Two things immediately stood out. The first is that, yes, despite its protestations to the contrary, the architects of CRT know they must focus intently on those who participate in the teaching profession. If CRT is a tool to be used for “revolutionizing a culture,” as its intellectual godfather, Derrick Bell, once put it, it must be implemented by teachers starting in K-12 and through graduate school.
K-12 teachers, along with students at all levels, were given special ticket prices to the CRT conference at a deep discount, as my colleague and friend Jonathan Butcher pointed out. K-12 principals also were given a special package, though at a smaller discount.
The other unmistakable takeaway is that CRT practitioners are aghast at the resistance they have encountered. The public, parents in particular, saw the attempted takeover of their cultural institutions that gathered speed four years ago and fought against it, much to the chagrin of the CRT elite and their followers.
And the summer school was indeed organized by the elite most wounded by popular rejection. It was led by Kimberle Crenshaw, a law professor at Columbia and UCLA. She is not just one of the key founders of the movement, but actually gave CRT its name at the discipline’s founding conference in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1989.
Crenshaw also invented the concept of “intersectionality,” by which the CRT founders mean that people can be discriminated against based on different attributes—their race, gender, able status, etc.
Also on hand to teach CRT was Cheryl Harris, another CRT founder and also a law professor at UCLA; Gloria Ladson-Billings, who perhaps has done more than anyone else to spread CRT’s ideas among the teaching profession; and Michael Eric Dyson, whose accomplishments do not equal those of the other three, but who’s much better known by the public because of his repeated media appearances. All in all, 40 academics, some very well known, were advertised to appear.
These CRT summer schools started in the long hot summer of 2020, when the whole country was aflame in the Black Lives Matter riots. It looked to the CRT folks then that the world was their oyster, as many leaders of cultural institutions were ready to surrender and accept many CRT principles.
But the oyster has gone bad and begun to stink up the room. In 2020, the summer school organizers saw the moment as a “great opportunity.” Those who led this year’s summer school, however, regard the present moment with a growing sense of dread.
In their triumphant 2020 announcement, the summer school organizers proclaimed that “the enduring racial inequalities laid bare by the casual murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery … have loosened the grip of colorblindness as the officially sanctioned anecdote to persistent racial injustice.” The 2020 summer school was held “to capture the significance of this opportunity.”
One must hasten to explain that, though most people think colorblindness is very much a good thing and an aspirational goal, it is anathema to CRT.
CRT is a body of work that depicts racism not as an individual act or attitude, but as a “systemic” problem. Racism, it preaches, is embedded in the ordinary business of society, and keeps the oppressor group (whites, males, Christians, heterosexuals, but also Jews, Asian Americans, or anyone else that generally meets with success) in power and wealth, while keeping members of victim groups subjugated. To reverse this dynamic—a goal derived entirely from Marxian concepts—CRT practitioners believe that government and industry must pursue color-conscious action.
Contrast the optimism in the summer of 2020 with this year’s foreboding summer school. The description to this year’s opening plenary meeting on July 28 said, “Our kick off plenary for CRT Summer School focuses on Tennessee ?as the ‘tip of the spear’ for the nationwide backlash against racial ?justice and democracy.” Every session revolved around this idea.
As Crenshaw said to radio host Kaye Wise Whitehead in a video advertising the event, “We started this in the middle of the summer of reckoning, recognizing that critical concepts, like structural racism and implicit bias and intersectionality were all part of the mobilization that we saw in 50 states across the country, demanding accountability. Well, now we are at a point where the backlash against 2020, the backlash against racial justice, has taken the form of suppressing our right to learn, our right to know, our books.”
All of that is hyperbolic, of course. Many, many people have developed antibodies against the attempted takeover of their country by Marxist academics, and their political leaders have responded by passing laws that make it hard to indoctrinate students and teachers with CRT and eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates from schools and universities.
These ideas are spread especially in schools of education, where unsuspecting and well-intentioned would-be teachers go to get their credentials.
I spoke to Beanie Geoghegan, co-founder of the group Freedom in Education, who has done a lot of work in this area. When I asked her if education students knew what they were being fed, she said, “Absolutely not.” The professors pushing this stuff “really prey on people who care about children,” she added.
It’s a good thing they are so discomfited at the moment.
]]>The Louisiana state House Committee on Education voted 6-5 against House Resolution 13 which would mandate that K-12 schools and higher education institutions report how much they spend on CRT and DEI programs. The legislation aimed to examine what resources were being spent on such initiatives because “activities offered by the state’s education institutions merit further examination,” Republican state Rep. Valarie Hodges, the sponsor of the bill, told The Associated Press.
Opponents of the bill called the legislation “unnecessary” and questioned why some lawmakers want to crack down on CRT and DEI initiatives, the AP reported. “Forget the money,” Democratic state Rep. Tammy Phelps said to Hodges, according to the AP. “What is your problem with inclusion?”
Monty Sullivan, president of Louisiana’s Community and Technical College System, testified against the legislation calling it a “racist instrument,” the Gambit, a Louisiana-based outlet, reported.
“I cannot go against something that I was a part of establishing,” Republican state Rep. Vincent St. Blanc, who helped hire Sullivan for his role at the college system, said, according to the Gambit. “I have a big problem with this [resolution], and I’m going to do the right thing.”
“Basically all it does… it’s seeking transparency and clarification on how, if at all, the concepts of DEI, SEL [social emotional learning] and CRT are being implemented,” Hodges told the Daily Advertiser, a Louisiana-based outlet. “Basically the report is just requesting that we could have this information to have a clearer picture of what’s being done.”
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].
]]>It’s no secret that our public education system, including preschool all the way up through college, is rife with total wokeness. Schools have become indoctrination centers for anti-American ideologies like Neo-Marxism, Critical Race Theory, and LGBTQIA+ Supremacy.
