Minneapolis Public Schools Bar White and Asian Students From ‘Black Culture’ Courses
New curriculum documents reveal Minneapolis Public Schools is limiting enrollment in certain Black culture classes to Black students only, excluding white and Asian students. The move immediately raises legal and ethical questions about equal treatment in a public system.
These classes count as electives toward graduation, so keeping some students out reduces the options available to them and creates unequal routes to the same diploma. That sort of race-based sorting in a public school is alarming to any parent or taxpayer who believes in fairness.
One syllabus lists a course called “BLACK Culture – Building Lives Acquiring Cultural Knowledge” open only to Black male students, and a companion class, BLACK Culture – Building Lives Acquiring Cultural Knowledge (Queens), limited to Black female students. Those titles make clear who the district intends to exclude. Schools that gatekeep learning by race risk both principle and legal trouble.
How is this not a civil rights problem? Public schools should expand opportunity, not carve it up by skin color.
Defending Education, a group that tracks curriculum content, flagged the district’s ethnic studies offerings and their political tilt. Below is their description of what those classes teach.
Minneapolis Public Schools’ ethnic studies courses feature content that teach students that capitalism and Western culture are exploitative and lead to slavery, colonialism, genocide, and white supremacy.
According to documents obtained through a data practices request, Minneapolis Public Schools’ ethnic studies curriculum features multiple course options which include content such as critical race theory, colonialism, intersectionality, social justice activism, and the pillars of white supremacy. The courses also include texts by Ibram X. Kendi and Howard Zinn.
Records show South High School, the district’s oldest and largest campus, lists both offerings in its 2025–2026 guide. The school serves mostly Black and Hispanic students, yet the classes remain race-restricted on paper.
One syllabus promises to explore “the complexity of the Black male experience” and “the lived reality of Black men in the United States,” while the female-focused course centers on “the experiences of Black girls in public schools.” Those are fine topics to study when classes are open to all.
Imagine the outrage if a predominantly white district shut Black students out of a course on “white culture.” The left would erupt, politicians would demand action, and lawsuits would pile up.
Don’t call it “reverse racism” as if that makes the idea less serious. Racism is racism, regardless of which direction it flows from.
Dan Morenoff, the executive director of the American Civil Rights Project, a public interest law firm, said it’s “extremely hard to imagine how this could possibly be legal under either Title VI [of the Civil Rights Act of 1964] or Title IX [of the Education Amendment of 1972] to literally have programming explicitly open only to one race.”
I’m no Title VI or Title IX scholar, but commonsense and precedent make this look vulnerable in court. Expect lawyers to test it and judges to have the final say.
Diversity and culture are worth celebrating in class, but the right way in public schools is inclusion, not exclusion. Real education opens doors for every student instead of locking them by race.
Policies that sort students by race invite legal fights and erode trust in public education. Parents and taxpayers should demand that the district change course and restore equal access now.
