Christopher Rufo: What to Do About the Rapid Spread of Critical Race Theory Throughout the United States

Christopher Rufo summarizes the spread of critical race theory, characterizing these stories as the tip of the iceberg. His article: "The Courage of Our Convictions: How to fight critical race theory."

What does critical race theory look like in practice? Last year, I authored a series of reports focused on critical race theory in the federal government. The FBI was holding workshops on intersectionality theory. The Department of Homeland Security was telling white employees that they were committing “microinequities” and had been “socialized into oppressor roles.” The Treasury Department held a training session telling staff members that “virtually all white people contribute to racism” and that they must convert “everyone in the federal government” to the ideology of “antiracism.” And the Sandia National Laboratories, which designs America’s nuclear arsenal, sent white male executives to a three-day reeducation camp, where they were told that “white male culture” was analogous to the “KKK,” “white supremacists,” and “mass killings.” The executives were then forced to renounce their “white male privilege” and to write letters of apology to fictitious women and people of color.

This year, I produced another series of reports focused on critical race theory in education. In Cupertino, California, an elementary school forced first-graders to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities and rank themselves according to their “power and privilege.” In Springfield, Missouri, a middle school forced teachers to locate themselves on an “oppression matrix,” based on the idea that straight, white, English-speaking, Christian males are members of the oppressor class and must atone for their privilege and “covert white supremacy.” In Philadelphia, an elementary school forced fifth-graders to celebrate “Black communism” and simulate a Black Power rally to free 1960s radical Angela Davis from prison, where she had once been held on charges of murder. And in Seattle, the school district told white teachers that they are guilty of “spirit murder” against black children and must “bankrupt [their] privilege in acknowledgement of [their] thieved inheritance.”

I’m just one investigative journalist, but I’ve developed a database of more than 1,000 of these stories. When I say that critical race theory is becoming the operating ideology of our public institutions, I am not exaggerating—from the universities to bureaucracies to K-12 school systems, critical race theory has permeated the collective intelligence and decision-making process of American government, with no sign of slowing down.

The woke-infested media has, for the most part, given CRT advocates a free pass regarding the real-world affects of CRT. Rufo proposes asking that CRT advocates be forced to answer these questions:

Critical race theorists must be confronted with and forced to speak to the facts. Do they support public schools separating first-graders into groups of “oppressors” and “oppressed”? Do they support mandatory curricula teaching that “all white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism”? Do they support public schools instructing white parents to become “white traitors” and advocate for “white abolition”? Do they want those who work in government to be required to undergo this kind of reeducation? How about managers and workers in corporate America? How about the men and women in our military? How about every one of us?

Rufo suggests advocating "excellence" rather than "diversity":

In terms of principles, we need to employ our own moral language rather than allow ourselves to be confined by the categories of critical race theory. For example, we often find ourselves debating “diversity.” Diversity as most of us understand it is generally good, all things being equal, but it is of secondary value. We should be talking about and aiming at excellence, a common standard that challenges people of all backgrounds to achieve their potential. On the scale of desirable ends, excellence beats diversity every time.

When we tell the story about the United States, we need to tell the whole story, the moral arc:

[W]e must promote the true story of America—a story that is honest about injustices in American history, but that places them in the context of our nation’s high ideals and the progress we have made toward realizing them.

Fighting back will require that good-hearted thoughtful people stand up to waves of abuse:

Above all, we must have courage, the fundamental virtue required in our time: courage to stand and speak the truth, courage to withstand epithets, courage to face the mob, and courage to shrug off the scorn of elites.

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No Real Teeth for “Anti-Discrimination” Efforts to Protect Asian-Americans

An amendment was offered to an "Asian hate crime" bill:

Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz introduced a change to a Democrat-authored “Asian hate crime” bill making its way through Congress, expanding on the bill’s prohibitions against anti-Asian racism by stripping federal funding from colleges and universities that discriminate against Asians in their admissions process . . .

