Zogby recently released a poll for Virginia. The poll showed Governor Glen Younkin and Lt Governor Winsome Sears both enjoying widespread popularity, which is good news. The poll also showed that a majority of Virginians oppose teaching Critical Race Theory to their children, but just barely. I’m disappointed that the opposition to the toxic garbage of CRT isn’t even higher. Part of the explanation may lie in how the poll described CRT.
Zogby poll question softening CRT
In their question, the pollsters define Critical Race Theory as “the movement based on the premise that race is not a natural attribute, but a socially constructed category that is used to oppress and exploit people of color.” The idea that race is not a biological distinction but a social construct is pretty well established and not really controversial. And the fact that race has historically been used as a justification for oppression is beyond argument. So why would 51.3% of people oppose teaching that??? The answer is, they know better. That is NOT what is at the heart of Critical Race Theory. The main argument of Critical Race Theory is that the systems, customs, and culture of the United States are based on racism and white supremacy. That all people of color in America are oppressed, and all white people enjoy an unearned privilege at their expense. CRT goes on to assert that racism and white supremacy are so ingrained in every facet of American institutions that they are irredeemable. The only solution is to completely tear them down and start over from scratch. The Founding. The Constitution. The Bill of Rights. Our economic system. All of them are racist and evil. All of them must go. That is what Critical Race Theory espouses. If 48.7% of citizens agree with that, we are in seriously deep trouble.
The superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools, Dr. Nikolai Vitti, is very concerned that the State of Michigan might pass a law banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory in K-12 education. With no elections coming up, the left can now stop pretending that CRT isn’t a real thing they are trying to ram down our throats.
Our curriculum is deeply using (sic) critical race theory, especially in social studies, but you’ll find it in English Language Arts and the other disciplines. We’re very intentional about creating a curriculum, infusing materials, and embedding critical race theory within our curriculum.
Dr. Nikolai Vitti – DPS superintendent (whose grammar skills suggest he could be a DPS graduate)
Detroit Public Schools have been a bad joke for my entire lifetime. If there actually were an institutional system of racism in America, Detroit Public Schools would have to be it’s headquarters. It is hard to imagine an institution that has done more to keep inner city black people down than DPS. Graduates are unable to do basic math, write a proper letter, or even read. In fact, students aren’t taught any of the basic skills needed to succeed in America. But at least they are properly indoctrinated in grievance politics.
Democrats got their clocks cleaned in the election a couple of weeks ago, where even a reliably Blue state like Virginia went Red. Part of the reason is undoubtedly the unmitigated cluster-fuck that was Joe Biden’s first year as “president.” But it was also due in large part to the left’s total embrace of Critical Race Theory and WOKE(!) political activism in K-12 education. It turns out even most Blue State parents don’t want their children indoctrinated with divisive and racist Marxist bullshit. Whoda thunk?
Far from learning their lesson, it sounds like the Democrats plan to double down for 2022. My reaction: Yes, please! Push your unhinged, divisive, and racist ideology even harder. Let Americans know what you really believe. Not all Democrats have their heads in the sand. Plenty of voices are raising the alarm bells.
But the loony left base of the party doesn’t want to hear it. CRT is central to their entire worldview. To the hard core progressives, Critical Race Theory isn’t a racist and divisive ideology with no relation whatsoever to reality, designed to tear the country apart and collapse our institutions and culture. Critical Race Theory is just historical fact that the evil white supremacists want to perpetuate. To them, it is the ugly truth about America’s inherent racism that white people want to hide from their own children. Or a racist dog whistle that isn’t even taught at all. Or both at the same time. Logical consistency was never the left’s strong point.
A recent Business Insider article explores the Democrats’ thinking on CRT. The article starts off with a predictable trope. That this isn’t even a real issue at all, and the problem Democrats have is just messaging and fighting off Republican smears. The CRT debate has nothing to do with actual policy, they claim.
They’ve called it a “racist dog whistle” and a “lie.” But those messages haven’t helped Democrats tamp down the uproar Republicans are fueling over “critical race theory,” now a misused catch-all term for teaching on race and diversity in K-12 schools that’s firing up protests at school board meetings around the country.
