June 23, 2021
Critical Race Theory (CRT) is an anti-white, anti-American philosophy that has spread like cancer throughout society. It has made surprising headway in government agencies, the corporate world, and the K–12 public schools — and, of course, the colleges and universities where it originated. This has happened while most Americans slept. But as awareness of CRT has grown, so has the resistance to it.
Tennessee, Idaho, and Oklahoma have enacted laws against teaching CRT in their respective public schools. Another 16 other states are seriously considering similar bans. In Florida, legislation did not pass, but its state Board of Education barred CRT from the classroom. Former President Donald Trump has added his weight to exposing CRT. At the North Carolina Republican Party convention, he gave the keynote speech, in which he called out CRT for being divisive, a form of educational indoctrination, and Marxist in nature. All true.
The strength of the pushback against CRT has caught progressives of all stripes by surprise. Many of them are now forced to openly admit their thinking. They claim that CRT is needed to teach the young how racism is woven into seemingly neutral laws and through America's institutions. In other words, the intent of CRT is to teach children that America's DNA has genes of racism in it, making the country inherently racist. The logical extension of this line of reasoning is that all whites are racist (except for those who are "woke") and have an unjustified privileged place in society — and that this privilege comes at the expense of everyone else. Nothing divisive there, right? Truly, progressives see white supremacy under every rock, and they're hell-bent on making sure our children learn to see it, too.
It's not just leftists who argue against banning CRT from the classrooms. More than a few libertarians are on the same page with the left. Take Reason magazine. The people there urge against banning CRT and instead advocate for school choice. Ah, yes. CRT is on the verge of actual implementation in the public schools, with the entire media complex, education establishment, and Biden administration behind it, while universal school choice is a pie-in-the-sky distant hope. That's a smart trade-off, all right, and typical of shallow libertarian thinking.
Then there's David French, the perennial NeverTrump. He's another libertarian. French's argument against banning CRT boils down to saying the state should not be in the business of banning ideas. Oh, really? Forgive me for getting personal, but if I had offered up such a threadbare argument in my sophomore high school civics class, Brother Cannon would likely have given me a rap on the side of the head. For French's edification, I can list half a dozen of ideas off the top of my head that French would vehemently want banned from the schools. Why can those ideas be banned and not CRT?
What it comes down to is this. Whom are the public schools for? The educational establishment doesn't own them, although its members earn a lucrative livelihood through the schools and believe that they should call the tune to which the schools dance. Rather, the unvarnished fact, which has too often lain dormant, is that the public schools belong to the people. It is the people who should have the final say in what is or is not taught in their schools. Who better represents the people: the education establishment or the state legislatures? To pose such a question begets the proper answer to all but the leftist hive.
For too long, the public has allowed the left-wing education establishment to have a free hand in running the schools. The public pays the bills and is told to be content with the slop the schools serve up to their kids. This has resulted in continuous deterioration of academic performance while costs have skyrocketed. Generations of kids have been stupefied by cockamamie educational programs like "New Math" and "Whole Language." Critical thinking was long ago abandoned. Standardize tests show the results of this educational malfeasance. Reading and math scores fall, while the performance of our students is pathetic when compared internationally.
It's clear that what the education establishment excels at is feathering its own nest, not educating the young. This is the very same education establishment and its left-wing allies that now want to force CRT into the schools. So instead of learning civics and reading, writing, and arithmetic, schoolchildren will be taught to dislike, if not hate, America...just as the leftists behind CRT do.
The audacity of this is breathtaking. But there it is.