It’s Time to Carefully Examine Critical Race Theory Programs Imposed on our Students in the Classroom

In his most recent column at City Journal, Christopher Rufo points out the dishonest claim by NYT columnist Michelle Goldberg that opponents of critical race theory are supposedly refusing to discuss and debate the merits of CRT. Goldberg's claim is wildly untrue. As Rufo states:

For more than a year, prominent black intellectuals, including John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Wilfred Reilly, and Coleman Hughes have challenged the critical race theorists to debate—and none has accepted. After Goldberg published her column, I called her bluff even further, challenging to “debate any prominent critical race theorist on the floor of the New York Times.” Predictably, none responded, catching the New York Times in a fib and further exposing the critical race theorists’ refusal to submit their ideas to public scrutiny.

Rufo then challenges those like Goldberg who vaguely describe CRT school programs as encouraging "social justice."

They present critical race theory as a benign academic discipline that seeks “social justice,” while ignoring the avalanche of reporting, including my own, that suggests that, in practice, CRT-based programs are often hateful, divisive, and filled with falsehoods; they traffic in racial stereotypes, collective guilt, racial segregation, and race-based harassment. The real test for intellectuals on the left is not to defend their ideas as abstractions but to defend the real-world consequences of their ideas.

Goldberg and Sachs should answer in specifics. Do they support public schools forcing first-graders to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities, then ranking themselves according to their “power and privilege”? Do they support a curriculum that teaches that “all white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism”? Do they support telling white teachers that they are guilty of “spirit murdering” black children? Do they support telling white parents that they must become “white traitors” and advocate for “white abolition”? These are all real-world examples from my investigative reporting over the past two months, all of which the left-wing critics have deliberately ignored in their rebuttals.

Rufo also challenges Jeffrey Sachs who, along with Goldberg, claim that lawmakers working to restrict CRT training are impinging on free speech issue. Really?  All you need to turn the clock back to 1850 to make it clear that muzzling overt racism in a classroom is not a serious free speech issue.  Rufo explains:

To raise the stakes even further, we could also propose a counterfactual. If the Ku Klux Klan sponsored a public school curriculum that stated, “whites deserve to have the power and privilege” and “black culture is inherently violent”—a simple transposition of critical race theory’s basic tenets—would Goldberg and Sachs jump to the Klan’s defense? They would not—and for good reason. Racism, from the Right or from the Left, is wrong. However, for the critical race theorists, opposing racism is not categorical; it is instrumental. Official discrimination against blacks and Latinos is considered “bad”; official discrimination against whites and Asians is considered “good.”

I have seen many news reports (including Rufo's) that convince me that he is accurately portraying many modern attempts to teach "racial sensitivity" or "bias" or "social justice." That said, we need to be careful how we categorize these programs and those who are advocating for them.  There are some productive ways to talk about race, including the programs advocated by Chloe Valdary.  The programs I find offensive fall along a continuum. Some of these programs (e.g., programs based on the teachings of Robin DiAngelo) shamelessly argue that we ought to see people as "colors," which is a dysfunctional and destructive way to interact with others.  Other programs suggest that we strive to find differences in each other where there are not relevant differences, though they don't say it as explicitly. Every program is different and must be evaluated on its own merits. [More . . . ]

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The New York Times Finally Wakes Up to the Dangers and Dysfunctions of Wokeness

After a long deep sleep, the NYT is finally starting to acknowledge the dysfunctions and dangers of Critical Race Theory. Or maybe I'm being too charitable. This has been a newspaper in deep denial, paralyzed by the fear of being called names by hostile people who mislabel themselves as "liberal" and who falsely claim to have solutions to "racism."  I've been reading and writing about these dangers for the past year, yet this is only the second article I've seen by the NYT that acknowledges obvious dysfunction in many of our colleges (the other was last week's article about Smith College). Here's an excerpt from Brett Stephens Op-Ed, "Smith College and the Failing Liberal Bargain: Absolution is off the table. And liberal ideals themselves are up for renegotiation": 

Why is it that racial tensions keep boiling over at some of the nation’s most emphatically progressive-minded institutions, whether it’s at Smith, Yale, Northwestern, Bryn Mawr or the Dalton School? Why does the embrace of social justice pedagogies seem to have gone hand in hand with deteriorating race relations on campus?

One answer is that if many students are enjoying a diet of courses on critical race theory, and employees are trained on the fine points of microaggressions, they might take to heart what they are taught and notice what they have been trained to see. Another answer is that if those who report being offended gain sympathy, attention and even celebrity, more accusations may be reported. . . .

In place of former notions of fairness toward individuals regardless of race, the Woke left has new ideas of “restorative justice” for racial groups. In place of traditional commitments to free speech, it has new proscriptions on hate speech. In place of the liberal left’s past devotion to facts, it demands new respect for feelings.