And of course, they had to do the obligatory gas-lighting, describing CRT as “a misused catch-all term.” Nobody gives a fuck if CRT as used in the common vernacular is different from the original legal theory of Derrick Bell. When people talk about CRT, everybody understands exactly what it is they are objecting to (or advocating for.) Playing silly semantic word games is just a pathetic attempt to change the subject and shut down any debate.
In Virginia, Republican Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin exploited the term and pledged to “ban” it in classrooms on his first day as governor, even though critical race theory — an academic approach to examining racial bias — is most often taught in law schools. Republicans plan to lean into the issue in the 2022 election cycle.
Well, they would be stupid not to lean into the issue in 2022. Especially if the Democrats are dumb enough to double down on it.
Democratic strategists say the party should hit back harder against “divisive” GOP claims while not losing sight of the priority for voters; the economy.
LOL. Democrats want to teach elementary school kids that their country is racist to it’s core, and that all the white kids are oppressors and all the POC kids are oppressed. But it is the Republicans that are “divisive.” Projection, thy name is Democrat.
Democrats haven’t yet pushed back on this issue enough, but the “good news” is the party’s response is effective and there’s time to make the case before the 2022 elections, said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist. They just need to make the case “relentlessly,” he said.
Great insight! The problem with CRT adherents is that they aren’t relentless enough. If only they weren’t so calm and reserved, they could be more effective in getting their message out. I can see why this guy is a professional “strategist.”
“Voters run from the Republicans when Democrats peel back the onion on what these claims really mean,” he said. “It’s not just that Republicans want a bigger role for parents in education, it’s that Republicans are willing to let White supremacists write curricula.”
In addition to being relentless, progressives need to call out concerned parents as racists. That is a sure way to win back their votes. Of course. It all makes such perfect sense now. This guy is a political genius.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the House campaign arm for Democrats, downplayed the threat to the party in congressional races. This fall, they tested responses to false claims about critical race theory in K-12 schools. The messages they say resonate most with battleground voters: Democrats want to teach the truth about US history and honor those who fought to make the country better
So the DCCC believes that better gas-lighting will fix everything. The Democrats main problem is that the claims about CRT in K-12 schools are not false at all. Parents can see the books and homework their children bring home. They can see what their kids are being force fed. And they don’t like it. But you Dems just keep telling yourselves that it is only a “messaging” problem.
Democrats keep insisting that teaching CRT is just teaching history. And they seem to actually believe it. They believe their warped perception of America is objective truth. They have convinced themselves that it is everyone else who is racist. The ones who can’t help but notice that it is progressive Democrats who make literally everything about race. And the ones who oppose the actual Webster’s Dictionary-type of racism going on in the here in now, instead of inventing new ways for benign things to be racist.
While it might be amusing to see the Democrats take an ass-whooping of Biblical proportions in 2022, the toxicity of WOKE(!)ness on American society should not be underestimated. The long term effects, especially on impressionable young minds, will resonate for decades. And in fact, that is exactly what the progressive left is counting on. This shit has got to end.
Democrats (elected and media) are in a tizzy after Virginia went Red last night. They are now, without irony, blaming McAuliffe’s defeat on race-baiting. With the left, it always boils down to race. Always. The narrative they are pushing is that Younkin exploited the latent racism of white suburbanites by concocting phony accusations about Critical Race Theory perverting the education system.
The approved talking point was obviously “Critical Race Theory isn’t even taught in Virginia schools.” Lots of lefty pundits and media types were regurgitating it in the final hours before voting started. Joy Reid, who sounded like a broken record, was just one among many repeating the party line. Reid apparently believes she can make this ridiculous claim by playing semantic word games. Critical Race Theory, she contends, is just an obscure legal theory that is only taught to University law students. A benign term that evil right wingers have co-opted as a racist dog whistle. Or so she contends.
