Banning critical race theory will gut the teaching of Jewish history - "these decrees fall more precisely within the category of what are called “memory laws.” Historian Timothy Snyder described these laws as “government actions designed to guide public interpretation of the past… by asserting a mandatory view of historical events, by forbidding the discussion of historical facts or interpretations or by providing vague guidelines that lead to self-censorship.” Compared to Americans, Europeans have less of an allergy to limitations on free speech, and they generally accepted these laws when they were designed to protect victims of historical trauma, for example, by banning noxious phenomena such as Holocaust denial. Putin, however, pioneered a new approach to memory laws: Rather than protecting the weak, they also can be weaponized to strengthen the powerful."
Ironic, since in CRT Jews are evil oppressors, and the laws are about not making students feel guilty about their race. Naturally, his objection is framed through power relations (i.e. applying racism), rather than being race-neutral
Only white people can be racist: Inside Global Affairs' anti-racism course materials - "Monday’s federal budget included a massive expansion of race-based programming, including a new drive for race-focused data collection, funding earmarked for what Ottawa is calling “equity deserving groups” and even a plan to prioritize government procurement from “Black-owned businesses.” It’s a ramping up of an initiative first begun in 2019, when the Government of Canada began rolling out antiracism training within its departments in a bid to combat a federal bureaucracy that they asserted was shot through with “systemic racism.” Ottawa’s focus on antiracism training became all the more acute after worldwide Black Lives Matter protests prompted by the death of Minneapolis man George Floyd in police custody, which was reflected in the more than $300 million put towards “equity” programs in the 2021 budget... The official antiracist training materials for Global Affairs Canada. The literature is markedly different than Canada’s official antiracism training of only a few years ago, which stressed tolerance and accommodation for an increasingly multicultural workplace. These new course materials explicitly cite as their inspiration “critical race theory,” a growing movement which posits that Western society is immutably tainted by white supremacy, and must be confronted and managed by conscious “antiracist” thinking and policies... “Racism is just as bad in Canada” The above quote appears in the “myths and facts” section opening the document, in which it is deemed a myth that “Canada race issues are not like the United States.”... critical race theory holds fast to an idea of an enforced system of race hierarchy that places Black people at the bottom. This is apparent in the Global Affairs literature, even to the exclusion of inequity problems that are more unique to Canada. There is little mention of what is arguably Canada’s greatest act of oppression: Indian Residential Schools... There is no mention whatsoever of Japanese-Canadian internment during the Second World War... Slavery, by contrast, is mentioned more than a half-dozen times. While chattel slavery did indeed exist for more than two centuries in colonial Canada, with about 3,000 estimated slaves in pre-Confederation Canada, Black historians have argued that it was never the defining institution that it became in the United States, which had four million enslaved Africans on the eve of emancipation... From infant mortality to hate crimes to representation in the incarcerated population, Indigenous communities in Canada see rates that aren’t even close to those of non-Indigenous populations of virtually any colour. Nevertheless, course materials repeatedly take a view more in tune with U.S. realities"
Meme - "CRT isn't taught in K12 schools"
"CRT is just history"
Critical race theory uproar: How history teachers design key lessons - "Should teachers sanitize otherwise historically accurate lessons? Or defy the new orders? What do lessons on such topics even look like? To answer that, USA TODAY Network reporters sought to observe middle and high school history classes this year during units on slavery, race and racism. We asked schools in big cities, small towns and dense suburbs – requests that were frequently denied. In Ohio, Columbus Dispatch reporters reached out to 48 districts seeking advanced placement U.S. history curricula and an opportunity to shadow classes. Four sent back course syllabi; the others declined to participate or never responded... Junior Emarie Hill said she didn't understand how teachers were supposed to present "both sides" of slavery. "There aren’t two sides," she said. "At least not a positive and a negative."... Hill said most school curriculum is biased. Lessons on the Civil War rarely focus on the accomplishments of Black people, she said, and Hispanic and African American history and culture are discussed more in music class than social studies... “I wanted students to take away the importance of looking at history from multiple perspectives”"
It's almost as if most schools have something to hide
Clearly, if history doesn't look like a Netflix show, that means it's biased
If it's important to look at history from multiple perspectives, it's curious that there is no evidence of that in the article
West Point cadets being taught Critical Race Theory: report - "The “woke” lessons ask cadets about whiteness while encouraging them to apply Critical Race Theory to their answers... The more than 600 documents were only handed over to Judicial Watch after the conservative organization sued the Department of Defense... “These documents show racist, anti-American CRT propaganda is being used to try to radicalize our rising generation of Army leadership at West Point.”"
