Mary Margaret Olohan
Media reports surfacing Tuesday and Wednesday went after Chip and Joanna Gaines for donating to a campaign run by Chip Gaines’ sister that critiques critical race theory.
The “Fixer Upper” stars donated $1,000 to Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District (GCISD) School Board candidate Shannon Braun’s campaign, The Dallas Morning News reported last week.
Braun has called Critical Race Theory (CRT) the “single most divisive threat that we have in education.”
“I will vote down anything and everything that further promotes critical race theory in our school district and actively work to remove all critical race theory,” Braun said in a video message on her campaign Facebook page.
CRT holds that America is fundamentally racist, yet it teaches people to view every social interaction and person in terms of race. Its adherents pursue “antiracism” through the end of merit, objective truth and the adoption of race-based policies.
Media outlets such as The Hill, Business Insider, the San Antonio Current, and the Dallas Observer headlined stories about the Gaines’ donations without mentioning that Braun is Chip Gaines sister. These headlines instead focused on Braun’s anti-CRT stance.
In a statement, GCISD pushed back on the idea that CRT is included in GCISD’s curriculum.
“The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, or TEKS, are state standards for what students should know and be able to do in each grade level,” GCISD said in a statement, according to the Hill.
“These are adopted by the State Board of Education and are then shared with school districts across the state to determine curriculum to best meet these standards,” the statement continued. ‘As we encourage our students to take ownership of their learning, they often have choice in how they approach an assignment or the topic they research and study, as long as they can demonstrate mastery of the TEKS. This does not mean, however, that Critical Race Theory is part of GCISD’s curriculum,”
The Gaines family also faced criticism in 2017 for going to a church that takes a traditional Christian view on marriage: that marriage should be between a man and a woman. They did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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