Of course, Joy Reid knows damn well parents aren’t pissed off because their children are being taught esoteric legal theories. Critical Race Theory in the common vernacular has come to define the dubious premises which underpin the legal theory. The phrase is understood to encompass all of the toxic WOKE! “Anti-Racist” bullshit peddled by Xbrim X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, and their ilk. It includes the idea that the totality of American systems and culture are hopelessly intertwined with systemic racism. That all white people, whether consciously or subconsciously, are racist oppressors. And all people of color are helpless victims of racist oppression. That every single interaction between whites and non-whites is defined by racism. And that “whiteness” is an evil which must be aggressively stamped out. It is these divisive and racist ideas that parents don’t want indoctrinated into their children. Yet they are very fashionable among leftist educators and school boards. And this more common understanding of what Critical Race Theory entails absolutely is creeping into classrooms all across the country.
And Joy Reid knows this. Or at least she should. Reid obviously isn’t the brightest bulb, and she is so blinded by her hard leftist ideology that she might not be able to distinguish between historical fact and woke revisionism. A common straw man the left keeps throwing out there is that Republicans don’t want to teach children the history of slavery. That is asinine. The historical facts about slavery, the abolitionists, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights movement have all been taught for generations. They are important parts of our history and belong in the classroom. Nobody wants to change that. However, the left’s Marxist critique of contemporary American society through the prism of race is not “history.” It’s not even factual. And it should not be used to poison impressionable young minds.
The alarming ascendance of Critical Race Theory in the mainstream left has been a recurring theme on this blog. Christopher Rufo has been on the front lines fighting against that toxic bullshit from the beginning. He has a new video on CRT up which does a pretty good job of describing our plight and how we got here.
I do think some lefties are genuinely perplexed as to why their policies haven’t improved things for inner-city blacks over the last half century. And Critical Race Theorists are all too happy to exploit their frustration. But other minorities are doing just fine. Hispanics are doing pretty well. Asians are thriving. Even recent black immigrants from Africa are doing just fine. The one group that is lagging far behind is the group that has been under total control of the Democrat Party and the left for 50 years. But the left can’t bring themselves to question their own ideals or policies. The continued plight of inner city African Americans just can’t be their fault. They mean so well. No, the real problem must be the “system.” The problem with this excuse is overt racism is steadily vanishing in this country. Finding examples is getting pretty tough. Ask a lefty for examples of “systemic racism” and they will most likely point to real estate redlining (abolished decades ago), the fact blacks are more likely than whites to be shot by the police (which is bullshit), or some other statistical factoid that has an obvious explanation other than racism. But Critical Race Theory is here to save the day. It breathes new life into racism by expanding it to include things like rugged individualism, punctuality, and the nuclear family.
Critical Race Theory will not heal this country. Quite the opposite. Critical Race Theory will just deepen our divide and sharpen the resentment. That is actually the point of it. The thought leaders of BLM and the like don’t want to help blacks achieve in the current system. They want more hardship, anger, and division. Their goal isn’t to lessen racial strife, but to increase it to a breaking point. They need to collapse the current system before they can replace it with their socialist vision.
The bad new is their toxic garbage is now ubiquitous in this country. The good news is their true agenda is still not popular with the American people. Everybody agrees with the platitude “Black Lives Matter.” Very few Americans agree with the agenda of the Marxist political group Black Lives Matter. The best way to fight CRT is to expose it for what it really is. And to expose the real world consequences of embracing it.
With all the bad news lately, even a little bit of sanity is a welcome change. Residents of Southlake, Texas voted overwhelmingly against pushing Critical Race Theory in their schools. Critical race theory is the toxic pile of divisive garbage the left has latched on to as a way to tear down the American system so they can replace it with a European-style nanny state run by an army of leftist technocrats. The poisonous effect it has had on American society has been a recurring theme on this blog (see, for example, here, here, here, and here among others.)
The voters have come together in record-breaking numbers to restore unity. By a landslide vote, they don’t want racially divisive critical race theory taught to their children or forced on their teachers. Voters agreed with my positive vision of our community and its future.
Hannah Smith, newly elected school board member in Texas
Of course, NBC news could barely hide their disgust at this story. After all, how could any decent person oppose “a proposal to combat racial and cultural intolerance in schools”? And what, exactly, is wrong with supporting “new diversity and inclusion training requirements”? Progressives just want to make “children feel safe and welcome”, according to NBC. And they use a bunch of other flowery euphemisms for CRT throughout the article. Of course, critical race theory isn’t really about any of those things. Critical Race Theory exists to sow division, resentment, and anger at the “system.” Like all critical theories, it’s main goal is to weaken and eventually collapse that which it is critical of. Namely, America as founded. Thank god the good people of Texas weren’t buying the horseshit the progressives and NBC were selling.