In at least one state, this is illegal, though you wouldn’t know that by visiting a public school. Democrat-dominated Washington state has a law on the books in their Revised Code of Washington State that would compel teachers to instruct on ideas such as patriotism. Instead, the exact opposite is true because nobody is enforcing the law.
It’s old. Originally written in the 19th century and most recently revised in the 1960s, RCW 28A.405.030 is not being enforced. Instead, our children are being taught false premises, fake history, and anything other than the education they’re supposed to be getting. Here’s how the law reads:
Must teach morality and patriotism.
It shall be the duty of all teachers to endeavor to impress on the minds of their pupils the principles of morality, truth, justice, temperance, humanity and patriotism; to teach them to avoid idleness, profanity and falsehood; to instruct them in the principles of free government, and to train them up to the true comprehension of the rights, duty and dignity of American citizenship.
This isn’t a law without teeth. There are two possible repercussions for those who do not teach the principles listed in the law. Teachers can be fired. They and administrators familiar with their activities can even be arrested and charged with a misdemeanor. This isn’t happening, of course, since the schools haven’t been drained of 90%+ of their teachers, administrators, or school board members.
It’s obviously a challenging law to enforce because it’s subjective whether someone is teaching patriotism sufficiently, but one thing is not as subjective. Considering the ANTI-American and ANTI-patriotic sentiment that is currently being taught to our kids, it should be easy to isolate the worst offenders. If they don’t want to teach the principles listed and only want to focus on educating our children, I’m okay with that. Parents should be the ones teaching principles. But if they want to teach kids to hate America, change genders, or make everything about race, I’m not okay with that at all.
Am I calling for teachers to be arrested? Maybe. In the past I might have called the law an overreach that went against a teacher’s perceived role as educator of such things as math, reading, and history. But in today’s post-truth society, the limits of leftism have been put to the test so it may not be a bad idea to enforce this law to put an end to the indoctrination that’s currently happening.
Call me radical, but we’re facing leftist radicals so sometimes it behooves us to get aggressive. The law’s already on the books. It’s long past time to get our education system fixed, as I discussed in the latest episode of America First Report. You can watch it on BitChute.
]]>The 600,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District is using taxpayer dollars to train government teachers and staff members to instruct boys and girls that meritocracy, success, and hard work are all “white.” So, logically, if you are black, then kakistocracy (rule by the worst), failure, and sloth are just your cup of tea.
This is vile, repugnant, racist garbage.
Documents unearthed by Fox News Channel’s Jessica Chasmar confirm that this “implicit/unconscious bias training” is guided by UCLA professor Tyrone Howard. It contends that “Whiteness” incorporates “an anti-Blackness ideology, which demonizes that which is furthest from White.” Also, “Individualism” operates “from a survival-of-the-fittest approach that stresses singular pursuit and accomplishment.”
When I was in the Los Angeles Unified School District, from kindergarten through grade 12 (1969-1982), it did not peddle this sludge. Instead, teachers, counselors, parents, and everyone else encouraged all kids—regardless of race—to focus, learn, strive, and, thus, prepare for prosperity in this land of abundance and opportunity.
Forty years later, my old school system tells black kids that if they believe they can rise by doing their homework, studying hard, and reaching for riches, then they are acting white.
America’s second-largest school district has incubated the self-inflicted cancer of the “acting white” syndrome—which plagues too many black kids who value intelligence—and injected it into the curriculum.
In short: Critical race theory holds blacks down, so the KKK doesn’t have to.
This Democrat-promoted concept is beyond reprehensible.
These training materials urge dismantling the “myth of meritocracy” and fighting “microaggressions,” among them “Everyone can succeed in the society if they [sic] work hard enough.”
According to these lesson plans, the microaggressors who would express such ugliness must be confronted with the question: “So you feel that everyone can succeed in the society if they work hard enough. Can you give me some examples?”
OK. Here are 10:
1. Booker T. Washington: This former slave founded the Tuskegee Institute.
2. Madam C.J. Walker: This one-time laundress earned millions via hair care products.
3. Louis Armstrong: This prostitute’s son co-fathered jazz and scored global stardom.
4. Ella Fitzgerald: This poor girl became the 20th century’s finest female vocalist.
5. Jackie Robinson: This star athlete integrated baseball and is among its greatest players ever.
6. Charlayne Hunter-Gault: She integrated the University of Georgia and thrived in network news.
7. E. Stanley O’Neal: This grandson of a slave rose to become CEO of Merrill Lynch.
8. Oprah Winfrey: Actress, broadcaster, media tycoon. Net worth: $2.6 billion.
9. Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Author, astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium.
10. Barack Obama: Law professor, legislator, 44th president of the United States.
Each of these individuals was born in the USA, worked hard, and succeeded. Aside from the mixed ethnicity of some, there is nothing “white” about them. They all made it here while being looked at as black and never running from their “blackness.”
Tens of millions of other blacks have yet to achieve such fame and fortune. Regardless, they own shops, fly planes, cure patients, fix computers, construct houses, cultivate crops, and otherwise flourish through talent and diligence.
Those who parrot the filthy lie that blacks cannot soar in America through industriousness because they lack “whiteness” are the most repugnant, dangerous, and evil racists around. For every white-hooded hatemonger haunting the hinterlands, there are hundreds of “diversity” specialists diligently advancing racism by preaching the slanderous gospel of black disability.
The critical race theory advocates who pump this unfiltered sewage into the curriculum in Los Angeles and beyond deserve to be utterly disempowered and ultimately roasted in hell with all the heat of the high noon sun.
Image by Bruce F Press, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Article cross-posted from Daily Signal.
]]>