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WA Gov. Inslee’s Equity Summit Tells State Agencies ‘Objectivity,’ ‘Individualism’ Rooted in ‘White Supremacy’

Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee held a recent equity summit that included a governor-appointed state education agency telling other state agencies that concepts like “objectivity” and “individualism” are rooted in “White supremacy culture” and should be rejected in favor of “indigenous relational pedagogy.”

During Inslee’s “2022 Governor’s Equity Summit” in Tacoma on Nov. 30, the interim executive director of the state’s Professional Educator Standards Board (PESB), which consists of 12 governor-appointed members dedicated to advancing “educational justice,” gave a PowerPoint presentation titled “Internal Transformation: How an Education Agency is Transforming Itself in the Name of Justice.”

PESB’s presentation began with a “land acknowledgment” recognizing “the original inhabitants of the spaces we occupy,” and it asked Zoom viewers and in-person attendees to “please take a few seconds to acknowledge the land that you are on as the traditional homeland of the Indigenous Peoples.”

The land acknowledgment was followed by a “moment of silence” to consider how “this country has elevated a story of democracy and freedom while minimizing the impact of violence and oppression on marginalized communities, communities on whose backs this nation was built.”

The presentation then outlined some of the “cultural shifts” that PESB believes are “needed” in Washington state’s education department and other state agencies.

“What does it look like when we move away from white supremacy culture toward indigenous relational pedagogy? What can you do tomorrow?” one of the slides asked.

The slide listed multiple concepts that are supposedly rooted in “White Supremacy Culture,” drawing from Tema Okun’s 2020 article of the same name.

The racist concepts, according to PESB’s presentation, included “Perfectionism,” “Worship of the written word,” “Individualism” and “Objectivity,” among multiple others, and the slide listed how those concepts can be replaced with “indigenous relational pedagogy.”

For instance, perfectionism is when “making a mistake is confused with being a mistake, doing wrong with being wrong,” according to the presentation. {snip}

The presentation argued that “worship of the written word” discriminates against certain people, because “those with strong documentation and writing skills are more highly valued, even in organizations where ability to relate to others is key to the mission.” {snip}

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Inslee gave the opening and closing remarks at the summit, stressing that the ideals put forth “have to get done” in order to achieve true equity.

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