The left is notorious for taking words for things that are good, and coopting them to describe things that are actually the exact opposite. “Liberal” used to mean you supported economic freedom, civil liberties, and the enlightenment. Until the left got a hold of the word. “Tolerance” used to mean live-and-let-live, an essential trait any large and diverse country needs to hold together. Now it means conform to the Woke! worldview, or else.
By controlling the language, Big Brother controls the way that the people think. With a limited vocabulary, the people are limited in how much they can think, as well as, what they think about.
George Orwell, 1984
And so it is with Critical Race Theory. The left knows it would be dead in the water if they admitted what it was really all about. So they rebrand it as “diversity and inclusion” or “racial sensitivity.” Critical Race Theory must be vigorously resisted and exposed as the racist garbage it really is.
A Massachusetts football coach has been fired from his job for objecting to Critical Race Theory being taught to his 12-year old daughter. The coach, Dave Flynn, was apparently concerned that his pre-teen was being force fed BLM and Critical Race Theory propaganda in class instead of learning 7th grade world history. When the coach complained, he found out the school principal and superintendent were just as WOKE! as his daughter’s history teacher. Seeing what he was up against, Coach Flynn begrudgingly decided to withdraw his daughter from the public education system and send her to a Catholic school instead.
But that isn’t the end of the story. Such heresy could not go unpunished by the WOKE! left. Coach Flynn refused to bow down at the altar of Anti-Racism and disrespected the social justice warriors in their righteous efforts. His insolence clearly could not be allowed to stand, so the school fired him from his coaching job. Not for anything whatsoever related to his job performance, but because he “expressed significant philosophical differences with the direction, goals, and values of the school district.” In short, he was fired for having conservative beliefs. He lost his very livelihood for being insufficiently WOKE!
The left has now cemented their cultural monopoly in the ruling Democrat Party, the mainstream media, the big tech companies, the social media platforms, and the education system at all levels. And they are ready to wield this monopolistic force to crush their enemies. American progressives don’t want unity. The want submission, and they want it now. Cancel Culture is coming for anyone who doesn’t accept the left’s new orthodoxy. Not even the former President of the United States can escape their censorship. The Great Purge has begun in America.
This is fantastic news! Donald Trump has ordered all Federal Agencies to stop any training programs which promote Critical Race Theory. I’ve long argued Critical Race Theory was pseudo-scientific garbage meant to sow racial division dressed up in the legitimacy of academic rigor. It is toxic nonsense the left uses to divide our population and undermine our Constitutional republic. The core idea of Critical Race Theory is that everything about America as founded, from our Constitution, to our culture, to our values, to our justice system is rooted in anti-Black racism and perpetuates white supremacy. To the Critical Race Theorists, America is inherently evil and totally irredeemable. The only remedy is to completely tear it down and start over from scratch. Only then can a just and egalitarian (i.e. socialist) society exist.
Because racism permeates everything in American life (according to the theory), to support America is to support racism and white supremacy. In short, support for America and it’s values is amoral. And neutrality is not an option. To the left, failure to actively resist a country as evil as America is support for the status quo. To them, there is no such thing as a non-racist person. You must be actively anti-racist (i.e. anti-America as founded), otherwise you are just as bad as openly racist skinheads and neo-Nazis. According to the theory, to claim you are non-racist is to deny the central truth of the theory, and is evidence of a desire to continue benefiting from white privilege and systemic racism at the expense of POC. Silence is Violence!!! Seriously, this is what they believe.
Somehow, claiming to accept this drivel has become quite fashionable over the last few months. The most obvious examples are the Black Lives Matter and Antifa movements. Both have taken the tenets of Critical Race Theory to heart. And both has become increasingly militant and confrontational. Sadly, Critical Race Theory is also being pushed in schools and WOKE corporations across the country.