The Role of Identity in the Outbreak of the Yugoslavian Wars - "The identity of a group can always be traced to the strategic manipulation of a typically very small circle of leadership. Whether based on ethnicity, class, nationality, religion, gender, common grievances, political allegiance or other background factors, identity is socially constructed based on cues given by a leadership in conscious pursuit of an ulterior purpose. The notion of inevitability of resulting conflicts is fictional. These identity-based conflicts are purposefully incited and strategically prepared by means of targeted mass communication. A prime example is the outbreak of the post-communist Yugoslavian wars: in the sunset days of the twentieth century they dissolved a comparatively prosperous and stable European country into barely viable entities. The nightmares of 1914 erupted in the same region as a result of the same suggestive incitement and similar instigation of a perception of grievances against nearby communities: in this region, “identity” serves as an enduring political tool for the ambitious usurpation of power and strategic resources.
The world was shocked by the violence of civil war in Yugoslavia, a relatively well-to-do European country, in 1991-2001. Much scholarly research on the topic was centered on the perceived inevitability of conflict between the region’s ethnic groups. Yet a closer look at the subject from the perspective of identity and its role in politics suggests a very different conclusion. While it is clear that every person maintains a certain individual identity, or rather many aspects of identity that build a multi-faceted personality, at certain times specific distinguishing qualities seem to become a defining aspect of the person, and subsequently they provoke political movements that agitate for, and often cause, major changes in the existing social order, or even lead to wars... Social scientists, including Robert Hayden in his essay “Imagined Communities and Real Victims: Self-Determination and Ethnic Cleansing in Yugoslavia,” often concluded that multi-ethnic constructs such as Yugoslavia are inevitably destined to fail. The precept behind this line of reasoning is that dissimilar groups cannot be brought to cohabit peacefully absent authoritarian rule because of their intrinsic differences, and that, in the end, segregation and autonomy are the only way to ensure peace in such an environment. This conventional wisdom contains many fallacies. Perhaps the most important of them focuses on the notion that one identity of an individual is exclusive of all his or her other identities. In this line of argument, a person identifying as a Serb or Croat cannot at the same time identify as a Yugoslav, a Slav, a member of a residential community, or even as a member of an ethnically mixed family. The implied assumption is that there somehow exists a “real” identity, in this case an ethnic identity, and that all other labels merely serve to conceal or obfuscate this most fundamental distinction. That is indeed an overly simplistic approach to the question of identity. Such versions of collective identity are typically created and used intentionally for political purposes. In fact, recent world history shows compelling evidence that various concepts of identity used to define an individual in the social and political scheme are mostly invented constructs without serving common objectives other than the temporary benefit of certain leaderships or elites... The most prominent example of a political system that tried to introduce the Marxist concept of class as an ideological basis for organization of society was that of the former Soviet Union. Unfortunately, neither Marx nor any of his successors, including Lenin and Stalin, ever provided an even remotely clear definition and overview of their concept of class – and probably for good reasons. Concerned mostly with the idea of class struggle, they also neglected to outline definitively a healthy class composition of a model society. This failure resulted in fluid definitions and inconsistent attempts at implementation of their envisioned “classless society.”"