The bill, Cruz said, “is not designed to do anything to prevent or punish actual crimes. It is instead a Democratic messaging vehicle designed to push the demonstrably false idea that it is somehow racist to acknowledge that Covid-19 originated in Wuhan, China and that the Chinese Communist Party actively lied and suppressed information about the outbreak, allowing it to become a global pandemic.”

Here is the vote on the Cruz Amendment:

Democrats apparently have no problem with the fact that Ivy League Colleges are viciously and openly discriminating against Asian-Americans.

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Enthusiastic Racism From the Academic Left

I agree with the message of this short video. I despair of the way that "anti-racism" is being implemented in many schools. What does it tell young people who identify as "black" that we need to lower standards for all "blacks" because they, as a group, cannot cut it?  Two things:

1. This claim is false. "Black" students can cut it.  If given high-quality education and parental involvement from the start, I believe that "blacks" are every bit as capable of educational achievement as any other "color" of student. Many "black" students are high performers.

2. This quick solution sends the same pernicious message that one would expect to hear from American slave-holders in the 1850s.  This is not what students need to hear.

Let's give all students (and their families) the tools they need to succeed.  And let's not shy away from inconvenient facts, including these the fact that 69% of "black" children were born outside of marriage (compared to 30% for "whites" and "15% for people categories as Asian.  I don't bring this up to be moralistic, but only to suggest that many more "black" children lack some of the resources available, on average, to children of other "races." A two-parent household (whether or not married) can, on average, offer more resources to the children of that household.  I also suspect that in some "black" communities (not all), education is approached differently than in some other communities (of all "races). John McWhorter has discussed this different approach on occasion (see, for example, the 30 min mark here). Both of these factors (and others) need to be addressed unflinchingly so that every child, including every single "black" child, gets the resources and encouragement he or she needs to excel as a student.

Nothing I have written here suggests that we should judge any child on any basis other than as an individual.  Every child is unique and there are high achievers and low achievers of every so-called "race."

[I no longer use the term "race" or the colors referring to "races" without scare quotes.  Use of these terms is horribly imprecise, unscientific and inherently divisive.  Claiming that there are "races" is the first step on the slippery slope toward racism.  We need a two-pronged attack: 1) We need to move away from claims that there are "races," as nothing good results from this divisive term. 2) At the same time, we need to ostracize and vigorously litigate against any person or organization that discriminates on the purported basis of "race." ]

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Conversations versus Performances

Scott Barry Kaufman says this well.

I have this exact same thought many times every day.  It's like we are trapped in blue-dress-brown-dress argument every time we open our mouths.

One fruitful solution to this mess is to re-learn how to have conversations using Heterodox Academy's HxA Way:

  1. Make your case with evidence.
  2. Be intellectually charitable.
  3. Be intellectually humble.
  4. Be constructive.
  5. Be yourself.

The above five points are merely the headings - the HxA Way is carefully thought out.  Here's a more detailed (yet succinct) description.

Then again, this solution of the HxA way assumes that both parties are interested in having a conversation, which is not the case with many of today's tribally charged performative chants that only pretend to be conversations.

Conversations and performative chants look similar in that they both involve two people talking in the presence of each other.  The way I distinguish the two is that to be a conversation, one or both parties is/are at least potentially open to changing the way they understand some aspect of the world. This is often extremely difficult to tell.  And the likelihood that we are witnessing a meaningful conversation diminishes greatly as 1) more and more people actively participate as speakers, 2) one or more of the parties fail to accurately restate the other side's position, 3) one of the sides refuses to give up the floor, or 4) voices get louder or more impassioned.  In other words, one's best shot at having a real conversation involves one-on-one conversation where people listen closely to each other's words, restate those thoughts accurately and want their thoughts and world-view challenged--they both seek a new version of truth and neither seeks to "win" the interaction.  The opposite of a conversation can be found in a religious sermon.

I'll close with this quote by Nietzsche:

"Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, nations and ages it is the rule."

--Beyond Good & Evil, Aphorism #156

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