Kerfuffle on Capitol Hill over CRT, but how do we teach it?

Happy Fourth of July, all things considered, including the drought and the pending gubernatorial recall. Still, let’s have other good days in the wake of a stilltenuous pandemic recovery — and I don’t mean more dry years and specious reasons to get rid of a sitting governor, regardless of political party.

Be that as it may, did Fox News Blatherer in Chief Tucker Carlson, who has never served in the military, really call Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “a stupid pig”? (Hint: Yes, he did.)

“Hard to believe that man wears a uniform,” he added, chiming in recently on his nightly show, this time about Milley’s June 24 testimony in front of members of the House Armed Services Committee, which included references to military leaders’ need to understand critical race theory, in part a response to U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz’s comments and this question: How should the Department of Defense think about CRT, as it is known for short.

But Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was first to respond to the inquiry by Gaetz, R-Fla. “We don’t teach critical race theory (in the military),” the secretary replied. “I think that’s a spurious conversation.”

Gaetz then referred to a lieutenant colonel assigned to the newly formed Space Force who apparently was relieved of his command for his public comments about critical race theory. Taught mostly at the graduate school level, it is generally defined as an intellectual movement and legal analysis based on the premise that race is a culturally invented category used to oppress and exploit people of color and that U.S. laws and legal institutions are inherently racist, maintaining social, economic and political inequalities, especially affecting people of color.

The Republican congressman, something of a bete noir to Democrats (and even others in his own party), more or less asserted that Austin hired someone who believes in and has embraced critical race theory and is advising Pentagon leaders. But Austin fired back, suggesting that Gaetz is getting, essentially, somewhat bogus information and skewed opinions. “I’m smart enough to know that maybe they’re telling you what you want to hear,” the retired Army general said.

Then it was Milley’s turn to address the question, with Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., an Air Force veteran, engineer, and graduate of Stanford and MIT, yielding her time to America’s top military leader.

“I do think it’s important actually for those of us in uniform to be open-minded and be widely read,” the four-star general began, adding that it is important for USMA cadets to understand the nature of white supremacy and some of the tenets of CRT. “I am White and I want to understand it,” Milley, a graduate of Princeton and Columbia universities, continued. “So what is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building (on Jan. 6) and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America? What caused that? I want to find that out.” “I’ve read Mao Zedong,” he noted. “I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist. So what is wrong with having some situational understanding about the country for which we are here to defend?”

It’s not a theory that our Declaration of Independence makes a reference to Indian territory; or the Constitution, in Article 1, with regard to apportionment of representatives, makes a reference to “Indians not taxed” and “three-fifths of all other persons,” the latter a compromise reached to settle disputes about counting slaves when determining a state’s total population. Of course, the 14th Amendment in 1868 repealed the compromise. So, Tucker Carlson, I believe sharp Vacaville or Wood high school students could make sound arguments that racism was and is embedded in our laws and legal institutions. It’s there in black and white, as clear as your ill-advised description of the general. The question is how do we teach K-12 and college students today about the racial structures of U.S. society, how each of us identifies within that society, and the responsibilities and obligations that we bear as one people but still a nation of immigrants?

So, Tucker Carlson, I believe sharp high school students could make sound arguments that racism was and is embedded in our laws and legal institutions.