WHAT I FOUND ABOUT CRITICAL RACE THEORY AND WHY IT SHOULDN'T BE TAUGHT

 Submitted by: P McMillan

WHAT I FOUND ABOUT CRITICAL RACE THEORY  AND WHY  IT SHOULDN'T BE TAUGHT State legislatures are wise to ban schools from promoting race essentialism, collective guilt, and racial superiority theory.    By Christopher F. Rufo July 8, 2021 (emphasis added)   America is up in arms about critical race theory in public schools. Lawmakers in California and Washington, and school districts in Oregon have introduced or mandated critical race theory in the state curriculum; lawmakers in Texas, Idaho, Oklahoma, and, most recently, Florida, have passed legislation prohibiting teachers from promoting critical race theory in the classroom.    But despite all of the furor surrounding these bills, many Americans still do not have a firm grasp of what critical race theory is and how it manifests in public schools. I’m an investigative reporter with the public policy think tank the Manhattan Institute and have recently completed a multi-part series about critical race theory in public schools – and what I discovered shocked me to the core.    First, a definition: critical race theory is an academic discipline that claims that the United States was founded on racism, oppression, and white supremacy – and that these forces are still at the root of our society. That's how it is defined in practice. But bureaucrats implementing critical race theory will say it is an academic concept arguing race is a social construct, and that racism is not only individual bias or prejudice but also something embedded in legal and political systems.   Critical race theory reformulates the old Marxist dialectic of oppressor and oppressed, replacing the class categories of bourgeoisie and proletariat with the identity categories of white and black. But the basic conclusion is the same: In order to liberate man, society must be fundamentally transformed through moral, economic, and political revolution.   In simple terms, critical race theory can be seen as a form of “race-based Marxism;” they share a common conceptual framework and critical race theory was explicitly derived from “critical theory,” a 20th-century ideology sometimes called “neo-Marxism.”   To the surprise of many Americans, this basic package of ideas has become part of the curriculum in many school districts across the country. The resulting lessons, as I’ve discovered through my reporting, are deeply divisive and I believe border on political indoctrination.    In Cupertino, California, an elementary school forced third-graders to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities, then rank themselves according to their “power and privilege.”   In Springfield, Missouri, a middle school forced teachers in a diversity training session to locate themselves on an “oppression matrix.” The trainers told straight, white, English-speaking, Christian males that they are members of the oppressor class and handouts warned of “covert white supremacy.”    In New York, a public school principal sent parents literature including "tools for action" and touting “white traitors” and advocating for full “white abolition.”    And in Portland, Oregon, my investigation found that students are not only subjected to a critical race theory curriculum but trained to develop their so-called “white identity” and are taught about racial justice in the terms of "revolution and/or resistance" – which sometimes culminates in students participating in violent protests.   In practice, critical race theory in schools is a form of state-sanctioned racism. The lessons traffic in three key concepts: race essentialism, collective guilt, and racial superiority theory.   First, these lessons reduce individual students to the racial categories of “white,” “black,” and “people of color,” which are then loaded with value connotations – “white” students are labeled “oppressors,” while “black” students are labeled “oppressed.”   Next, this framework teaches students to think that they bear responsibility for and are the beneficiaries of historical crimes committed by individuals who shared the same skin color; consequently, they must atone for their so-called “white privilege."  Critical race theorists in practice sometimes refer to this as  “internalized racial superiority” within white people.   Finally, critical race theory ascribes a moral superiority to individuals based on their race – whites are deemed inherently racist and oppressive because, a Buffalo Public Schools lesson phrased it, "all white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism;" people of color, by contrast, are deemed by this theory inherently virtuous and laboratory.    State legislatures, worried that children will be indoctrinated into this destructive ideology, are absolutely right to prohibit these lessons in public schools. Critical race theorists have the right the express their beliefs as individuals, but taxpayers are not obligated to subsidize their beliefs and incorporate them into the school curriculum.   Legislation prohibiting critical race theory achieves three important protections:  First, they protect students’ and teachers’ First Amendment right of conscience – they cannot be compelled to believe in racial theories that violate their sense of basic dignity. Second, they uphold the basic premise of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees that individuals must be treated equally under the law, regardless of race.    Third, the legislation ensures that a state’s public institutions reflect the values of the public – in a representative democracy, voters decide which values to transmit through public schools, and legislators have the right, even the duty, to shape the curriculum to those ends.    Ultimately, the beauty of state legislation is that it is politically neutral. The legislation in Texas, for instance, prohibits schools from requiring or making part of a course the ideas that any race is “inherently superior to another,” that an individual “bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race,” or that an individual should “receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race.” The bills would outlaw a Klan-sponsored curriculum, as well as a CRT-sponsored curriculum.   Liberals, moderates, and conservatives should unite behind this simple proposition: public schools should not promote state-sanctioned racism, no matter the intention and no matter the target.  Americans of all backgrounds should support this legislation – and ask why, after decades of progress, some political factions want to drag the country back into the ugly politics of racial division.   Christopher F. Rufo is an American the director of several documentary films. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributor to its magazine, City Journal. Formerly, he was a research fellow at the Discovery Institute.

