New York Public Schools principal Mark Federman, a caucasian, distributed handouts for parents to identify and reflect on their ‘Whiteness,’ the NY Post reported.
The handouts included ‘the 8 White Identities’ list and its infographic in the form of a rating meter. The list was made based on a curriculum by Barnor Hesse, an associate professor of African American Studies at Northeastern University in Illinois.
The infographic shows a rating meter with the color red to green, indicating bad to good. A red meter labeled ‘White Supremacist’ on one end shifts to a color green meter labeled ‘White Abolitionist’ on the other.

Parents first shared the document with the school as “part of ongoing anti-racist work in the school community and is one of many resources the schools utilize,” according to the New York City Department of Education.
Why it matters:
The dissemination of ‘the 8 White Identities’ is merely a small part of today’s intensifying education on critical race theory.
- In 2019, Major De Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza funded a $23 million citywide ‘implicit-bias training‘ that will continue to 2022.
- To many, anti-racist teaching can impose antagonism and self-hatred on Whites and perpetuate identity politics.
- Four former Department of Education administrators filed a $90 million lawsuit against Chancellor Richard Carranza’s training for allegedly creating a hostile environment towards white employees.
What they’re saying:
- Barnor Hesse on ‘The 8 White identities’:
- “There is a regime of whiteness, and there are action-oriented white identities.”
- White Abolitionist means ‘Changing institutions, dismantling whiteness, and not allowing whiteness to reassert itself.’
- People of color can also be white: ‘White Benefit, Sympathetic to a set of issues but only privately; won’t speak/act’ because they ‘benefitting through whiteness in public (some POC are in this category as well).’

- Christopher F. Rufo, a director of Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth and Poverty and a CityJournal Writer tweeted: ‘This is the new language of public education.’
The fallout:
Thanks to the Summer of love, filled with protests in the name of racial justice, NYPD reported a 79% increase in murder.
We’ll see how re-education in the name of anti-racism benefits New Yorkers this time.