Is wokeness the West’s new religion? - "Critics of wokeness often compare it with a religion. Like religious fundamentalists, woke believers tend to be self-righteous, dogmatic and puritanical. Anyone who thinks this comparison is stretching it should see what is happening in British schools. While woke ideas about race and gender have been in the school curriculum for some time, one teachers’ group wants to take things a step further. It wants woke precepts like ‘white privilege’ to be taught as part of kids’ religious studies. New curriculum guidance from the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education (NATRE), which represents RE teachers in the UK, says that primary-school children aged between eight and 11 should be taught an ‘anti-racist’ RE curriculum... in a clear nod to the iconoclasm of last summer’s BLM demos, apparently children should also learn why Bristol’s Colston statue is ‘racially offensive’. Teachers are even urged to confess their unconscious racial biases."
Where Have the Honest Liberals Gone? - WSJ - " Stanley Crouch, the cultural critic who died last month at 74, was a tell-it-like-it-is kind of guy. In the 1980s and ’90s, when he wrote for publications like the Village Voice and the New Republic, he was sometimes referred to as a “black conservative,” the lazy label applied to any black person who strays from civil-rights orthodoxy. Crouch was liberal but decidedly not doctrinaire, and black intellectual elites often came in for bruising in his work. Crouch wrote that the black-power activists of the 1960s did little more than “transform white America into Big Daddy and the Negro movement into an obnoxious, pouting adolescent demanding the car keys.” He observed that “Afrocentrism is another of the clever but essentially simple-minded hustles that have come about over the last twenty-five years” and “has little to offer of any intellectual substance.” His essay on Derrick Bell (1930-2011), a black scholar who popularized critical race theory in the 1980s, was titled “Dumb Bell Blues.”... Critical race theory attributes social inequality to racial power structures. It posits that problems within the black community are entirely the fault of whites and the responsibility of whites to solve. This thinking has grown in popularity over the past decade through the writings of Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michelle Alexander, Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi. Its jargon—“white privilege,” “systemic racism,” “unconscious bias”—has entered the vernacular. It has moved beyond college campuses and into our elementary schools via Nikole Hannah-Jones and the New York Times’s “1619 Project.” It has entered workplaces through “diversity” and “racial sensitivity” training... Many people are learning for the first time that the government has been paying “diversity consultants” to teach employees that the U.S. is inherently racist. But what’s also been revealed is the dwindling number of Stanley Crouches on the political left who are willing to call out today’s Derrick Bells. Progressives have succeeded in bringing into the mainstream a school of thought once relegated to the fringes of the academy. There is no shortage of conservatives willing to push back against this pernicious nonsense, but where have the honest liberals gone? In 1989, Randall Kennedy, a black professor at Harvard Law School, published a devastating law-review article on the “empirical weaknesses and inflated rhetoric” of critical race theorists. He also noted their “strategic use of accusations of prejudice.” Toward the end, Mr. Kennedy revealed that black colleagues who had seen earlier drafts of the article urged him not to publish it. They feared that it might undermine their arguments for racial preferences in hiring. Mr. Kennedy suggested that they come up with better arguments. Liberal black elites claim to speak on behalf of everyday blacks when in reality they are just speaking for themselves. School choice and crime control are two obvious examples. Blacks favor charter schools and putting more police in their neighborhoods, while civil-rights leaders call for charter-school moratoriums and reduced funding for law enforcement. Nor is this divide a new phenomenon. In 1993, a Gallup poll found that 75% of black respondents wanted more cops on the street; 82% said that the criminal-justice system didn’t treat offenders harshly enough; and 68% favored building more prisons so that longer sentences could be handed out. Pushing “white supremacy” or “systemic racism” as a blanket explanation for racial disparities is a parlor game for better-off blacks who can afford to play games. It helps activists raise money and intellectuals secure cushy posts in the academy, but it does nothing to help the black underclass, which is more interested in safer neighborhoods and better schools than in making white people feel guilty."