 

 

Fact Check: Cori Bush & Maxine Waters - July 4th    By: Kathleen Brush, Ph.D. July 8, 2021   Cori Bush: Black people still aren’t free. Answer: Ridiculous America is the only global power in the world to elect a minority to the highest office of the land – twice. She has fifty-seven current black Congresspeople, a black woman is the first elected female to occupy the oval office, and black mayors lead 1/3rd of the nation’s 100 largest cities. African Americans in politics, industry, and sports are globally recognized and admired around the world. There is no nation in the world where a minority holds this much power. This claim is absurd. Congresswomen Bush might want to focus on the black murderers in her state that are free.    Blacks are killed by blacks 90% of the time, and distrust of police, and fear of retaliation limits witnesses from coming forward.    In Bush’s home state of Missouri, in 2020 90% of homicide victims in St. Louis were black, and 61% of cases remain open. Homicide in St. Louis was up 36% in 2020.   Cori Bush: The freedom they are referring to is for white people? Answer: False ●  African Americans are the most prosperous and educated black population in the world.  ●  Latino household income is higher than exists in any Latin American nation.  ●  Asian Americans are the most educated and most highly compensated racial group in America.  ●  Five black women count among the 100 most influential women in the world. Four are from the United States.    Maxine Waters tweeted the names of 5 black people killed by police. Answer: And the police? Thirty-seven officers were murdered in the first 5 months of 2021. This year there have been 161 police line-of-dutydeaths. An officer is 3.75 times more likely to be killed by a black person than a white person.    Maxine Waters. In 1776 the founder wrote: All men are created equal. Only white men.  Answer: False. In 1776 no one was free. The Revolutionary War was concluded by treaty in 1783. Soldiers were mostly unfree, poor white men, and most stayed poor and unfree after the war. In 1776 laws limited freedoms for: blacks; Native Americans; white Catholics, Jews, indentured servants, and poor people; and all immigrants. Poor whites would be able to vote throughout the United States in 1830. In 1863, blacks were freed but white indentured servants remained unfree. Some until 1930.    Cori Bush: This land is stolen.  Answer: Untrue ●  Land in America was originally claimed by Britain and France under the Doctrine of Discovery and the Right of Conquest.  ●  Most Native American tribes sided with France in the French and Indian War, and Britain in the Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812.  ●  As losers, France and Britain conceded large swathes of Native American land.  ●  Additionally, many settlers given grants of land by the Crown decided to pay the Native Americans for land.  ●  Native Americans had surplus land and were anxious to trade for goods, like arms.  ●  It was regular for Native Americans to also pay off debts with land. ● ●  After 1776 all Indian land was to be acquired by treaty, and it was.    For some, an issue of unfair power relationships left lingering feelings of land theft. To address this, the Indian Claims Commission operated between 1946 and 1978.  After this, claims continue to be negotiated with lawsuits. By 2016 about $7 billion in claims had been paid.  No indigenous population in the world has been courted more to ensure fair compensation for their land or received the protected freedoms, concessions, and financial transfers as Native Americans