Left-wing outlets insist it to no end. Whether in The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Slate, The Atlantic, and just recently The New York Times, in voicing concerns over critical race theory, conservatives are rubes igniting a bogus culture war. It isn’t what the racist Trumpers think it is, the left and its allies offer. The racists are just clutching their privilege.
Take this piece by Charles M. Blow, an opinion columnist at the Times. According to Blow, “Critical race theory is the political right’s new boogeyman” that makes white people uncomfortable but “doesn’t diagnose the country as evil, even though it is beyond dispute that some evil people designed the architecture of racial oppression in this country and that there are still some who help maintain it.”
If you found these statements contradictory, you are not alone. Rather, you are sane.
Blow’s “boogeyman” theory completely dismisses the reality that CRT is invading schools across the nation and that parents are justified in desiring a say in their kids’ curricula. Also included here is insisting CRT does not preach systemic racism (false) and that the United States is rotten to the core because of an institutional superstructure (also false).
Blow’s claim is a great representation of how legacy media frames the critical race theory debate. In such articles, left-leaning writers often generalize about ubiquitous oppression, all while rebuking and minimizing Americans who are skeptical of a doctrine that actually asserts all white people are inherently racist.
In the aforementioned New Yorker article, this is on full display. “Republicans on the national level have been a little low on talking points and shock material,” writes contributor Benjamin Wallace-Wells. “The debate isn’t about history, exactly. It is about the possibility of blamelessness.”
“When your priority is to preserve a particular mythology — the United States as a land of equal opportunity — the push to take a critical view of the United States’ racial history becomes a threat,” Christine Emba writes in The Post. “Thus has emerged the conservative obsession with critical race theory (CRT), a mode of pushback that has taken on a life and logic of its own. It is a psychological defense, not a rational one.”
So Blow is very much in the gaslighting camp with his recent article. He reiterates the talking points of his legacy media colleagues. CRT is not actually a “threat,” he argues. Why, it is merely an idea publicized by Republicans who hate minorities, not because they are allowed to have dissenting opinions about curricula.
“So the rush by states across the country to ban the teaching of critical race theory in schools isn’t really about a real threat,” the Times writer states. “Very few schools even teach C.R.T. as a core part of their curriculums, if at all. Republicans are using their tried-and-true playbook of fear mongering about the rise of otherness and the displacement of whiteness, the white patriarchy and a dominant white narrative.”
Not only is Blow denying the surging existence of CRT — which is obvious to anyone paying attention — but he is reinforcing exactly what this detestable doctrine holds: That white people rule America and an “equitable” framework of non-colorblind relationships will even the playing field. For a writer trying to assert people are nuts for being fearful of a doctrine he views as not actually present in society, it is curious that he literally espouses the ideas behind the theory. The Times writer seems to neglect that his admission of such ideas negates his CRT “conspiracy” argument.
“In fact, I don’t even believe that most people have any real concept of what critical race theory is,” the writer says. “It’s just a collection of words that hint, to them, at agitation and aggrievement: a theory that mentions race and that is critical, or, in their minds, criticizes.”
The trajectory of the piece is simple. Deny, deny, deny. But none of it makes sense, given how the writer is simultaneously claiming CRT is a myth while decrying white supremacy as interwoven in all institutions.
There is a reason the same ideas are espoused in each bombshell story on the subject. There is a reason the same consulting groups are funneled tens of thousands for training. There is a reason the same terms show up nearly every time: microaggressions, implicit bias, white privilege, equity, diversity, inclusion, action civics, and so on.
CRT is here in America, and those who support it — either openly or in practice by writing in favor of its tenets — insist it is no big deal. Nothing to see here. But CRT is not merely a “collection of words” without an underlying “concept.” Claiming as such is not only silly but naive.
Worse, Blow is under the impression that CRT has only “simply become the latest tool” for the right. While he backs this up with the claim that “Right-wing politics in America is exhausted,” he misunderstands the actual situation. The fact is that a political tool can also be something with relevance throughout society.
Not only is CRT a concept making major headway in America, but it is a tool in a way the Times writer just does not comprehend. Republicans and conservatives, in general, are waking up to this nonsensical and racist framework.
If Republicans wish to run on CRT, power to them. After all, shouldn’t the GOP run on issues its constituents deem important, as opposed to corporate tax cuts and endless wars?
Source: The Federalist