Op-ed: White teachers who refuse to teach CRT should leave profession - "This fight to uphold white supremacist values and beliefs that perpetuate psychological, emotional, and physical violence against Black and Brown students is being played out on a national front in schools of all classifications throughout the United States. Why am I not seeing more teachers outraged by this? My inclination is to believe that the lack of outcry is over- shadowed by the even bigger and collective exhale of teachers — White teachers — who are relieved by the denouncement of culturally relevant, responsive, and sustainable curriculum. These are teachers who have never had a desire to and who never will teach about anything not based in White privilege. This apathetic approach to education, in my years of experience, is too often rooted in the educators own lack of learning. It’s rooted in their racist, sexist, homophobic, misogynistic, xenophobic beliefs. If you’re an educator who has let this year go by without attending to the issues and events that matter most to our shared humanity and that directly or indirectly impact your students, their families, and their communities, then there’s no longer room for you in the proverbial inn. Exit stage left. The show is over. Your leading role has been cancelled without renewal...
Vivett Dukes is an educator and social activist."
From May 2021. This won't stop liberals gaslighting about how CRT is not taught in schools
Kendi and Reynolds' Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You, a Remix—A Partial List of Errors - " The "hot" book to "spur discussion" about racism or teach about "antiracism" for middle and high school students is Jason Reynolds and Ibram Kendi's book, Stamped a Remix, which is a dumbed-down version of Kendi's book Stamped from the Beginning. Kendi's antiracism ideology is pernicious. He divides the world into segregationists, assimilationists, and antiracists. The assimilationists, like the segregationists, are in Kendi's telling all racists (pages xii-xiii). This includes almost everyone prominent who has ever worked for civil rights, including Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois (at least until he became a Communist), Martin Luther King, Jr., and more. Any book that depicts these individuals as racists should raise more than a few eyebrows before getting assigned to middle-schoolers. The hero of the last third of the book is Angela Davis. For some reason, even though she was Communist who devoted most of her life to advancing Communism in general rather than civil rights specifically, and was an over-the-top apologist for every brutal action ever taken by the USSR, she becomes the exemplar of antiracism. Davis' attitude toward Soviet Jewish dissidents fighting for religious and cultural freedom, for example, was worse than dismissive. The Harvard Crimson reported in 1972 that Davis "explained that the situation of Jews in Russia 'has been totally blown out of proportion by the bourgeois press because they're going to do everything they can to discredit socialism.'" Not incidentally, she was and remains [link has her engaging in a modern version of blood libel by ridiculously linking Israel to police violence against blacks in the U.S.] an antisemite, and it's rather difficult to see how a racist against Jews can be an antiracist heroine. (One wonders more generally if it's a coincidence that every one of Kendi's modern heroes–Davis, Malcolm X, Jeremiah Wright, Stokely Carmichael–has a history of antisemitism.) But plenty of other people have taken on Kendi's ideology. I had occasion to read the book, and made a running list of errors, which is undoubtedly incomplete. The list is extensive enough that no reputable academic institution should assign the book... Along with gross errors, I'm including examples of where the authors gloss over reality when it suits their agenda. Some of these errors go to the heart of Kendi's project, some are minor. But together they reflect authors who are indifferent to fact...
Page 162: Malcom X and the Nation of Islam. The book's description of NOI's philosophy makes it sound rather benign, ignoring both the overtly racist and crazy elements of it...
Page 170: Angela Davis. The books suggests that she was unhappy with the "white activism" she found at Brandeis, and created her own Afrocentric ideology after the Birmingham bombing. In fact, she was mainly influenced by the white, Jewish, Communist Herbert Marcuse, who was her professor and mentor at Brandeis. The authors need to distort the history because Davis adopting ideas she learned from a white Communist wouldn't fit with the Afrocentric theme of the book...
Page 174: The book states that Senator and 1964 presidential candidate's Barry Goldwater's opposition to federal spending was because it was going to black people for the first time ("This racist epiphany hit Goldwater once Black people were receiving government assistance, too."). This is utter and pernicious nonsense. There is no evidence that Goldwater's views on government spending, which long predated the civil rights era, had anything to do with black people, and they reflect a longstanding American libertarian tradition of being in favor of limited government that has existed independently of whether black people were potential beneficiaries (or victims) of the government. Goldwater, of course, came to these views while growing up in Arizona, where the black population was small, and whre his own family had a deserved reputation for racial tolerance.
