Let’s keep critical race theory out of our schools
You’d be hard-pressed to peruse the Sentinel these days without coming across an article or commentary extolling the virtues of critical race theory, with nearly half a dozen columns or news stories published in the last three weeks.
This divisive ideology that pits Blacks and whites against each other by branding whites as the oppressor and Blacks as the oppressed should be rejected as simply another chapter in the progressive playbook, and an effort to further divide the country in pursuit of a far-left political agenda.
The answer to perceived systemic racism is not more racism.
Many conservative Black scholars, such as Shelby Steele, Bob Woodson, Thomas Sowell and the late Walter Williams, have spoken and written extensively to oppose the concept and teaching of critical race theory.
Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, defines critical race theory as “an academic discipline … built on the intellectual framework of identity-based Marxism,” as opposed to the original Karl Marx version of class-based Marxism.
Rufo continues, “Its supporters deploy a series of euphemisms to describe critical race theory, including ‘equity,’ ‘social justice’ and ‘diversity and inclusion.’ Critical race theorists realize that ‘neo-Marxism’ would be a hard sell. Equity, on the other hand, sounds nonthreatening and is easily confused with the American principle of equality.”
Shelby Steele, renowned author and fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative public policy think tank, said on a recent podcast, “Critical race theory is bogus. To me as a minority, (it’s) demeaning, dehumanizing … But it is a currency with which whites can buy innocence in the marketplace. It’s a currency with which Blacks and other minorities can exercise power in the political arena.”
Bob Woodson, civil rights activist and founder of the Woodson Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that supports neighborhood-based initiatives to revitalize low-income communities, says of critical race theory, “It’s really planting the seeds of Black self-doubt and it is wreaking havoc in our communities. And so what we are saying is Blacks are not defined by slavery or Jim Crow.”
Parents across the country have been loudly complaining to their local school boards in an effort to keep this curriculum and ideology out of their schools. Here in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis is taking proactive measures to prevent critical race theory from soiling classrooms in the Sunshine State.
This also extends to the evil stepsister of critical race theory, the similarly divisive 1619 Project published by The New York Times in 2019. The latter claims that America’s founding was not 1776, but 1619, the year African slaves arrived in Virginia, and that the American Revolution was fought primarily to preserve slavery, claims that have been disputed by historians.
Peter Wood, President of the National Association of Scholars, a conservative advocacy group, and author of “1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project,” throws a tsunami of cold water on what many historians view as revisionist history. In a recent interview, Wood says of Nikole Hannah-Jones, the lead New York Times writer for the 1619 Project, “she made a number of claims that I think just have to be seen as preposterous,” and that she is “telling a story that is factually untrue … It is a strange thing that a newspaper of all things would think that it has the intellectual authority to wipe away American history and replace it with something that’s brand-new.”
Clearly, nobody is arguing that schools shouldn’t teach the full, unadulterated history vis-à-vis slavery and racism in this country. Schools should recognize that Blacks and other minority groups in this country are still confronted with too many instances of residual racism to this day.
On Aug. 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and said, “I have a dream that one day … little Black boys and little Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”
Unfortunately, critical race theory and The 1619 Project are overt and unequivocal repudiations of King’s vision of a colorblind society, and completely antithetical to that noble pursuit. A pursuit for which he tragically gave his life.
To me, that is the saddest part of all this.