To the editor:

Words are so important because they lead to thoughts. The writer of “CRT message: Out to frighten you” (10/4) used Sheila Kendall’s words, “Am I trying to scare you?” And her answer, “Yes, I am,” to tell Independent readers the goals of the Critical Race Theory should not be taken seriously.

A presentation on CRT was given in New Ulm to “a packed City Hall Council Chamber” and printed in the Independent some time ago. The fourth tenet: “No person has a single identity. A person is not just black or white. A person also has a gender or sexual orientation.”

It is interesting that little children do not see themselves as black or white, but just as fellow children — reminding me of the Bible verse, “A little child shall lead them.”

CRT seeks to identify people, not by their character, but by their color and their gender or sexual orientation. Don’t you find that scary? I do.

The writer of the Forum article once received the Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Award at SMSU. Wasn’t MLK’s challenge to judge people by their character and not their color? What happened to that dream?

Why not let children come to school to learn academic subjects instead of discussing what gender group they belong to or that “white superiority is a factor in maintaining systemic racism”? (quote from the New Ulm Journal report cited above) I would say CRT is very scary. We need to take a stand to keep CRT out of future social studies programs.

Trudy Madetzke

Marshall