193-97: Discussion of Angela Davis' arrest and acquittal for smuggling guns used in a kidnapping and murder. The book spins a fictional tale. The truth, via historian Ron Radosh: "Eventually, she was acquitted in 1972, despite her proven ownership of the murder weapons and a cache of letters she wrote to George Jackson in prison expressing her passionate romantic feelings for him and unambivalent solidarity with his commitment to political violence."...
206 "Reagan's economic policies caused unemployment to skyrocket." Unemployment went up at the beginning of the Reagan administration, then went down for the rest of it to lower levels than when he started...
216: The authors criticize a Black women's organization being "racist" for being opposed to misogynistic "gangsta rap." As if one can't imagine other reasons for Black women criticizing misogynistic rap lyrics."
So much for CRT being "teaching accurate history"
Kyle Kashuv on Twitter - "Also, to Republicans, a thought: Don't "ban" Critical Race Theory. You can't (and shouldn't) ban ideas, particularly if they are impossible to delineate (something deeply true of CRT)."
"There is no “market place of ideas” in a Kindergarten classroom…"
Race education in preschool? How some daycares teach kids about racism - "On one of their first days back to school, a group of 3-year-olds at Little Sun People preschool in Brooklyn, New York, spent the morning learning how to write their names"
Indoctrination must start early for best results
Meme - "Iowa teacher with a "sinister agenda": "If it wasn't for teachers, more kids would turn out like their parents."
"That's the point."
It's still a "myth" that teachers see their job as indoctrinating children
Desperately Seeking Sunlight | American Civil Liberties Union - "It has been said that “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”" - ACLU, 2008
ACLU on Twitter - "There can be no accountability without transparency. Journalists, advocates, and lawyers must have access to the places where immigrants are held." - ACLU, 2021
ACLU on Twitter - "Curriculum transparency bills are just thinly veiled attempts at chilling teachers and students from learning and talking about race and gender in schools." - ACLU, 2022
Comment: "“CRT isn’t being taught in K-12 schools!”
“CRT isn’t being taught in K-12 schools, and parents have no right to know if it is!”
You guys are hilarious."
Facebook - "The ACLU - American Civil Liberties Union - comes out against transparency! Imagine that?! This is why we set up Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR) last year. To pick up the mantle the ACLU dropped. To have a national organization that actually stands for civil liberties. Today, FAIR filed a federal lawsuit to stop New York City from enforcing its unconstitutional order prioritizing Covid-19 treatments based on racial categorization and ethnicity*"
Meme - Jesse Singal @jessesingal: "As a Jewish person I'm concerned that wildly popular people like Robin DiAngelo are ACTIVELY ENCOURAGING whites to view themselves as a unified collective without a moment's thought as to how reviving this sci..." "As a White Nationalist person, I'm rubbing my hands together in glee that critical race theory, BLM thuggery, & other rogue Golems are increasingly driving self-respecting white people toward unapologetic white identity politics."
Meme - "You'Re A BAD PERSON! YOUR MoM Is A BAD PERSON! YOUR DAD IS A BAD PERSoN! YOUR GRANDPARENTS ARE BAD PeoPLe! YoUR GREAT-GRANDPARENTS ARE EVEN WORSE! EVERYTHING THEY GAVE YoU WAS STOLEN, AND YoU NEED To APoLOGIZE FoR ALL oF it!"
"How WAS YoUR FIRST DAY BACK, HoNEY?"
Is "Critical Race Theory" the Wrong Term? - "People just make these things up on the fly, reveling in the overthrow of prevailing attitudes, even if the overturned standards are ones they themselves set ten minutes ago. It’s fashion, not politics... Critical race theory,” said the Washington Post’s Colbert King, “is simple truth-telling.” The war over “Critical Race Theory” in this sense has become a political marketing campaign that’s uniquely double-edged in its cynicism. Democrats are pretending they don’t know what the fuss is all about. Republicans are pretending there isn’t a dog whistle in their backlash campaign. At the center of it all is the concept itself, which does exist but is much broader, and both more interesting and more frightening, than the narrow race theory that has Republican politicians in maximum wig-out mode. Two years ago, writer Wesley Yang penned a series of tweets about the “new language of power throughout the non-profit sphere,” giving it a name: the “Successor Ideology.”... What Yang went on to describe in a series of articles and appearances isn’t narrowly about race, or trans issues, or feminism, or American history, but a much wider concept that argues that our foundational notions about everything are wrong and need to be overturned... Attempts by conservatives or even critics on the left to question any of this are usually described in news accounts as efforts to clamp down on something uncontroversially right and necessary, e.g. “educational discussions about race.” This ignores the fact that the movement seems also to be about things like ending blind auditions for orchestra applicants, or redefining mathematics to discourage a focus on “getting the right answer,” to classics teachers canceling the classics, and many other bizarre things"
You Have to Read This Letter - "It was written by a Brearley parent named Andrew Gutmann. If you don’t know about Brearley, it’s a private all-girls school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It costs $54,000 a year and prospective families apparently have to take an “anti-racism pledge” to be considered for admission... Gutmann chose to pull his daughter, who has been in the school since kindergarten, and sent this missive to all 600 or so families in the school earlier this week...
