USD 383 Meeting Comments on BetterLesson & CRT Harm – John Matta
(Bold text was omitted during my verbal comments due to time constraints)
This is a story shared by a woman in Kansas. These are her words.
There have been numerous incidents of harm from CRT tenets and values that I have experienced as a graduate student. Some of the worst moments were with my advisor, who was a woman of color and a CRT scholar.
My needs as her advisee were not as important as other students’ needs—because I am White. For example, I did the work of second author in papers, but when they were to be published, my name was moved to fourth or fifth because she wanted to put students of color ahead of me. I am not making assumptions, she told me this was her reasoning. Author order matters in academic papers.
This advisor used Twitter often to communicate her thoughts on CRT and White people. At one point, she was receiving threatening messages because of her tweets about White hate and wishing for White genocide. It was frightening in our department because we had to lock down the building in response to the threats she was receiving. Soon after this, I was attending a class she taught, and we had to Tweet about CRT as an assignment. She told us if we had a problem with it, to email her. So, I emailed her to tell her it made me nervous to tweet anything because of what had happened to her. She never responded, at least not during the course.
She responded in a meeting a year later, however, saying that I was “centering my White femininity” when I emailed her saying I was scared to Tweet. She said I showed my commitment to whiteness and White supremacy. This was in a meeting with other students—my friends and colleagues. I was so upset, that I had a panic attack when I left. I was driving home, and my panic attack turned into a seizure—I had never had a seizure before. I went off the road, rolled the car three times, and hit a tree. I don’t remember any of this—a woman was driving by and saw it happen and told the sheriff who came when she called 911. Thankfully, I didn’t kill myself or anyone else. But I couldn’t drive for six months, and I continue to have seizures when I am stressed out. I still can’t drive.
I have cut ties with this advisor. However, she thinks I cut ties with her because of my “whiteness and racism”. I know this because she tweeted about me. She said YT (White) women get away with having a tantrum and don’t have to answer for it. Many of her Twitter followers came to her side and said things about me that are not true. Although she didn’t say my name in her tweet, I knew it was me, and it still felt like a group of adults and faculty bullying me.
We had a Zoom meeting the last time I spoke with her. It was when I told her I had to find a different advisor because I got so stressed out when I worked with her that I was having seizures. I told her specifically that the time she talked about me and my White femininity made me have a panic attack. She said it wasn’t her fault I can’t take criticism and hung up on me.
There are more incidents that happened during my time in this department involving other faculty and students. But the harmful things that happened to me are based in CRT. The past five years have been ruinous to my health and well-being.
I didn’t know who I could talk to because it was taboo to talk against CRT in our department. If there had been someone in authority who listened to me and could do something about it, it would have helped. The only answer would have been to find a different advisor for me, which I have done for myself.
Submitted by: John Matta, FAIR Flint Hills, KS Chapter Leader
I have been able to hear and receive email stories from people across the USA and Kansas as part of my work with FAIR. This is just one of many such stories. The author asked to remain anonymous. The CRT tenants and values she mentions match up well with the BetterLesson material in the staff memo on BetterLesson, the BetterLesson website, and reading list.