Of course, liberals scoff at the idea that encouraging racial polarisation, grievance and hatred can lead to horrible consequences (also see, Tutsi Privilege in Rwanda)
American Airlines Investigating Texas Pilot Who Criticized Critical Race Theory In His Local School - "American Airlines is investigating one of its pilots after he spoke out about critical race theory (CRT) being taught in his local school. The airline chose to investigate Guy Midkiff, 62, after several social media accounts urged the company to audit Midkiff’s social media history. Midkiff is a resident of Southlake, Texas, who has flown for American for over three decades... Midkiff was a vocal critic of the school’s proposed CRT-inspired course, called the Cultural Competence Action Plan... CRT curriculum teaches the racism in the United States is still embedded within many of its institutions and is the source of inequality across the country. The Southlake community largely rejected that picture of the United States on March 2"
A 9-year-old’s vital warning: Making kids think in racial terms does enormous harm - "Anyone who still can’t see the danger in promoting racial thinking in America’s schools — particularly of the sort that underlies critical race theory — should listen to Novalee. In a video circulating this week, a 9-year-old Minnesota girl who refers to herself by that name lectures school-board members about how she normally doesn’t think about “the color of skin,” but the Black Lives Matter posters they put up in her school “make me think of it.” The brave youngster also accuses the board of violating its own rules against politics in the schools by posting the signs, which send “a political message about getting rid of police officers, rioting, burning buildings down.” Yet for most Americans, it’s her description of how the board’s action is corrupting her normal tendency to judge people based on their character, rather than their race, that should hit home, especially as schools across America rush to adopt critical race theory."
Teachers in States now banning 'Critical Race Theory' : education - "Here a Critical White Studies scholar talks about teaching White students they are inherently participants in racism and therefore have lower morale value:
White complicity pedagogy is premised on the belief that to teach systemically privileged students about systemic injustice, and especially in teaching them about their privilege, one must first encourage them to be willing to contemplate how they are complicit in sustaining the system even when they do not intend to or are unaware that they do so. This means helping white students to understand that white moral standing is one of the ways that whites benefit from the system.
Applebaum 2010 page 4
Applebaum, Barbara. Being white, being good: White complicity, white moral responsibility, and social justice pedagogy. Lexington Books, 2010...
This sentiment is echoed in Delgado and Stefancic's (2001) most authoritative textbook on Critical Race Theory in its chapter on Critical White Studies, which is part of Critical Race Theory according to this book:
Many critical race theorists and social scientists alike hold that racism is pervasive, systemic, and deeply ingrained. If we take this perspective, then no white member of society seems quite so innocent.
Delgado and Stefancic (2001) pp. 79-80
Delgado, Richard and Jean Stefancic Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. New York. New York University Press, 2001.
Delgado and Stefancic are the chief codifiers of Critical Race Theory and were present at the founding conference. Delgado and Stefancic (2001)'s third edition was printed in 2017 and is currently the top result for the Google search 'Critical Race Theory textbook'"
The Meme Policeman - Posts | Facebook - "This meme is ironic in that it tacitly admits CRT in schools would misinform students about the history of racial discrimination. In this case, it lays the blame on private banks, without mentioning that it actually rested squarely on the Federal government, and progressive politicians in particular. Here is the relevant history that you probably weren’t taught, nor would CRT teach in public schools. The following comes from the book The Color of Law, which covers the history of racial discrimination imposed by government. This is a book written and approved by CRT sympathizers, so they can’t question the source... When the G.I. Bill was adopted in 1944:
“The VA not only denied African Americans the mortgage subsidies to which they were entitled but frequently restricted education and training to lower-level jobs for African Americans who were qualified to acquire greater skills.”
The biggest road blocks for black veterans and civilians alike, outside of Jim Crow, were put up by the Federal government under progressives... “In 1913, Wilson and his cabinet approved the implementation of segregation in government offices.” “One official responsible for implementing segregation was the assistant secretary of the navy: Franklin Delano Roosevelt.” This was the era of eugenics, popular among progressives, and segregation spread beyond jobs to housing... Racially segregated housing was given its biggest boost by the New Deal... This isn’t to pretend there would be no racial strife absent these measures, but the European immigrants who were similarly discriminated against in the early 1900s and who often were lower status than black Americans in the north, were able to claw their way up in society with hard work over generations. If the Federal government had enforced the 14th amendment among the states, or, at a minimum didn’t violate it on a giant scale itself, things would likely have turned out much differently.