The counter-productive BLM movement is particularly depressing. The left has managed to convince yet another generation of Black people (or at least a good chunk of them) that the American dream is not for them. That they live in a country that hates them and exists to oppress them. That there is no hope for them outside of revolution. The anger this message breeds is palpable. But it is unfocused anger… just anger at the world. The demands of the group are necessarily vague and contradictory. If some nebulous “system” is keeping you down, you are left lashing out at everything and anything. And the message becomes self-fulfilling prophecy. And then there is the damage done to predominantly Black communities. The Detroit riots happened 53 years ago in 1967. The city still hasn’t fully recovered. How long will it take Minneapolis to heal? How many businesses will close for good, taking the jobs, goods, and services they provide with them?
Critical Race Theory is a cancer eating away at this country. The fact Trump is trying to remove it’s stain from our government is a very good thing. I suspect he will face fierce resistance from the Deep State. And if paste-eating Joe Biden wins in November, the radicals pulling his strings will undoubtedly reverse course and go all in on the left’s favorite anti-American ideology.
Ever wonder how a guy like MN Democrat John Thompson can barge into a peaceful residential neighbor hood, cuss out and threaten the homeowners just because they have a lighter skin tone and different political leanings from him, yet still think of himself as some kind of hero? Or how BLM protesters can harass people for the neighborhood they live in based solely on the color of their skin, and still think of themselves as the good guys? Welcome to the brave new world of Critical Race Theory!
Critical Race Theory is all the rage right now with the American left. While the theory is nothing new, recent best-selling books like White Fragility and How to Be an Anitracist have revitalized it and brought it to the mainstream. Two pillars of Critical Race Theory are:
Systemic racism is ubiquitous at a fundamental level in the United States.
You must be actively Anti-Racist, otherwise you are supporting injustice.
From these 2 propositions, an number of conclusions naturally flow. If American culture and systems are racist at their very core, then reforming them would be futile. If everything about America is based on perpetuating White Supremacy, then the culture and systems must be irredeemable. The only just course of action is to completely tear them down and start over from scratch. Also, anyone not committed to tearing down America is guilty of a moral failing. To be Anti-Racist, surely one must oppose a country explicitly built on racism. Support of America as founded is a racist act which can only be taken as a sign of malevolence on the part of the individual or, at best, unforgivable ignorance. And complacency is not an option. Failure to actively oppose racism (i.e. America) makes one complicit in the oppression. Silence is violence.
It’s no wonder the radical left absolutely loves this theory. They have wanted to disrupt, dismantle, and displace American culture and government for generations. And smearing their opponents as racists has long been one of the favorite tactics of the left. Now, with Critical Race Theory, they have a pseudo-intellectual basis to justify their name-calling. And they have a manifesto to wield against all of American culture and it’s founding principles.
On a practical level, you can see how Critical Race Theory can be used to justify all sorts of obnoxious behavior. Those white people in the video just trying to enjoy a barbecue in their yard aren’t innocent victims. Their indifference to the BLM movement is violence against POC. Their complacency is support for a racist system. They deserve to have their cozy lives upended. By not being actively Anti-Racist, they are committing racism whether they realize it or not. And racists don’t deserve peace.
Likewise for the white guy who had the audacity to sleep comfortably in his apartment in a predominantly black neighborhood. He is guilty of the sin of being white in America, and receiving the unfair privilege that a racist system bestows upon him. A system he is perpetuating by snoozing away instead of marching with the protesters. He is guilty as charged. And no evidence other than his skin color is required to condemn him.
These are the kinds of actions Critical Race Theory encourages. Demands, actually, if taken to it’s logical conclusion. We can expect a lot more of this in the near future. It’s also likely that the encounters will become more confrontational, and ultimately, violent. Critical Race Theory is toxic nonsense that must be resisted. It will tear this country apart if allowed to fester.
BLM protestors practiced “Active Anit-Racism” by waking up residents and telling them they didn’t belong in their neighborhood because of their skin color. Which is of course racist AF. Yet they get praise from the media and corporate world because nobody wants to come out against the platitude “Black Lives Matter.” It’s time to separate the bromide from the Marxist political movement and call this ugliness out.
“I have a dream that one day little black boys and black girls will occupy separate residential areas from little white boys and white girls, strictly delineated and enforced along racial lines.” – Martin Luther King pic.twitter.com/kQDHfKwonR