I object to the view that I should be judged by the color of my skin. I cannot tolerate a school that not only judges my daughter by the color of her skin, but encourages and instructs her to prejudge others by theirs. By viewing every element of education, every aspect of history, and every facet of society through the lens of skin color and race, we are desecrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and utterly violating the movement for which such civil rights leaders believed, fought, and died... I object to the idea that Blacks are unable to succeed in this country without aid from government or from whites. Brearley, by adopting critical race theory, is advocating the abhorrent viewpoint that Blacks should forever be regarded as helpless victims, and are incapable of success regardless of their skills, talents, or hard work. What Brearley is teaching our children is precisely the true and correct definition of racism... If Brearley’s administration was truly concerned about so-called “equity,” it would be discussing the cessation of admissions preferences for legacies, siblings, and those families with especially deep pockets. If the administration was genuinely serious about “diversity,” it would not insist on the indoctrination of its students, and their families, to a single mindset, most reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Instead, the school would foster an environment of intellectual openness and freedom of thought. And if Brearley really cared about “inclusiveness,” the school would return to the concepts encapsulated in the motto “One Brearley,” instead of teaching the extraordinarily divisive idea that there are only, and always, two groups in this country: victims and oppressors. l object to Brearley’s advocacy for groups and movements such as Black Lives Matter, a Marxist, anti family, heterophobic, anti-Asian and anti-Semitic organization that neither speaks for the majority of the Black community in this country, nor in any way, shape or form, represents their best interests... I object to the gutting of the history, civics, and classical literature curriculums. I object to the censorship of books that have been taught for generations because they contain dated language potentially offensive to the thin-skinned and hypersensitive (something that has already happened in my daughter's 4th grade class). I object to the lowering of standards for the admission of students and for the hiring of teachers. I object to the erosion of rigor in classwork and the escalation of grade inflation. Any parent with eyes open can foresee these inevitabilities should antiracism initiatives be allowed to persist... Lastly, I object, with as strong a sentiment as possible, that Brearley has begun to teach what to think, instead of how to think. I object that the school is now fostering an environment where our daughters, and our daughters’ teachers, are afraid to speak their minds in class for fear of “consequences.” I object that Brearley is trying to usurp the role of parents in teaching morality, and bullying parents to adopt that false morality at home. I object that Brearley is fostering a divisive community where families of different races, which until recently were part of the same community, are now segregated into two. These are the reasons why we can no longer send our daughter to Brearley."
Meme - Ryan James Girdusky: "CRT is in private schools including religious, charter, and nonsectarian schools. Saying we should increase school choice as an answer for CRT is like being in a horror movie and choosing to stay in the killer's house but just switching rooms."
