School board candidate in Evanston, Illinois, criticizes radical BLM curriculum

A candidate for the school board in Evanston, Illinois, is speaking out against the school district's "Black Lives Matter" curriculum, which she says is negative, divisive, and disempowering for black kids who are taught that they cannot overcome systemic racism in America.

Ndona Muboyayi is running for school board in District 65, located in a Chicago suburb that recently made headlines for becoming the first American city to offer slavery reparations for black residents. Evanston is a stronghold of progressive values where President Joe Biden won 91% of the city's vote in the 2020 presidential election.

It's the same school district that made news this week for prioritizing "black and brown" students for in-person learning due to limited capacity as schools reopen after closing during the pandemic.

Yet even in this die-hard leftist community, some parents in March raised concerns about the school district's Black Lives Matter curriculum, which draws from critical race theory and teaches children as young as 4 or 5 that white people are inherently racist, black people continue to this day to be oppressed, and any criticism of these ideas is definitionally racist. Parents, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to The Atlantic for fear of reprisal for speaking out against the curriculum, said they worried their children were being indoctrinated.

But Muboyayi, who was raised in Evanston and attended public school there, told The Atlantic this week she does not fear reprisal because she is self-employed. She is publicly outspoken against the curriculum, which she says is not balanced and teaches black children that they cannot get ahead.

Muboyayi was interviewed on Fox News' "Fox & Friends" on Friday about her conversation with The Atlantic, explaining that when she returned to Evanston after living abroad with her family, she was dismayed to learn what they were being taught in school.

"Upon my return to Evanston, I learned quickly that the curriculum changed drastically. No longer were they teaching children basically about the history of the world — including the history of African Americans and people of the African diaspora — but they had added something that they called, 'Black Lives Matter' curriculum," Muboyayi told Fox News.

She explained that the weeklong lessons teach children about "white supremacy" and "white privilege" and "a number of negative things that have happened to African Americans within this country."

"But it doesn't speak about when African Americans have fought against white supremacy or fought against oppression," she continued. "So it was very much speaking about the one side, a very negative side, and nothing really about the things black people have accomplished in this country."

Muboyayi's candidacy for school board aims to change what children are being taught. While she supports the idea that black lives matter, she is critical of the school curriculum for leaving out crucial history that shows times when black people rose up against oppression.

"They attempt to cram thousands of years of history of a people into five weeks. And within that five-week period they tend to focus mainly on atrocities," said Muboyayi. "Very briefly do they touch on when black people marched or attempted to fight against injustices.

"There is no balance," she added.

Muboyayi would like to see the school curriculum teach children about slave revolts like the Stono Rebellion of 1739 in South Carolina — the largest slave revolt in Colonial America — and other times in U.S. history where black people fought against oppression to lift themselves up.

"Stories such as that are not told to balance out the narrative that black people in this country have constantly been beaten down but have never risen up," she said.

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