A white grievance backlash has arrived in Massachusetts, to hear the liberal media tell it. Well-funded and well-connected GOP power players masquerading as aggrieved parents have been “harassing educators for policies they deem unfair to white students and antithetical to their values,” per a Boston Globe columnist. It’s “white backlash politics” that’s “clearly coordinated, with right-wing money” and engaged in a campaign of “whipping suburban parents into a frenzy” to win elections for the Republicans.

Sounds sinister! But if you talk to the parents at the center of the ongoing fight over Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in public schools in Newton, Massachusetts, you’ll find something very different. You won’t find MAGA Republicans opposing DEI in the schools, but rather liberal Democrats who have noticed a shift in their children’s school system priorities. And their complaints have nothing to do with being white.

One parent had a child excluded from an affinity group (a race-based social group), while other parents were dismayed to find an accelerated math program that was in place for years had been scrapped due to equity concerns. Still others were troubled to learn that their children’s English and History instruction was filled with language dividing everyone into categories of oppressor or oppressed.