Teachers’ union chief Randi Weingarten equated dad and mom who search alternate options to conventional public colleges to segregationists, a comparability that didn’t sit effectively with conservatives, beginning with Sen. Tim Scott.

The South Carolina Republican fired off an electronic mail declaring “I’m so sick and tired of liberals, too many of them happening to be white, crying racism every single time they’re losing an argument.”

“I can’t think of anything more racist than teachers’ unions trapping poor Black kids in failing schools in big blue cities,” Mr. Scott mentioned in a Thursday tweet. “Randi Weingarten, you’ve done enough damage.”

Ms. Weingarten mentioned in an interview that school-choice advocates like former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman have used the “same words” as Nineteen Fifties-era segregationists, specifically “choice” and “parental rights.”

“Those same words that you heard in terms of wanting segregation post-Brown v. Board of Education, those same words you hear today,” mentioned Ms. Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest lecturers’ union.

Her feedback got here throughout a blogcast interview posted Tuesday with Seth D. Harris, senior fellow on the Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University.

Ms. Weingarten credited the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center with connecting the dots for her.

“I was kind of gobsmacked when I was talking to Southern Poverty Law Center and they showed me the same words — choice, parental rights — and attempt to divide parents versus teachers,” she mentioned. “At that point it was White parents versus other parents. But it’s the same kind of words.”

Of course, supporters of college vouchers aren’t the one ones calling for “choice” — assume advocates for expanded abortion entry — however Ms. Weingarten wasn’t completed.

“They want to have basically a Christian ideology, their particular Christian ideology,  dominate the country, as opposed to a country that was born on the freedom of the exercise of religion,” she mentioned.

🚨🚨Randi Weingarten likened parental rights and faculty selection advocates to segregationists:

She says the phrases “choice” and “parental rights” are the identical form of phrases that have been utilized in response to highschool desegregation by opponents of the Brown v. Board of Education resolution. pic.twitter.com/XDvP12pWbU

— Nicki Neily (@nickineily) September 13, 2023

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, accused her of “Christian bashing.”

“The subject under discussion had nothing to do with religion, so it tells us volumes about Weingarten that she would indict Christians, without cause,” mentioned Mr. Donohue in a Thursday assertion.

Ms. Weingarten and different union officers have lengthy fought towards faculty vouchers, constitution colleges, and different choices to conventional public colleges, accusing them of looking for to convey in regards to the “end of public education as we know it.”

Mr. Donohue added that “Weingarten should resign.”

“The hatred that she has for millions of school choice and parental rights advocates — especially those who are Christian — disqualifies her from serving in any public role,” he mentioned.

Ms. Weingarten pressured that she wasn’t describing most dad and mom, however slightly “a small group of extremists.”

Nicki Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, famous that her group has filed complaints towards colleges that separate college students by race “in the name of ‘social justice.’”

“If Randi is actually interested in addressing modern-day segregation in schools, she should unequivocally condemn the practice of racially segregated ‘affinity groups’ & ‘healing circles’ that are used in K-12 schools,” Ms. Neily tweeted.

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