Critical race theory
Repackaged Marxism, white supremacy
Some observers have objected to a law the General Assembly passed that disallowed indoctrinating Tennessee K-12 students with pro-Marxist curricula that teaches all white people are all inherently racist.
Although this law never banned Critical Race Theory (CRT) by name, critics have asserted the law’s disallowed tenets amounted to such. These critics have decried that such a law is unpatriotic and, even, un-American. Perhaps, to get past misleading rhetoric to the truth, these assertions merit examination.
What is CRT? First, it is not the teaching of African-American history. Some dishonest apologists maintain CRT benignly examines social, cultural and legal issues as they relate to race and racism. Additionally, for many of the uninformed, CRT is, apparently, simply a vague assertion of racism, trivially cloaked in academic jargon. Alternatively, for some African-American scholars, it is a politically correct and conveniently acceptable blame-transfer mechanism.
Countering this last perspective, John McWhorter, an associate professor for Columbia University, said, “Only victimology makes black thinkers so ominously comfortable portraying their own people as the weakest, least-resilient human beings in the history of the species.”
Likewise, Glenn C. Lour, professor of economics at Brown University, asserts: “This [CRT] is no reasoned ethical reflection. Rather, it is indoctrination, virtue-signaling, and the transparent currying of favor … ”
Contrastingly, strident CRT supporters declare that our constitutional republic callously maintains white supremacy. These supporters assert American institutions enhance white power and enforce societal or structural racism.
Unsurprisingly, they advocate radically and violently for transforming the relationship between law and racial power. CRT advocates demand achieving anti-subordination (which is, apparently, whatever they say it is) more broadly by “oppressing white oppressors.”
The tenants of CRT are openly Marxist theories with the word “race” inserted. Marxism is a destructive political philosophy that has never succeeded for a single country on which it has been imposed. In fact, Marxism has eventually ruined every society coerced to accept it.
Condensed to basics, author Ibram Kendi and other CRT proponents propose past oppression must be avenged by present oppression against the descendants of past oppressors. CRT teaches that even in the absence of present oppression, descendants of past oppression victims remain permanent victims.
Additionally, CRT tenets hold that those whose ancestors were past oppressors must become and remain permanently oppressed.
Such tripe is nothing more than finely tailored, disingenuous imposition of Marxist dialectic class struggle theory on our history. This approach leaves no room for the “Laws of Nature or Nature’s God,” or the “self-evident truth that all men are created equal.”
Likewise, CRT has no vindication for abolition movements led by the white oppressor class. Moreover, there is no explanation for a bloody civil war eliminating slavery led by the white oppressor class.
Furthermore, in CRT it is impossible to acknowledge the Civil Rights Acts passed by the white oppressor class, etc. Our K-12 students should be taught “how” to think to understand that no one is a permanent prisoner of ancestral mistakes.
Similarly, learning to think creates the understanding that people are defined by the content of their character, not their skin color.
Additionally, they should understand that our system is established on the rule of law however imperfectly applied, not a class or race struggle. Moreover, they must learn to appreciate that our divinely bestowed rights protected by our constitutional form of government, create unapparelled opportunities. Marxist indoctrination, whether hidden in a term like “Critical Race Theory,” or, not, has no place in Tennessee classrooms. Contradicting CRT/Marxist advocates, no intelligent person believes African-American history should be hidden from our students. We must never allow our nation’s mistakes to be propagandized by ideologues in pursuit of power or unprincipled hucksters. Rather, Tennessee educators should present historical facts impartially and unemotionally.
America’s successes should be presented with equal or greater vigor alongside its mistakes — the abolition of slavery, Women’s Suffrage, the Civil Rights Acts, the election of a mixed-race president and vice president, African-American chief of staff of the military, African-American and Indian-American UN ambassadors, secretary of state and other, U.S. cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, etc. Our nation is not, nor has it ever has been, perfect.
Nonetheless, even with all of its faults, it remains as both Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan noted, “the last, best hope of earth.”
John Ragan lives in Oak Ridge and represents District 33 in the Tennessee House.