Judicial Watch Critical Race Theory Investigation: Records Show Massachusetts School District Segregates Students/Staff Based on Race In ‘Affinity Spaces’

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it received 111 pages of records from Wellesley Public Schools in Massachusetts which confirm the use of “affinity spaces” that divide students and staff based on race as a priority and objective of the school district’s “diversity, equity and inclusion” plan. The school district also admitted that between September 1, 2020 and May 17, 2021, it created “five distinct” segregated spaces.   

Judicial Watch obtained the records after filing a May 17 Massachusetts Public Records Law request for records concerning the number of affinity spaces, the policies regarding their creation and use, the topics discussed, and any analysis of whether affinity spaces that exclude certain races are consistent with state and federal law, which would include the 14^th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the MA Equal Rights Amendment and/or the MA School Attendance Law.

The Wellesley Public School records include a document detailing the school district’s “Equity Strategic Plan 2020-2025” which includes a “District Equity by Design” plan with the stated goal of amplifying student voices by providing “opportunities for affinity spaces for students with shared identity.”

In a section of the document titled “Diversity Staffing,” a stated goal is to “Provide resources for affinity spaces for specialized populations within the wider Faculty/Staff (ie. ALANA, Admin Leaders of Color, LGBTQ+, White Educators for Antiracism, etc.)”

Wellesley Public Schools states in its plan for “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion:” “We will practice risk-taking and challenge one another to continuously examine systems of privilege and bias, and work collectively to disrupt and dismantle inequity in all its forms.” 

In an email on March 18 to Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Charmie R. Curry, the day of the so-called “healing space,” a Wellesley High School fitness & health teacher writes: “I wanted to check first, is it appropriate for me to go to this healing space?” Curry responds: “This time, we want to hold the space for Asian and Asian American students and faculty/staff. I hope this makes sense.”

In an April 12 email to school district colleagues, Curry notes that “Equity Literacy” is required coursework in the district. Curry writes: “There is still plenty of time to enroll in the two required courses – ‘Understanding Equity and Inequity’ and ‘Learning to Be a Threat to Inequity.’ These courses, with a keen focus on helping us to build/sharpen our structural ideological lenses, are essential to our ability to address inequities in our community. Our students who are being impacted by inequities such as racism, homophobia, ableism, etc. need to be equipped to respond today to their needs in order to positively impact their experiences.”

In addition, the school district admitted that it does not have any records analyzing whether such segregated spaces violate the U.S. Constitution, the Massachusetts Constitution or any other law.

“These documents confirm how Wellesley Public Schools segregated students and staff by race without thinking about what’s legal in pursuit of extremist critical race theory agenda,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Wellesley marks the latest battle in Judicial Watch’s fight to expose the hard-left “Critical Race Theory” agenda that is being pushed nationwide.  

In May, Judicial Watch obtained records from Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) which include documents related to their “Anti-racist system audit” and critical race theory classes.

The documents reveal that students of “Maryland’s Largest School District” who attended Thomas Pyle Middle School’s social justice class were taught that the phrase “Make America Great Again” was an example of “covert white supremacy.” The phrase is ranked on a pyramid just below “lynching,” “hate crimes,” “the N-word” and “racial slurs.” They were also taught that “white privilege” means being favored by school authorities and having a positive relationship with the police.

The documents show that Montgomery County Public Schools allocated over $454,000 for an “Anti-racist system audit” by The Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium, a company that claims that their “expertise in using intersectionality as part of its theory of change makes us uniquely positioned to conduct the Anti-Racist Audit and mitigate the root causes of systemic barriers.”

In February, Judicial Watch filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of David Flynn, the father of two Dedham Public School students, who was removed from his position as head football coach after exercising his right as a citizen to raise concerns about his daughter’s seventh-grade history class curriculum being changed to include biased coursework on politics, race, gender equality, and diversity.

You can watch a Judicial Watch video presentation on the Flynn case here.