Critical race theory in medicine - "Deeply rooted in theory-informed action, critical race theory can be used to understand the structural forces that drive racial inequities in society, and to work toward their dismantling. Studying race and racism, even structurally, is insufficient and must be coupled with tangible action at multiple levels. Critical race theory is organized around 4 main ideas, referred to by the terms “race consciousness,” “contemporary orientation,” “centring the margins” and “praxis.” Race consciousness refers to an understanding of racialization, or the creation of “race” as a social process that assigns meaning and value to physical and cultural differences between people... In medicine, it means thinking critically about what makes it possible to perceive race as a biological fact, and why it is so easy to use race as an explanation for health differences between people while overlooking the effects of political and social forces... Critical race theory forces us to reassess the racist practices we take for granted and the policies we perceive as “neutral.” For example, routinely obtaining a history from patients without seeking professional translation services when there is language discordance between patient and provider is wholly inadequate care, yet widely accepted... In the context of critical race theory, “centring the margins” means shifting our focus from the dominant group to those who have been pushed to the margins. It means valuing the expertise of people who have been marginalized and oppressed, in addressing inequities and creating new alternatives. A growing body of medical scholarship informed by critical race theory, published over the past decade, has shed light on how racism affects the way physicians care for patients from primary care to rheumatology and obstetrics. However, there has been little discussion of how critical race theory can be woven into the very fabric of the medical profession... Praxis, or theory-informed action, urges clinicians to move beyond mere recognition of racism to intervening to eliminate race-based health disparities... Racialized health care workers face microaggressions and other forms of everyday racism at work... Critical race theory prompts reflection on the structural foundations underpinning these everyday experiences and action to address them. Rather than everyday racism being disregarded as isolated, minor incidents, critical race theory encourages centring of the experiences of racialized trainees and physicians and shifts focus from intention to impact. It can drive measures such as reviewing and modifying hiring practices and training programs, and the creation of communities of support to foster safe and inclusive workplaces."
Weird. Liberals keep telling us CRT is only about the law. I guess all these papers (like the microaggressions paper) need to be retracted since they have misunderstood CRT
Critical Race Theory: NEA Gaslights Parents - "Twenty twenty-one is shaping up to be the year of one of the largest grassroots movements since the Tea Party movement in 2009. Millions of parents across the country are fighting back against the spread of critical race theory (CRT) in their schools, recognizing it as a dangerous ideological movement meant to divide Americans. The movement is so widespread that CRT was Googled more in June than Joe Biden. Understandably, parents are upset that some teachers are telling white students that they are perpetuating racism while telling black children they are locked out of the American dream. While the Left pretends this racist ideology isn’t being taught in grade school, new business items adopted by the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, show that there is a coordinated effort by the education establishment to force teachers to promote CRT in the classroom and to work to destroy its critics. Let’s rewind to last year, when parents participating in their children’s at-home learning received a front-row seat in their children’s classrooms for the first time. What they saw disturbed them. Instead of trying to improve America’s failing grades on math and science, schools spent class time indoctrinating kindergartners, teaching five-year-olds about “racist police,” and telling students that “all white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism.” That was the spark for a nationwide movement to reject racist, neo-Marxist teaching that spread like wildfire... CRT supporters brought in the big guns: the National Education Association. At their annual conference last weekend, the nation’s largest teachers’ union announced a six-figure campaign to “have a team of staffers for members who want to learn more and fight back against anti-CRT rhetoric” and an official position that “in teaching these topics, it is reasonable and appropriate for curriculum to be informed by academic frameworks for understanding and interpreting the impact of the past on current society, including critical race theory [emphasis ours].” The announcement exposed the source of CRT in schools: not necessarily individual teachers, but a coordinated left-wing campaign that includes massive teachers’ unions. Pushing CRT in schools behind the scenes wasn’t enough for these teachers’ unions, however. They doubled down and are attacking the groups opposing their agenda. A separate business item, costing nearly $60,000 in new union dues, was also adopted:
NEA will research the organizations attacking educators doing anti-racist work and/or use the research already done and put together a list of resources and recommendations for state affiliates, locals, and individual educators to utilize when they are attacked.
Which organization did they single out? The Heritage Foundation, Heritage Action’s partner organization and the leading conservative think tank exposing CRT. The official left-wing talking point, “CRT is not being taught in schools,” was repeated ad nauseam over the last two months by liberal think tanks, the mainstream media, and progressive politicians alike, in an attempt to gaslight Americans and convince them that they were crazy for wanting to protect their children from the Left’s indoctrination. But the NEA resolution destroyed that narrative — and their woke allies noticed. Soon after the NEA convention concluded on July 3, they removed every business item from their site, including all items mentioning CRT. I noticed the deletion within an hour, and Heritage Action immediately spread the word. Soon after the news broke, the NEA redirected the old links to their homepage. But this flimsy cover-up attempt was too little, too late: Parents nationwide have concrete proof that the education and progressive political establishment are willing to support racist CRT education, lie to Americans about its presence in their children’s schools, and then delete their pro-CRT stance to cover their tracks. American parents aren’t falling for it. They know that CRT-based curricula are infiltrating their schools, and they overwhelmingly reject it. According to polling conducted by Heritage Action, 79 percent of voters say children should be taught about the American dream instead of the idea that their destiny is tied to their skin color, and 61 percent reject the idea that America is “fundamentally a racist country.” As more parents begin to learn about what CRT really is, they will continue to reject it... This battle won’t be easy. Grassroots Americans are going head-to-head with some of the nation’s most well-funded and politically connected organizations. The American Federation of Teachers has added $2.5 million to their legal fund to “defend” teachers who insist on breaking the law and indoctrinating students against the will of their parents — even while insisting that CRT is not being taught. Under Biden’s “whole-of-government equity agenda,” the Department of Education is directing grant money to schools for “culturally responsive education.” The good news: Americans are on our side."
