Former CRT scandal chief sues Grapevine-Colleyville ISD

Black caregiver – who left his job at the Grapevine-Colleyville School District amid backlash against “critical racial theory” sues the district and one of the school board members.

The lawsuit, filed Friday, alleges trustee Tammy Nakamura defamed former principal James Whitfield by calling educators like him “poison” and making other public comments in violation of a settlement agreement reached when he left the district last school year. year.

The lawsuit alleges that Nakamura, a conservative trustee, made public comments in June in which she called Whitfield a “total activist” and said that a letter denouncing discrimination was “a straw that broke the camel’s back … because of which he was fired.” “.

“That’s why we made this agreement to end it. I won’t talk negatively about you, and you won’t talk negatively about me,” Whitfield told NBC 5. “We’re going to go our separate ways. Like I said, I did it”.

Whitfield says he just wants to move forward and focus on education.

Grapevine-Colleyville ISD declined to discuss the lawsuit. Nakamura has yet to respond to NBC 5’s request for comment.

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What is Critical Race Theory?

Critical race theory is a way of thinking about American history through the lens of racism. Scholars developed it in the 1970s and 1980s in response to what they saw as a lack of racial progress since the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. It is based on the idea that racism is a systemic phenomenon in national institutions and that they serve to maintain white dominance in society. The architects of the theory argue that the United States was founded on the theft of land and labor and that federal law preserved unequal treatment of people based on race. Proponents also believe that race is culturally created, not biologically. Read more about CRT here.