Former educator Kali Fontanilla rips colleges pushing DEI rhetoric in trainings, courses: 'Race hustlers'
Kali Fontanilla, former California high school teacher, discusses the lucrative industry of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) on college campuses.
A former California high school teacher criticized top universities' pushes to bring diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) rhetoric to everyone with lucrative programs geared toward the ideology, claiming it only creates a greater racial divide.
"These are race hustlers," Kali Fontanilla said Monday on "Fox & Friends First."
"They're learning that DEI is very lucrative. Imagine getting paid $12,000 to record a lesson about how you're a microagressive racist if you're a White person that wants to touch someone's hair," she added, alluding to allegations and stereotypes that White people rudely ask to touch different hair textures without permission.
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Former California high school teacher Kali Fontanilla criticized elite universities' DEI pushes as they rake in massive sums of money for programs. (Fox & Friends First/Screengrab)
Several top U.S. universities, including Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Georgetown are raking in cash by offering DEI certificates to potential students looking to get certified in training to reduce unconscious bias and assess the history of "structural inequities."
Fox News anchor Ashley Strohmier read a statement from The University of Pennsylvania responding to questions about its $9,368 DEI certificate.
"Today more than ever, there is an urgent need to identify and address the social histories and contexts of structural inequities such as systemic racism, sexism, classism, queerphobia, xenophobia and other forms of institutional discrimination," the statement read.
Harvard similarly touted their $12,000 program's ability to make students more conscious of "bias and marginalization" to "build an inclusive organizational culture."
Harvard is among the institutions offering DEI certificate programs with a large price tag. (Photo by Michael Fein/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Fontanilla pushed back against these sentiments and others like them, alleging that DEI rhetoric only isolates people of color and asks others to view them differently.
"[This shows that] these corporations are paying these activists to come and train their employees and maybe have a DEI specialist in their corporate setting." she said.
"They're basically out to monitor people based on how they interact with each other based on race, and I'm like, ‘Please, can we not do that right now? We are at a crisis in this nation, and we need to make sure that we’re getting along, and I only see this as causing more racism.'"
She shared her own experience during the segment, noting that DEI curriculum had begun to infiltrate teacher trainings during her tenure working in the public school system and she asked others not to treat her differently based on race.
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"I do not want a coworker to come up to me and say, ‘Because of your skin color, I’m going to take a step back and listen more' or ‘I’m going to let you go first,' or any of this hand-holding pandering that they're doing…
"It's just getting really out of hand," she said.
University of Pennsylvania student Peter Kapp and Stanford College Republican Walker Stewart joined "Fox & Friends" on Monday to offer a student perspective on the DEI push, both alleging, though the programs are not required yet, they are strongly encouraged to get the jobs they want.
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"I do think that, in today's workforce, you're going to become required to take these courses with little to no educational value because of the virtue signaling that we have," Kapp told Brian Kilmeade.
Stewart said he believes the workforce is "heading in that direction" and predicted that required courses will become more common in the near future.
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