New Jersey private school teacher quits job over school's 'damaging' critical race theory ideology

An English teacher has quit her job at an elite New Jersey private school because of what she considers its emerging agenda about so-called white privilege and the "hostile culture" the shift has created.  

Dana Stangel-Plowe who taught at Dwight-Englewood School in Bergen County voiced her concerns in a resignation letter.

"Today, I am resigning from a job I love because D-E has changed in ways that undermine its mission and prevent me from holding true to my conscience as an educator," she wrote. "I reject the hostile culture of conformity and fear that has taken hold of our school." 

The school has made a push for students and faculty to "grapple with the whiteness and white identity" in its anti-racism efforts.

Stangel-Plowe said school leader Rodney De Jarnett, told the entire faculty that he would fire everyone if he could to replace them with people of color, according to the DailyMail.

"I believe that D-E is failing our students," she also said. "Over the past few years, the school has embraced an ideology that is damaging to our students' intellectual and emotional growth and destroying any chance at creating a true community among our diverse population."

The school's outline to becoming an anti-racist community asserts that it is "critical to think about whiteness and the overwhelming systemic/historical construct of white privilege and how people live this today."

The resignation of Stangel-Plowe was published by the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, (FAIR) an organization created to combat critical race theory teachings in schools.

FAIR recognized Stangel-Plowe as an "award-winning teacher" and a graduate of Cornell University.

Stangel-Plowe also said students are taught to see themselves not as an individual but as a representative of a group, forcing them to take on a victimhood or privileged mentality.

While supporters of critical race theory say it's intended to draw attention to the everyday struggles faced by people of color and not by whites, Stangel-Plowe says students have become rigid, closed-minded and unwilling to consider alternative perspectives as a result.