Portland Teacher Says NEA Is Working to Purge Teachers Who Aren't 'Antiracist' - "A Portland-area teacher likened her colleagues who don’t want to teach “anti-racism” to pedophiles, adding that anyone who doesn’t “evolve” with critical race theory will be fired for doing “racist things” and “abusing” the children. “If you’re not evolving into an anti-racist educator, you’re making yourself obsolete in this field of profession,” warned Cedar Park Middle School teacher Katherine Watkins during a Zoom conference that was later posted to social media."
Rutgers professor calls white people 'villains' - "A professor at New Jersey’s Rutgers University said she believes that white people are historically “committed to being villains” — and that her unfiltered solution to addressing white supremacy would be to “take them out.” Brittney Cooper, a professor of women’s and gender studies and Africana studies, addressed the history of colonialism during a discussion last month about critical race theory... She said white people don’t trust society to redistribute power to diverse groups of people “because they are so corrupt.” “You know, their thinking is so murky and spiritually bankrupt about power that they … they fear this really existentially letting go of power because they cannot imagine another way to be”... She argued that white people are already “losing,” noting the rising cost of living and that demographics are shifting. “White people’s birth rates are going down … because they literally cannot afford to put their children, newer generations, into the middle class … It’s super perverse, and also they kind of deserve it”... “‘Kids actually can grasp critical race theory because the issue that the right has, is that critical race theory is just the proper teaching of American history”"
Apologists slam the right for not knowing what critical race theory is. But here we have a professor promoting it who doesn't either. Ironic
Texas School District Shames White Students As Part Of ‘Cultural Competence,’ Parents Enraged - "An incident involving white students singing along to racial slurs in rap lyrics led Texas’ most successful school district to adopt a radical approach to combating racism. The Carroll Independent School District of Southlake, a Dallas suburb, is the “top-achieving school district in Texas”... because of videos showing students singling along to rap lyrics and the media attention they received, the district overreached and instituted programs meant to combat “institutional racism” but that in reality shame white students for the color of their skin... “administrators were also told that being white is a bad thing.” “It includes ‘white fragility,’ ‘a state in which even a minimal amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves (anger, fear, guilt.. silence),’ Pullman reported. “Ironically, the presentation also warns against ‘stereotyping,’ which it says ‘happens when you generalize about a person while ignoring the presence of individual differences.’” One parent, Juan Saldivar, told Pullman that he didn’t want his kids taught this because it was “poison.”"
Opponents of critical race theory win Texas school election - "A Texas school board has scored an overwhelming election victory to stop “critical race theory” and a new “cultural competence action plan” from being forced into classes. The elections in Southlake on Saturday were so divisive that backers of the new anti-racism measures called on the Department of Justice to intervene — and even pop star Demi Lovato ripped opponents of the plan."
