Journalist Christopher Rufo Discusses the Dangers of Critical Race Theory with Dave Rubin

Critical Race Theorists are getting their way in many institutions in the form of forced “training” for unwilling students and employees. CRT advocates are largely getting a free pass on this trend. Many people who have serious concerns about CRT’s ideological foundation and tactics are afraid to speak up for fear of losing their jobs, for legitimate fear of being canceled in other ways or for a well-documented fear of being branded “insensitive” or “racist.”

CRT advocates proudly embrace the idea that one can determine another person’s character by simply noticing immutable characteristics such as skin color. In short, CRT advocates claim to be are fighting racism, but they do this by employing racism. CRT thus has a lot in common with astrology: both approaches assert that one can understand another person by reference to something purely accidental (whether it be a skin tone or a birth date). Both approaches lack scientific validity and CRT is setting the civil rights movement back by decades by trashing Martin Luther King’s dream that we will one day judge each other by content of character. Unfortunately, CRT has gained critical mass in many schools, corporations and government offices, which now invite forced CRT indoctrination of their students and employees.

Christopher Rufo is a journalist who has declared war on this trend. He discusses CRT principles in this video, then bemoans the fact that thoughtful liberals are not able or willing to criticize the movement for fear of being called names or losing social status or employment:

15:31

Rubin: Do you sense that the liberals have any defense against this? I think this is where i have a bit of a difference with some of my friends in this where I think some of them still think the liberals have some defense mechanism against this. I simply don’t believe that anymore. I think i it’s either the conservatives and in a weird way, it’s Trump or or bust. What do you think about that?

Rufo: Yeah, I 100% side with you. I think that what we’ve seen in Seattle and San Francisco and Los Angeles, that the kind of old-line liberals or the kind of moderate liberals really have no ability to push back or even restrain the most extreme progressive ideologues. That kind of experience in the last 10 years in these very liberal cities on the west coast is now being nationalized in our discourse and, frankly, Joe Biden is not going to offer any kind of restraint against this. It’s completely naive and absurd to think so. It’s also kind of naive and absurd to think that there’s some great third party unity ticket that could fight against it. The kind of brass tacks of it is that dissident liberals, mainstream liberals–they have to to create an alliance with conservatives in order to stop this. I’m encouraging all of my friends on the center left to move over and forge an alliance at least on these critical issues with us within the conservative movement because the bottom line is really this uh kind of writing an op-ed no matter how good it is kind of appealing to civil discourse appealing to restraint, appealing to the center, is not going to change the minds of the fundamentalists who are running the kind of intellectual architecture of the left and they have to basically make the decision we are going to tactically align with conservatives to stop this.

Many of Rufo’s conclusions align well with the opinions of many on the dark web, many of whom are now considered “dissident” liberals because they believe in traditional liberal values, but not the pernicious ideas of CRT. As far as defining “traditional liberal values,” consider Jonathan Haidt’s description:

I think young people are losing touch with some of the hard-won lessons of the past, so I’m not going to say “Oh, we have to just accept whatever morality is here.” I still am ultimately liberal in the sense that what I dream of is a society in which people are free to create lives that they want to live. They’re not forced to do things. They’re not shamed. There’s a minimum of conflict and we make room for each other. If we’re going to have a diverse society, we’ve really got to be tolerant and make room for each other. That’s my dream. I think in the last five or ten years, we’ve gotten really far from that.

For another lengthy and robust conversation regarding the danger of critical race theory, consider this Making Sense podcast, in which Sam Harris interviews John McWhorter: #217 – THE NEW RELIGION OF ANTI-RACISM. . Sam Harris has been a shining light on these issues of Wokeness for many months. Making Sense has a paywall, but I’d ask you to consider making the investment. If you can’t afford it, write Sam an email and he’ll give you free access for a year.

I’ll end with this recent political development: Donald Trump “has just signed a full Executive Order abolishing critical race theory from the federal government, the military, and all federal contractors.” This is an era of strange bedfellows. I can’t think of a person I detest more than Donald Trump, yet I think this executive order is an appropriate step. Perhaps this order will provoke real and nuanced public conversations about the aspirations and dangers of CRT in lieu of institutional bullying and infinite varieties of ad hominem attacks in reply to sincere criticism. For more, see Rufo’s article from yesterday (with the full executive order) here.

To clarify – Rufo and Rubin urge voting for Trump on this one issue. I have never voted for anyone based on one issue, and Trump’s maliciousness, mendaciousness and corruption will keep me from voting for him even if I think he made one appropriate move on CRT.

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Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

This Post Has 5 Comments

  1. Avatar of Steve grappe
    Steve grappe

    CRT permeates downward to the indoctrination of children by adult parents that are wholly bought in.
    Bringing up a generation of children with nothing they can see outside their blinders. Racism then becomes ingrained in a much deeper level disquised as wokeness.

    1. Avatar of Erich Vieth
      Erich Vieth

      In my view, the first racist act is choosing to believe that “race” is a real thing and that it should matter. The far right and the far left are now in agreement on this unscientific belief and they are acting as equal and opposite forces giving rise to hate and violence throughout the political spectrum.

  2. Avatar of Erich Vieth
    Erich Vieth

    In this WSJ article, Christopher Rufo describes various examples of CRT training. I’m no fan of Donald Trump and he won’t get my vote on this one issue, but I believe (for whatever motive) it is an issue he actually got right.

    In accompanying documents, Mr. Ross argues that whites share an inborn oppressive streak. “Whiteness,” employees are told, “includes white privilege and white supremacy.” Consequently, whites “struggle to own their racism.” He instructs managers to conduct “listening sessions” in which black employees can speak about their experience and be “seen in their pain,” while white employees are instructed to “sit in the discomfort” and not “fill the silence with your own thoughts and feelings.” Members of “the group you’re allying with,” Mr. Ross says, are not “obligated to like you, thank you, feel sorry for you, or forgive you.” For training like this, Mr. Ross and his firm have been paid $5 million over 15 years, according to federal disclosures.

  3. Avatar of
    Anonymous

    If my money nose still works, this has become an industry. If that is the case, then racism has become that most precious of all raw materials to mine, process, and exploit. Hence, this growth – that America, Britain, and indeed, all majority white nations have never been more racist. If this were not true, the industry would collapse. And humans have historically been know to do some mighty strange things for money. The pattern persists. A non-racist white person has become a useless thing for the politically ambitious. Something to stamp out and erase, if at all possible.

    What astonishes me no end though – is how and why this issue has not morphed into its true, final and vital form. Which has next to nothing to do with conflict between Caucasian people, and people of any other color. It has directly and specifically to do with African American people, and that long history back towards a race memory that places elephants in every room.
    I mean, they invented an entire culture over 3 centuries, learning how to deal with their history, its aftermath, and its consequences.
    How can I be at all surprised that although many succeeded, many others failed to come to grips with the thing and move on.
    I would never agree with the idea that they don’t have issues, or a cause. My disagreement is with the methodology and the leadership.
    But then……even the white folks haven’t done so well with their brand of leadership, either.
    And by the way, spinning lies and hatred reaps the wind and not much else. Even a thousand year Reich only lasted about a decade.

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