All of this has left many of the traditional gatekeepers of liberal institutions uncertain, timid and, in many cases, quietly outraged. This is not the deal they thought they struck. But it’s the deal they’re going to get until they recover the courage of their liberal convictions."

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No Thanks, [Formerly Prestigious American University]. I Need to Go To School Elsewhere to Get a Real Education

John McWhorter has received many hundreds of emails from people who are dismayed with the Woke dismantling of American Education. Here is a recent communication he received, redacted to protect this person and published at It Bears Mentioning, McWhorter's Substack Website, part of an article titled, "If I like it, it's data; if I don't like it, it's "anecdata." No - whether you like it or not, it is neither dim nor racist to generalize on the basis of widespread and frequent events (i.e. both cop killings and Elect abuses)." McWhorter introduces this communicating by noting that this person had been "accepted into a graduate program at a prestigious institution."

It hurts so much that I have to decline your offer and several other great offers that I have received from elite universities and programs that used to be the dream schools for young people like me. I am simply very frustrated by ideology masquerading as objective science in today's higher ed. particularly humanity fields. Universities these days are trying to make young people like me feel guilty because we are white and because the whole system is filled with white racists, and me included. There is such strong moralization in the academy that is so certain that it has Science on its side in all of its proclamations. Frankly, today's academy’s ideological dogmatism is one of my major fear and hesitancies for entering it. I fear any work I do, especially in developmental or evolutionary psychology, would be evaluated not on its merit but instead on what is perceived as my politics based on how politically convenient my findings are. I have decided to move to [foreign country] to join a group of very creative and young [subject area redacted by me] on a [ibid.] research project. I want to spend the last 5 years in my 20s on something scientific, not political. But it seems that it is simply impossible to accomplish that goal in my own country.

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ADHD and its Functional Twin: VAST (Variable Attention Stimulus Trait)

For many years, I thought of “ADHD” and “ADD” as dysfunctional conditions with which other people struggled, not me. Discussion of these conditions brought back vivid grade school memories of several bright and energetic boys struggling to sit still in their desks for seven hours, while nuns scolded and belittled them. I was fully aware of the social stigma that came with a diagnosis of ADHD. At the same time, I have long been aware that many successful people have been diagnosed with ADHD. I’ve long been convinced that, to some degree, their ADHD traits fueled their success.

Before my divorce in 2014, my wife Anne (in our 18th year of marriage) accused me needing treatment “because of ADHD,” explaining that I was “ruining the marriage.” She had been reading a website called ADHD and Marriage. She insisted that I should see a doctor to get medication for my “problem.” She told me that I was a bad listener. She told me these things repeatedly. It didn’t help that these concerns were hurled at me, not gently broached, but I now understand her frustration better.

An ADHD diagnosis also seemed ridiculous because I had never before been told I exhibited ADHD symptoms. No other human being ever raised a concern about ADHD until Anne proclaimed her diagnosis in black and white. Nor did any instances of ADHD seem apparent in any of my close relatives.

I resented these sole-cause accusations because I saw our marriage to be much more complex than that and far more nuanced. Also, I liked who I was and saw myself as high functioning. I have always been upbeat. I enjoy many activities and I’m fairly good various things, including my legal career, writing and composing music. Also (as I reminded my wife), I was capable of sitting in front of a computer screen for twelve hours per day writing complex appellate briefs. I have received awards for my brief writing. Fellow lawyers (and opposing lawyers) have often expressed that they like working with me. On a regular basis, more than a few of my friends tell me that I am an extremely attentive listener.

After the divorce in 2014, I became increasingly intrigued about ADHD. I started reading various articles and books about ADHD. From this informal research, I became convinced that many of the qualities associated with the ADHD mind are things that describe me well. In December, 2020, Anne died suddenly causing me to do a lot of thinking about a lot of things, including our marriage, including the role ADHD might have played in our struggles over the last few years of our marriage.

More icing on the cake: a counselor has gotten to know me well over the past few months. He recently blurted out: “You are ADHD from top to bottom.” Hmmm. That I am indisputably high-functioning (unlike many people who receive the diagnosis) doesn’t rule out ADHD, but it explains why I pushed back when a diagnosis was hurled at me. I’ve thought further about my ability to writing for many hours at a stretch? After the divorce learned that hyper-focusing is something that some people with ADHD diagnoses do well.

The above paragraphs are a bit awkward for me to re-read because my purpose is here is not to tout my accomplishments. It is not my purpose to drag my marital struggles into the public, post-mortem. My purpose is to show the reasons for my initial confusion and to set the stage to explain something fascinating I’ve recently learned about my way of processing the world. Perhaps my journey might help others. [More . . . ]

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