The reason why CRT adherents wouldn’t highlight this history in schools is because it’s an activist ideology which is anti-capitalist and pro-big government. Thus, they’ll gladly point out that banks didn’t give loans to blacks because it fits their narrative. But they’ll seldom point out how progressive politicians, infrastructure programs, public housing, labor unions, the minimum wage or even simply ignoring the constitution contributed to discrimination in much more meaningful ways. Because underneath they want more of those things and less of capitalism."
'This Painting Could Be the Future': Artist Jonathan Harris on Why His Viral Image 'Critical Race Theory' Struck a Chord Around the Globe - "It’s a hauntingly effective image. A blonde figure stands, back to the viewer and paint roller in hand, covering up the images of Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, and Malcolm X with strokes of white paint. Widely shared on social media, Critical Race Theory (2021) has been embraced as a powerful reminder of the importance of teaching and preserving Black history."
Ironic. This is a great commentary on how white people obsessed with CRT whitewash the egalitarian ideology of the civil rights movement
Weird. We are simultaneously told that CRT is a narrow study of the law and that it's just teaching accurate history. Typical liberal doublethink
Critical race theory and remote learning are making American students stupid - "Critical race theory is bad enough, but when paired with remote learning, both become exponentially efficient in assisting each other in lowering standards for American students. This will create a bunch of adults that believe external circumstances are at fault for their own failures, and that they bear no responsibility for their own achievement... The emergence of critical race theory in education is supposed to give students another perspective to the mainstream narrative, to show that our heroes were not untarnished, but instead it has become the only perspective permissible."
The same people who claim Critical Race Theory is about the legal system and only taught in universities also claim that it's just teaching accurate history
Lessons From Critical Race Theory: Outdoor Experiential Education and Whiteness in Kinesiology - "This study demonstrates that students must negotiate Whiteness and settler colonialism to participate in OEE. Three main findings include the following: (a) The imagined student is wealthy and White, (b) students both assimilate to and resist codes of Whiteness, and (c) curricular documents and practices promote Eurocentricity and erase Indigeneity"
Weird. Liberals keep insisting CRT is about the law and is only taught in law school
Black People Are Far More Powerful Than Critical Race Theory Preaches - "Many in the critical race theory camp view black people as uniquely disempowered by America's history of racism. Racism "has contributed to all contemporary manifestations of group advantage and disadvantage along racial lines, including differences in income, imprisonment, health, housing, education, political representation, and military service," write several critical race theory scholars, including Kimberle Crenshaw and Mari Matsuda in Words that Wound. "Our history calls for this presumption." But our history actually tells a different story, too, one of empowerment through struggle. In the racist Jim Crow South, segregation forced African Americans to form their own businesses, universities, legal funds and other civil society institutions. "The more cut off black communities became from white communities and the more that white businessmen refused to cater to black customers, the more possible it became for enterprising black entrepreneurs to create viable businesses of their own," The Henry Ford Foundation's Donna Braden writes. Black-owned barbershops, cafes, motels, taverns and other small-scale, local businesses began to proliferate in the Jim Crow South. Black-owned newspapers, churches, banks, construction firms, radio stations and other enterprises flourished, too, in the vacuum for black business created by white racism. These business owners were following the lead of Booker T. Washington, who preached economic independence and progress through education and entrepreneurship as a pathway to freedom. And they were catering to a growing black middle class the prized the dignity their independence gave them, even while white America denied it to them. This economic empowerment was revolutionary, and not just at the personal or communal level. It was critical to the success of the Civil Rights Movement. Access to monetary funds and an active network across black-owned newspapers, churches, and legal defense funds housed in organizations like the NAACP gave black communities the economic leverage and political power required to successfully boycott bus companies and drive down their revenues in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955. Some 40,000 bus riders participated in the boycott after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. This would have been impossible if black churches hadn't acted as institutional centers for collecting money to compensate for the losses, and if black-owned cab companies didn't agree to charge black riders ten cents to ride, the same cost of bus fare. In other words, it was in the systemically racist South that money and political power accrued in black communities—with astonishing results. This means that racism simply cannot be blamed as the sole or primary reason for disparities in access to money and power; the historical record shows that the social reality is more complicated than that reductive claim, and that when faced with much worse racism than today, the black community in the South was able to overcome, and in many cases thrive. To understand the point, contrast this not only with today but with the plight of black Americans in the North at the same time. In both the North and the South, the U.S. government attempted to cripple black Americans through state-mandated racism... Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights establishment found it more difficult to organize black Americans in the North than in the South. In fact, after the Civil Rights act and the Voting Rights were passed in 1964 and 1965, the movement completely disintegrated in the North... the spiritual doctrine against resentment and vengeance as embodied by nonviolent agitation against segregation in the South fell on deaf ears in the North, because so many black Americans in the North lacked a sense of self-worth to begin with... These differences between the North and the South shows that racism is not an invincible bogeyman. It's not an all-powerful force permeating everything and keeping all black people down. The opposite is true: It can be brought to kneel by a strong, robust, and vigorous black community. And it's this complexity that critical race theorists fail to grapple with. On the contrary, they are committed to the opposite view: In Words that Wound, Crenshaw and Matsuda write that the goal is not to extract racism from things like traditional values or established property interests; "[i]nstead we ask how these traditional interests and values serve as vessels of racial subordination." But again, this approach has much to learn from the historical record of how black Americans overcame the indignities of the Jim Crow South. It was precisely traditional values like free enterprise, Protestantism, and those selfsame property interests that created black wealth in spite of white supremacy, proving that no matter how cruel and corrupt, institutionally enshrined discrimination was simply no match for the power and resiliency of a "forward-looking, upward-striving people."... We should reject critical race theory's social gospel not only from a wish to see no one—including white people—dehumanized because of their skin color but also as an affirmation of the enduring power, beauty, and triumph of black American life, despite the tragedies we have been made to bear."
Critical Race Theory, race equity, and public health: toward antiracism praxis
Weird, I thought critical race theory was only a thing in law school
One father’s stand against critical race theory: We’re indoctrinating our children - "There appears to be widespread belief that opposition to critical race theory is a view held solely by the political right. This perception is wrong... Since my letter became public, I have received several thousand supportive emails and messages from people across this country, including many from self-described Democrats and liberals. The tone of most of the messages sent to me is not at all political in nature; instead, the tenor is one of desperation and powerlessness. I have received emails from parents expressing devastation that their kids, as young as five years old, are coming home from school after being taught to feel guilty solely because of the color of their skin. I have received messages from grandparents feeling hopeless that their grandchildren are being brainwashed and turned against their own families. And I have received notes from teachers brought to tears because they are being required, day after day, to teach fundamentally divisive, racist doctrines and being forced to demonize their own students. Perhaps the most powerful – and most frightening – of the notes I have received are the several dozen from those who identify themselves as having immigrated to America from the former Soviet Union or from countries in formerly communist Eastern Europe. These emails are never political in nature and are nearly identical in message: These first-generation Americans all write that they have “seen this movie before.” They are familiar with the propaganda, the tactics of indoctrination and the pervasive fear of speaking up that plague today’s United States. Simply put, they cannot believe this is happening here. A second common misconception about critical race theory is that it is confined to educational institutions. This, too, is false. Over the past year, the tenets of critical race theory have become pervasive throughout society, in our corporations, in our scientific and medical community, and in our military. Coca-Cola’s diversity training materials have encouraged employees to “try to be less white.” United Airlines has announced a plan for half of its new pilots to be women or people of color. The Walt Disney Company has reportedly asked employees to complete a “white privilege checklist.” The American Medical Association released a three-year roadmap that rejects equality and meritocracy and espouses “racial justice.” The Department of Defense has