By Robert J. Hansen | Special to The OBSERVER
A San Jacinto councilmember who came between a man and a Black female student at a Temecula school board workshop on critical race theory March 22 is being threatened with a lawsuit.
“His whole starting point was yelling at a kid,” Hawkins said. “The fact that he went to charge towards a kid and the young lady went to stop him, my reaction was to make sure that the kid was safe.”
Childs has hired attorney Tracy Henderson, who sent a cease-and-desist letter to the councilmember threatening a lawsuit if he does not publicly apologize, remove from social media “false videos” and statements about Childs, and obtain retractions from news outlets.
Brian Hawkins interceded when Troy Childs had a tense moment with Jaunae Brown, 17, as the workshop, hosted by the Temecula Valley Unified school board, deteriorated into a confrontation between several attendees and demonstrators, videos show.
Hawkins said in a phone interview that he isn’t concerned about the potential lawsuit.
“It’s [Childs] in the video,” Hawkins said.
Henderson also accused Hawkins of coming to the meeting “with a group of activists, dressed as an activist with the intent to disrupt it.”
Hawkins said he does not know what Henderson meant by saying he was dressed as an activist or the relevance of how he was dressed.
“I guess because I’m Black,” Hawkins said. “I don’t even know what ‘dressed like an activist’ means.”
Justice Reform Coalition, a Sacramento advocacy organization, is assisting Hawkins in his legal response.
“Ms. Henderson’s letter is a sad attempt to intimidate and censor Councilman Hawkins, who is also a pastor, from shedding light and voicing his concern [over] the Temecula school board’s racial climate and blueprint,” on critical race theory, said Rachel Rodriguez, the coalition’s criminal justice chair.
Rodriguez said the letter frivolously quotes and skirts the law to shroud Childs’ true intentions and evade his accountability.
“Tracy Henderson tries to divert the blame by blatantly using racial stereotyping and profiling to paint Councilman Hawkins as a menacing Black man with a hidden agenda,’” Rodriguez said.
At the meeting, Hawkins had quickly rushed to stand between Childs and Brown as the man towered over and yelled at her.
“There shouldn’t be an adult in a child’s face like that,” Hawkins said.
After Hawkins and Childs exchanged words and other attendees came between them, deputies escorted Childs from the meeting.
Brown said she was stepping between Childs and another student demonstrator Childs yelled at.
“It was a scary encounter having this man towering over me. I just didn’t want this to escalate any more than it already had,” Brown said in a phone interview, adding the atmosphere was charged from the beginning.
“You could cut the tension in the room with a knife,” Brown said.
She said the resolution banning critical race theory was vague and did not clearly outline what was allowed to be taught.
“That’s why [students] looked at it as [the school board] trying to censor our education and our history,” Brown said. “Whether that be Black, Latino or Asian, they’re just trying to censor minority history and that wasn’t something that we wanted to see.”
Dissent at the March 22 event also was aimed at the board’s decision to ban critical race theory and the district’s hiring of an anti-critical race theory consultant.
The Temecula Valley Unified school board in December voted 3-2 to ban critical race theory, with newly elected members Jennifer Wiersma, Joseph Komrosky and Danny Gonzalez casting the votes in favor.
All three, whose campaigns were supported by Inland Empire Family PAC, were sworn in Dec. 13, three days before the vote.
In response, about 300 students, Brown included, from all three of Temecula Valley Unified’s high schools staged a walkout Jan. 13.
A political action committee last week created a petition calling for the immediate resignations of Komrosky and Wiersma, and to censure Gonzalez.
After passage of the vote, the district board spent $15,000 to hire a Paso Robles attorney, Christopher Arend, as a consultant to give two days of lectures on critical race theory to district teachers and administrators. The workshop intended to have Arend “explain” critical race theory to parents and teachers.
Arend was on the Paso Robles Joint Unified School District board from 2018 to 2022. During that time, the district became one of California’s first school districts to ban critical race theory. Arend is a self-proclaimed critical race theory expert and does not hold a teaching credential.
The Temecula Valley district has yet to comment.
Critical race theory is a body of legal scholarship, the main idea of which is that racism is not only a product of individual bias and prejudice, but embedded in American legal systems and policies.
Political conflict over critical race theory was fanned by conservative activist Christopher Rufo. In a Sept. 2, 2020, appearance on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” he called for an immediate executive order by then-President Donald Trump “to stamp out this destructive, divisive, pseudoscientific ideology.”
About two weeks later, Trump told the nation that critical race theory teaches that the United States is “wicked and racist.”
The campaigns and agendas of Temecula Valley’s newly elected conservative board members bear a striking resemblance to Trump’s messaging. The resolution passed by the Temecula school board calls critical race theory “divisive” and says it is “an ideology based on false assumptions about the United States of America and … that assigns moral fault to individuals solely based on an individual’s race and, therefore, is itself a racist ideology.”
Brown and other students said they felt the ban was a form of accommodation for the district’s white students.
Brown, who is often the only Black student in her classes at Temecula Valley High School, said some history teachers now are afraid about being reprimanded for teaching about the civil rights movement or Reconstruction.
“They’re afraid that they won’t be able to teach the more controversial historical figures like Malcolm X or the Black Panther Party without receiving backlash from the district,” Brown said. “They want to teach all of history.”
Temecula Valley is at least the third California school district to ban critical race theory, following Orange County school district Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified in April 2022 and Paso Robles Joint Unified in August 2021.
The district did not respond to requests for comment on whether the ban will affect curriculum, or if changes such as removing certain books from schools – as is happening in Florida – already have been made.
Temecula Mayor Zak Schwank also did not respond to requests for comment.
A demonstration and press conference at Temecula City Hall are planned for Saturday, April 8, with Councilmember Hawkins, Temecula Valley students and Justice Reform Coalition.