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Elite Christian School In New York Considers Racially Discriminatory Hiring Practices

Grace Church School considered instituting two different sets of hiring practices, one for white people, one for non-white people.

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A leaked draft hiring manual obtained by The Federalist reveals that Grace Church School in New York considered using two different sets of hiring practices on the basis of the candidate’s race and ethnicity in a move that would discriminate against internal white applicants.

The school has been the center of racially charged controversies since a teacher went public last spring with complaints about “woke” “indoctrination” of students. The teacher, Paul Rossi, soon departed the school.

New information reveals the elite Christian school, which charges a tuition of nearly $60,000 per year, also laid out a method for practicing organized racial discrimination in a document titled “DRAFT Hiring Manual.” Topher Nichols, a spokesman for Grace Church School, told The Federalist that an official hiring manual has not been adopted. He did not address the racially based exceptions in the draft.

The manual begins by explaining that it intends to provide a “useful starting point” before going on to explain that the school seeks to engage in “anti-bias hiring.” It also remarks, “We seek to align our work with best practices for anti-racist institutions.”

Standard Hiring Practice

The standard hiring practice was described in the manual and was notably complex. It consisted of 12 different and multifaceted steps. The standard hiring practice required different employees of the school, including in human resources, the hiring committee, the hiring manager, and the assistant head to take part in the effort.

This lengthy process includes the creation of a hiring team and the appointment of a hiring manager, the HR and the assistant head working together, and multiple rounds of interviews.

The document noted there isn’t a set number of candidates that must be considered, establishing “the size of the pool determined by the hiring team’s sense of its strength and diversity,” an admission that race, not just merit, will factor into employment with the school. 

Discrimination Against White Job-Seekers

The manual listed a number of exceptions to the rule, one of which was “When there is an exceptional internal candidate of color.” Should this racial criteria be met, the 12-step process could be bypassed.

It goes on to explain “When that candidate is a person of color, the Head of School may determine that the time that could be saved by avoiding a Potemkin search — i.e., one in which the school goes through the motions of a process whose outcome is already clear — merits appointing the internal candidate without going through the full search process.”

Such a search must still be conducted if the exceptional candidate is not a person of color, the document says, assuming that other exceptional criteria are not met. Other exceptions, it says, can only be made if a role must be quickly filled for student safety, an exceptional candidate is about to accept another offer, or if the head would like to change the name of a role without significantly altering the work. An exception may also be made if the internal pool is “deep and diverse.” 

Thus, the school has considered enshrining racial discrimination as an explicit aspect of their hiring process, by purposefully instituting different sets of hiring processes based on applicants’ race or ethnicity. 

This means that, should the practices in the draft be adopted, a non-white person might be hired without having to compete against any other applicants, while an equally qualified white applicant would be required to contend with a variety of other applicants, as Grace Church invests time and resources to advertise the position to the candidate’s competitors. 

Belying this document, Grace Church School recently reassured parents and teachers in a statement on anti-racism, which claimed “Antiracism is not a zero-sum game in which we are taking resources away from one group to give to another.”  

Despite the school’s claimed opposition to racism, this leaked document proves the institution has considered engaging in systemic anti-white discrimination against members of their own community. This professed opposition to racism was present at several points in the manual. 

One section claims that Grace Church strives to be a school that “tells the truth about racism and the harm it causes to members of the school community” while envisioning “a just future where all feel an abiding sense of belonging regardless of their Identities” and being committed to “the work of anti-racism and the cause of justice.”

Sparking Racial Animosity and Division

As Grace Church speaks the language of diversity, equity, and inclusion, with incessant appeals to anti-racism, previous controversies and even their current website display both outright racial animosity and a concerted effort to divide students on the basis of race. 

Grace Church School is no stranger to controversy and appears to have a history of anti-white practices. Previously leaked audio indicated Head of School George Davison admitting that the school was “demonizing white people for being born” through what it erroneously refers to as “anti-racism” initiatives.  

The school also advertised that they’ve worked in partnership with Pollyanna Inc, an organization that crafts curriculum laden with critical race theory and racial grievance politics. The leftwing organization is also set to host an online event in defense of CRT.

Despite such clear evidence of racial division that is the hallmark of CRT, Nichols said in a statement to The Federalist that the school doesn’t “teach critical race theory as a discipline or subject or train teachers to do so.”

Racially Segregating Students

Like the Parish Episcopal School in Dallas, Texas, Grace Church School also hosts affinity groups. These are racially segregated groups where “those that share an identity, such as race, religion or gender, come together with an advisor” for conversations about identity.

Both schools are affiliated with the National Association of Independent Schools, a leftwing private school accreditation organization. Grace Church School notes that affinity groups are distinct from “alliance groups,” which are not racially exclusive.

The affinity groups begin in middle school and continue through high school, with groups like the Student of Color Affinity Group, which seeks to “offer opportunities for social-emotional and positive racial identity development” and SWAG, the Student White Anti-Racism Group, being promoted on the school website.

There’s also BICONS+, a club for “Bi/Pan/Queer/Questioning” students, or anyone else who finds himself “in the middle of the Kinsey scale,” which is named after Alfred Kinsey, a leftwing researcher of sexuality whose experiments featured acts of pedophilia. 

The Grace Church School is only one of several elite, private, NAIS-affiliated schools that similarly teach their students. The Federalist previously revealed that one Dallas Christian school had been lying to parents about teaching CRT, while another private school in the same area had been hosting racially segregated school clubs.