Minnesota residents furious over school's 'anti-racist' layoff policy
Take Charge Minnesota ambassador Kofi Montzka and former Republican Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Kendall Qualls call the move 'repugnant.'
Some Minnesota residents are furious over a school district's new "anti-racist" layoff policy, prompting one parent to call it "repugnant."
"You think about the discrimination that we've faced in this country back in the fifties and sixties. It was wrong then. It's wrong now," former Republican Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Kendall Qualls told "Fox & Friends."
Qualls reacted to an agreement between the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers union and the school district stating that White teachers will be laid off before teachers of color, regardless of their seniority.
The agreement, which was reached to end a two-week teacher strike last spring, says that starting this school year, "if excessing a teacher who is a member of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers in the site, the district shall excess the next least senior teacher, who is not a member of an underrepresented population."
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Excessing teachers is the process by which staff are reduced at a particular school due to a drop in enrollment, funding or other reasons.
Qualls, a U.S. Army veteran, said the policy is straight from the pages of author Ibram X. Kendi's book "How to Be an Antiracist."
"This book is almost in every school library in the country. And what he basically says in order to remedy past discrimination, the Jim Crow South, we need to implement present discrimination. And for present discrimination, we need to implement future discrimination. It's an infinite loop of evil. It's un-American," said Qualls.
Ibram X. Kendi visits Build to discuss the book Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You at Build Studio on March 10, 2020 in New York City. (Michael Loccisano)
Take Charge Minnesota ambassador Kofi Montzka said that more discrimination cannot solve past discrimination and that racism in and of itself is evil.
"It's wrong and it's illegal. If people really did discriminate against teachers like the Minneapolis Public Schools admit they have done, then they need to remedy that and punish the people who are discriminating, not innocent teachers," said Montzka, an attorney and mom of three.
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Montzka explained further that this also "causes resentment among people of color."
"These policies, no matter what their intent, make it look like we are stupid and dumb and that we can't compete in the marketplace. They make people more racist and life harder for me and my kids and people who look like me," she told Brian Kilmeade.
Fox News' Kelsey Koberg contributed to this report.