By Ronald Sampson
Scott Menzel. Photo credit: azcentral.com
Have you ever felt like someone you knew was living a lie? That you would talk them up but then you realized that you had made a mistake?
I am now starting to feel that way about Scottsdale Unified School District superintendent Scott Menzel.
This blog has covered Menzel quite a bit, and frankly, mostly in a positive way. Indeed, I tended to agree that he had handled some very difficult situations in a deft and utilitarian manner. So this recent Fox News article had my head spinning.
To summarize, a recent interview from his time in his previous role as a superintendent in a Michigan school came to light recently. And while many on the political left talk about how Critical Race Theory is not anything that is seen in public education, his words during this interview seem to come straight from a CRT textbook.
In it he goes through a checklist of progressive racial talking points: he states that white people should feel uncomfortable. He said that the meritocracy of our country is a lie. He touts a book titled “White Fragility”. In one interview, he espouses all of the ideologies that we are told don’t exist in our schools.
While there is a strong possibility that this Michigan school district has far more people of color than Scottsdale (which if we’re to be honest, wouldn’t be too difficult), and that he was simply preaching to the choir, I have to wonder how much he suppressed his real views in order to get his current job. Why he even wanted this job if his views were so far outside of the mainstream here. Was he looking for something cushy, or was he attempting to turn our education system into a progressive wonderland?
After all, going to a city that is truly built on meritocracy more than nearly any in this country when you’re dead set on internalizing their own supposed fragility? I would have to believe that he lied his butt off in his interview process.
This blog has defended him against charges from the hard right wing in the past; I have defended him from the same. But now I can’t help but feel that the wool was pulled over our eyes. And Mr. Menzel has a whole lot of questions to answer.