Opinion: Critical Race Theory Lies and People Who Tell Them

Listen carefully to the language used by proponents of critical race theory (CRT). That language is intentionally false and misleading. It was invented to sell folks many Big Lies they couldn’t sell with honest language.

For example, diversity, equity, inclusion and access was invented to sound like equal opportunity and fairness, and to replace that lode star with racial essentialism and lies about western democracy, values and history. Social justice and affirmative action are racist terms to displace the bedrock of individual liberty and rights with the injustice of group rights and to divide people and promote continual strife and destructive revolution.

Claims that all whites (but no non-whites) are racist and exaggerations of white privilege and white supremacy are dominant features of CRT proponents.

The concepts of oppressor and oppressed groups are borrowed directly from Marxism to sell the lie that fundamental facts of society never improve, so the oppressed must turn to violence. Or at least demand that others use their preferred pronouns, recognize ever proliferating genders, and be governed by alleged victims’ personal subjective truths.

With CRT, accountability and tolerance mean giving in to all its proponents’ silly and malicious demands as they politicize everything. Everything is about race.  One CRT extremist wrote an NBC opinion piece saying parents wanting a say in their children’s education is like interfering with surgery and they shouldn’t be allowed to have any say.

True, this nonsense started in law and graduate schools where such creativity is indulged, instead of being promptly dismissed as pernicious nonsense. As it filtered down the education ladder, it reached K-12 standards, professional development and training, and student surveys.

There it lurked in the shadows to promote indoctrination of our students via social and emotional learning and other misleading titles from pre-school and kindergarten onward while hiding from parents, taxpayers and citizens’ real scrutiny. That allowed K-12 educrats to lie that CRT was not being practiced or taught in public schools.

The Douglas County school board and administration recently tried to pass off the lie that CRT plays no role in its district – just like its Washoe County counterparts have been doing for some time (a subject for another day).

My good friend Virginia Starrett, a former college professor, called their bluff in a detailed op-ed piece sent to the local paper titled “The Alphabet Soup Poisoning Our Schools.”

She summarizes: “Make no mistake, CRT is alive and well and politicizing the classrooms, teacher training, teacher development program, student assessment tools, and libraries of Douglas County’s schools. The DCSB is either woefully ignorant of what the term ‘CRT’ has come to mean, or it knows and doesn’t want to do anything about it. I suspect it is the latter.”

A former Douglas teacher also produced a fine video online documenting that CRT and similar nonsense has long been employed there.

Tony Kinnett, Indianapolis’ District Science Coordinator & Instructional Coach, and founder of Chalkboard Review, says essentially the same things about his district and school systems around the country. He’s facing possible firing for doing so.

“When we tell you that schools aren’t teaching [CRT], that it is nowhere in our standards, that’s misdirection,” he says in his video. “We don’t have the quotes and theories as state standards, per se. We do have Critical Race Theory in how we teach.” A professional development speaker for the district uses the term, “Culturally Relevant Pedagogy.”

“When schools tell you we aren’t teaching [CRT, it] means one thing, ‘go away and look into our affairs no further,” Kinnett said. “It isn’t about transparency, it isn’t about cultural relevance, it’s race essentialism, painted to look like the district cares about students of color.”

A study of mainstream media coverage of the issues by Frederick Hess shows it has provided biased cover for CRT practices and ideologues. He notes news outlets rarely talk about controversial ways CRT has been implemented in classrooms, including race-based affinity groups, rejection of color-blindness, and the assertion that the U.S. is fundamentally racist.

He points out media cover CRT as if parents are debating “whether schools should discuss racism and slavery.” The results are “a misleading, slanted, and dismissive caricature of sober concerns.” The culprits, I’ve observed, include the Washington Post, New York Times, NBC, CBS, ABC, NPR, CNN, Associated Press, USA Today and many others.

Washington state’s legislature has passed three bills mandating CRT training for all teachers. And another for training of medical students. That’s unsurprising because teacher unions, many unelected bureaucrats and non-government organizations promote this stuff. As does the American Medical Association.

Virginia school districts mostly deny they employ CRT, despite reams of evidence found by parents showing otherwise.

What to do?

Let’s start by calling out administrators, boards, teachers, educrats and legislators when they deny they employ CRT without clarifying exactly what they do. If in doubt about their intent to lie, at least call them gullible, ignorant and stupid.