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.