, it appears that CLEAR’s political leaning and intentions are less “equitable” and more exclusionary. It seems if parents’ voices do not align with “professional learning, political action, and community empowerment,” then CLEAR encourages that these voices not be heard.
You will be able to find or make anything you can that serves an agenda if you’re looking for ways to help others. The “research” arm of CLEAR did just this in crafting its Equity Audit report for MBUSD.
This is the purpose of the Equity Audit Report:
The purpose of this Equity Audit is to identify the most common causes of inequities that exist in MBUSD and elevate the voices of the stakeholders so that meaning can be brought to the Board policies, Board goals, processes, and practices within the District based on stakeholders’ lived experiences, including students, staff, and families. The data in this report was collected from administrators, students, parents and staff. Equity Audits These tools allow districts to implement guided reforms based on data.
From my reading of the Equity Audit report, and from initial reports from Fred Taylor and Pam Davidson of WeTheParents about what occurred in an October 20 meeting where the results of the Equity Audit were supposed to be discussed, it does not appear that the school’s policies needed to be changed in order to reflect more diversity or create a more welcoming environment. The MBUSD Board and its Trustees looked for ways to improve policies in order that CRT-like programs and curriculum could be incorporated.
Pamela Davidson, a grandmother to a MBUSD student is Pamela Davidson. Davidson, a Ph.D., analyzes data to make a living and saw that there were gaps between CLEAR Equity Audit’s stated goals and the MBUSD Board’s implementation plans.
Davidson, a data analyst who is an expert herself, was initially scheduled to present at the meeting on October 20. The title of her analysis may have caused some eyebrows.
CLEAR Equity Audit Report: Weak, Biased, Inaccurate, Failing, and Bias
Audit Report recommendations are not linked to data/evidence
It was amazing to see that Davidson was allowed to comment publicly after she sent her analysis and recommendation to the MBUSD Board and Trustees.
Doesn’t sound very equitable or inclusive, does it?
Here are Davidson’s summarized conclusions:
It is difficult to see the connection between the information collected and reported, and the numerous recommendations that emerge from the report. The CLEAR/CRT model is imposed on Pages 32 to 41, which have little or no basis in actual data. Recommendations in the report aim to restructure the MB Schools District processes and policies. Parents and the community aren’t informed about the recommendations and they will strongly oppose them when they find out more.
Not surprisingly, the recommendations in this report are not linked to educational excellence. The Consulting Company must be immediately dismissed and resources should be diverted to interventions that directly link with educational excellence.
In my interview, Davidson made these salient points about what was at work here with the CLEAR Equity Audit and the MBUSD Board’s push to incorporate their recommendations.
“We want the educator to stay focused on the core subjects, and we don’t want them moving into this agenda that they’re moving into what we refer to as CRT principles, and also gender identity, and all of that. We don’t want our teachers and our school leaders indoctrinating our students,” Davidson said.
“School prayer was taken out. We’re not allowed to have school prayer, right? Prayer actually reflects my values, but that’s gone. This was forbidden. But, rather, we’re trying to replace it with this secular philosophy and indoctrination that has kind of… it feels a little bit like Communism or Marxism to me.”
The MBUSD currently has 6,500 students within a city of 35,000 people, according to census 2020 data. CLEAR reports that these are the demographics of ethnic origins and racial diversity.
61.2 per cent White; 1.1percent Black/African American; less than 1% American Indian; 10.1 percent Asian; 1.2 percent Filipino. 11.7 percent Hispanic/Latinx. Less than 1% Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander. 13.4 percent students identify themselves as more than one race. Specific classifications for students include: 12.9 per cent are students with disabilities; 4.7% are socioeconomically disadvantaged; 1.6% are English Learners; and 0.6 percent are homeless. [sic]Migrant or foster youth.
CLEAR Equity Audit Report continues to state this:
Typically families and community connected with a public school district such as MBUSD reflect the same diversity as the school composition; however, in this case, the Equity Audit revealed the District’s diversity does not seem to be well-recognized by the larger community.
As the Census data shows, this is an outright lie. Just because a community is not throwing up bright, shiny symbolic gestures and holding parades over its diversity, doesn’t mean it is not recognized. To draw such an incongruous conclusion based on very little evidence is a insult to Manhattan Beach.
In some places, however, this community is more representative of the student population than listed above. It is likely that the 13.4 percent who don’t identify with their parents are responsible for this. One race. It is becoming more and more popular for people to identify as biracially or triracially in this age and time. Yet our betters on “racial equity” fail to recognize and incorporate this as a fact, nor do they bother to study the damage caused by injecting curriculum and language that labels one racial group as an oppressor and the other as oppressed; especially when both racial groups exist genetically in the young person. Instead, they’d rather breed anger and confusion in a child who has one white parent, and another with a different race/ethnicity to further their own ends.
It’s also interesting that Asians and Hispanics are the second largest minority groups in the district, and are strongly reflected in the community; but it appears this is data that CLEAR chooses to ignore, as Davidson referenced in her analysis.
MBUSD’s so-called “measures” (e.g. social/emotional learning) have been noted as measures that parents and religious institutions are best able to provide for their children in the past and present. This is a societal entity that the public educational system tried to minimize and eradicate. These so-called Equity auditors and CLEAR seem determined to complete this process.
On Wednesday, October 20, the MBUSD Board met to discuss Equity Audit reports. This meeting was to assess the audit’s findings and make a decision about whether to incorporate its recommendations into the MBUSD. After WeTheParents’ Lauren Harger attended the meeting, she emailed this update:
“I assume you tuned in to last night’s clown show, aka ‘workshop’ where the board listened enthusiastically to various committee members talk about all the EDSJI-compliant plans they have in store for our kids. It’s a Woke nightmare. Last night, I discovered a new buzzword: PositionalityI hope you enjoyed it. You will soon be able to view a video, or at the very least, a transcription. Bring wine.”
Part 3 will examine the Oct 20 meeting. Perhaps with a glass of wine in hand,
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