Students claim soap dispensers are proof of systemic racism. Here’s my rebuttal. - "As one UCLA student claimed during the debate, automatic soap dispensers “don’t see her hands” due to the dark pigment of her skin. As another student reiterated, soap dispensers are racist because they force “black and brown bodies” to show their palms — “the only light areas of the skin” — in order to get soap out... students at UCLA actually thought that they were designed with white supremacy in mind. This, and other claims like it, were not unique perspectives shared by one lone student, but rather a world-view that was reiterated and supported by the over 80 students who attended, or more accurately zoom-bombed, the debate. Wild dispenser-eque claims abounded: from the argument that “white people fed black babies to crocodiles” to “I had a racist teacher who was racist because she asked me where I was from.” The scary thing about these claims aren’t the ideas themselves, but rather the world-view that informs them: that systemic racism and white supremacy is all around us, and in everyone, and everything, a person encounters. These students go about their daily lives and when anything goes even slightly wrong, they immediately conclude that white supremacy, systemic racism, or racism is to blame... For them, racism is not a viewpoint held by shrinking group of misguided individuals, but rather a secret force that exists everywhere, permeates all things, and wields power over society. Sound familiar? That’s because it has a name: conspiracy theory... There are, after all, no institutions left in this country which by law are permitted to promote or allow racist rules, unless you count racial promotion through quotas. Often, as I saw at the UCLA debate, there is little point in arguing with the theorists themselves. They have become so entrenched in their far-fetched beliefs that they consider all opposition to be inherently evil (many of the pro-systemic racism students claimed all opponents to their ideas were simply racist themselves). Instead, the most we can do is confidently defy their claims publicly to prevent more unknowing people from falling into their grip. This dangerous ideology is no longer confined to debates on college campuses, but has already permeated many aspects of our lives and is seeping into many more, from the news media’s insistence on framing every story to fit its predetermined narrative, to creating biased Ethnic Studies curriculums for public schools (to see the real world ramifications that this is already having, I suggest you read the recent works of some courageous Asian American activists such as Asra Q. Nomani, Wenyuan Wu, and Kenny Xu). Especially here, in California, we can see this change occurring rapidly, evidenced by the recent approval of the new ethnic studies model curriculum, which still contains many flaws despite going through three edits, and which at its core promotes the Balkanization of California students through race, rather than making them all proud Americans first, not to mention the fear many parents have toward standing up against it. In order to stop the advance of these ideologies stemming from the toxic and abusive orthodoxy of critical race theory, systemic racism and its proponents must be pushed out of the center of American discourse."
Yes, There Really Is a War on Math in Our Schools - "The Oregon Department of Education (ODE) recently encouraged teachers to register for training that encourages “ethnomathematics,” an education trend that argues, “among other things, that White supremacy manifests itself in the focus on finding the right answer”... not only are x and y under attack but so is 2 + 2 = 4... One of the earlier proposals was to abolish algebra at community colleges. By 2017, a growing number of educators wanted to dump it... It has become clear that a much more ambitious project is now in hand: to replace math with social justice math, including, perhaps, a name change. Educator Rochelle Gutierrez, whose specialty is “equity issues in mathematics education,” was to give a keynote presentation, “Mathematx: Towards a way of Being,” at a Mathematics Education and Society Conference in India in early 2019, according to whose abstract, “Drawing upon Indigenous worldviews to reconceptualize what mathematics is and how it is practiced, I argue for a movement against objects, truths, and knowledge towards a way of being in the world that is guided by first principles — mathematx.”*... One target has been the equals sign, =, once considered the bedrock of mathematics... The bizarre tricks that critical theorists use to try to make 2+2 come out to 5 underline a lack of acceptance of the need for rigorous thinking. Thus, when Brooklyn College Professor of Math Education Laurie Rubel announced in early August that 2+2=4 “reeks of white supremacist patriarchy,” she was speaking for surprising numbers of academics and teachers. Many rightly ask, what about the disadvantaged children who depend on public schools to provide basic literacy and numeracy skills? Well, there are two ways of looking at that. One would be to emphasize the skills; the other would be to undermine their value across society. Critical theory is firmly decided on the latter. Is there a way of critiquing this mass flight from fact? In the current environment, that’s harder than some might think. For example, in an excerpt from Cynical Theories, Pluckrose and Lindsay note that the new progressive theory explains too much: “It reduces everything to one single variable, one single topic of conversation, one single focus and interpretation: prejudice, as understood under the power dynamics asserted by Theory.” But why should that be seen as a problem when it is precisely the intention? They then argue, “The entire backbone of the theory is affirming the consequent. True logical statement: if there’s prejudice, then there’s disparity. Logical fallacy: there’s disparity, so there’s prejudice.” But, with the abolition of logic, logical fallacies are no longer a problem. People who don’t accept fallacies, however, are a problem."