Sharif El-Mekki, an ‘Extremist’ Black nationalist who believes Black students ought to be taught exclusively by same-race teachers has received $20 million in funding from major donors, including Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
Sharif El-Mekki is a former middle and high school teacher who has been vocal about anti-racism education in public schools, and also spent time as an adviser to Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, as reported by The Free Press, while also running the Center for Black Educator Development (CBED).
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CEBD is a nonprofit whose mission is to create a world where “all Black students are taught by high-quality, same-race teachers” and “all teachers demonstrate high levels of expertise in anti-racist mindsets,” according to the organization’s website.
According to a Daily Mail report, the nonprofit has amassed more than $19.5 million in assets, with significant contributions coming in from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which donated over $1.4 million, particularly between 2020 and 2021.
Other notable donors include NBCUniversal, Nike, the Bezos Family Foundation, and also the University of Pennsylvania School of Education.
The organization has also reportedly secured at least $560,000 in contracts with the Philadelphia School District to address educational inequalities and confront what they deem as the nation’s “racist history.”
CBED claims to have trained more than 1,000 teachers nationwide, with a keen focus on what it calls “liberation education”, which is aimed at combating systemic racism in American institutions, including schools.
The nonprofit also developed educational materials in collaboration with the Pennsylvania Department of Education, and emphasized that education is a “political act” that can “upend white supremacy” and challenge the use of education as a tool of oppression.
El-Mekki earns $233,410 every year from the organization, and originates from a family of activists, as his parents were members of the Black Panther Party and moved to Iran when he was in middle school, following his mother’s conversion to Islam.
His mother, Aisha El-Mekki, praised Iran’s former leader Ayatollah Khomeini for standing up to the U.S. and other superpowers, and her son seems to have threaded a similar path in his fight against racism.
The ‘Extremist’ black nationalist also expressed admiration for Iran’s education system, indicating that the country produces more engineers, doctors, and scientists than many others.
However, he has heavily-criticized the U.S., and called it an “anti-Black and anti-intellectual” nation.
