It didn’t take Martin Luther King Jr. Day to shed light on our continuing fight against racial and ethnic discrimination. For me, all it took were the comments of a parent at a local school board meeting.

In this particular case, it was a session of the Davis County School District, but it could have well been any of the districts in Utah. As First Lady Abby Cox, a native of rural Sanpete County noted at the meeting, “I was not aware that some hurtful acts were the result of racism. I think I have grown, learned from other people’s perspectives, and I’ve tried to teach my children to be aware of what somebody else is going through.” 

A U.S. Department of Justice investigation of the school district over a five-year period found numerous examples of students using racial epithets, derogatory racial comments, and physical assaults. There is a current discussion about the causes – possibly racially-oriented – over the bullying of a fifth grader who took her own life.

Then there is the experience of a now adult Black student who moved to Utah after her parents converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At her Davis County high school she was voted Homecoming Queen only to be brought in by her principal who questioned whether she should ride in the school parade due to upset parents. Later, she was told by administrators that many white parents were angered that she had been selected for the Presidential Scholarship at Utah State University. She was even counseled by an adult church leader and told that she should avoid dating young white men. 

This didn’t happen in the Deep South in the 1950s. This occurred some 30 years ago in Utah, and the school board rightly addressed the DOJ investigation by forming a committee to review future allegations of racial discrimination in its schools.

But some white parents objected, supposedly taking their ammunition from the ongoing debate over the virtually non-existent Critical Race Theory which had led to violence and assassination threats against some school board members across the U.S.

One of these parents stood up and argued against the meddling of the Justice Department. His statement: “Parents have had enough of the woke-ism. It’s nauseating.”

Sorry guy, but the incidents in the school are not your silly claim of “woke-ism.” It’s racism, plain and simple. You don’t denigrate Latino, Black, Asian, or Polynesian students who win scholarships. You don’t tell minority students they should be afraid of being elected dance royalty. You don’t make students feel unsafe or say they “stink” because of their racial or ethnic background.

And as far as those who oppose teaching the history of racial oppression, you don’t muzzle history teachers and whitewash the immoral and often deadly incidents targeting racial minorities in all 50 states.

What is “nauseating” is that some parents are resistant to Abby Cox’s commitment to “being aware of what somebody else is going through” and, if need be, calling it for what it is: a fear of a minority person succeeding more than you!