recommended many steps to its diversity and inclusion initiatives, including examining changes to recruitment policies, aptitude tests and senior leadership promotion criteria... Democracy fundamentally cannot work properly if we cannot openly have discussions and debates on the difficult issues facing our country. We have allowed a small but very vocal minority, amplified by the power of social media, to shut down nearly all debate on the topic of race and critical race theory. The simple cry of “racist” or the threat of that cry will nearly always do so. This cannot be allowed to continue. Regardless of one’s own beliefs on the roots of racial disparities, on the existence of systemic racism or on the merits of critical race theory, we must together agree that we can no longer allow a small group of Americans to bully the rest of us into silence... Do we really want to extinguish our founding principles, or do we want to reaffirm them and work harder to make sure they apply to all Americans? Do we really want to abandon the precepts of free speech – if not by statute, then by fear – or do we want to foster diversity of thought in our schools, workplaces and communities? Do we really want to adopt the thoroughly Marxist concept of equality of outcome, or do we want to strive for equality of opportunity for all those who seek it with talent and effort? Do we really want to encourage divisiveness and wallow in victimhood, positions that will weaken us and almost certainly lead to ethnic strife, or do we want to use our diversity as a strength to help face the many global challenges ahead? Lastly, do we really want to make skin color the defining feature of America, or do we want to return to the colorblind dreams of our storied civil rights leaders, and to the true inclusiveness for which they preached?"
The Warped Vision of “Anti-Racism” - "self-censorship is itself a clue that something is awry: What equal society silences people because of the group they belong to? Wasn’t the point to get away from classing people by group, by race, by ethnicity? But the clues are elsewhere. At first, one notices them like glitches in the matrix. Maybe you read an unorthodox remark on Twitter, and watch as its author is insulted in the cruelest terms by thousands of people, many with words like “social justice” or “diversity and inclusion” in their bios. Glitch. Maybe you notice that certain avatars of the social-justice left have a penchant for casting troubling aspersions at Jews. Glitch. Maybe you see fabulously wealthy news anchors looking down their noses at millions of people without a college degree, and denouncing them as racists for worrying that they might lose their job to an undocumented immigrant willing to work for even less than the $7 an hour they’re making bagging groceries. Glitch. These aren’t glitches, though. The basis for today’s social-justice movement is a deep skepticism about liberal values like equality, justice and democracy. This is rooted in an academic discipline known as “critical race theory,” which takes elements from Hegel and Marx, along with postmodernists like Foucault and Derrida, to assemble a worldview that does not accept that equality can exist. It’s not hypocrisy that makes today’s left a perpetuator of the inequality it claims to oppose; it’s the source material... Society, culture and history were produced in the back and forth, or “dialectic,” between the powerful and the powerless—the master-slave dialectic, as Hegel’s pairing became known in subsequent iterations. And the iterations were many over the following 200 years, with many elaborating the possibility that human history is a power struggle between oppressor and oppressed. When Marx articulated his thesis of class conflict as the basis for all modern social existence, he was—in the view of Jean-Paul Sartre among others—expanding on the master-slave dialectic. Master dominating slave became Marx’s bourgeoisie exploiting the proletariat—an unsustainable situation, Marx said, that would eventually lead the working class to revolt. And if history progressed through a changing cast of masters and slaves for Hegel, or class struggle for Marx, for critical race theorists and their “anti-racism” inheritors, it’s white people and people of color in a binary that gives one side all the power and the other side none. Over time, three other key ideas were grafted onto the master-slave dialectic: false consciousness; a belief that the ideals of a society mean less than do the exceptions to those ideals; and a commitment to undermining the grand narratives that a society relies upon. “False consciousness” was an attempt by Marxists to explain why the working class wasn’t buying into their worldview... You can see the concept of false consciousness—and the condescension that is its hallmark—everywhere in critical race theory. Its proponents classify people of color who don’t have radical views on race or who vote Republican as the handmaidens of white supremacy; their rejection of a racial binary isn’t proof that society is more complex, but further proof of the power of the oppressive system, so mighty that even its non-white victims may be duped into supporting it. The idea of false consciousness is everywhere in the work of Robin DiAngelo, a prominent proponent of “anti-racist” ideology whose book White Fragility has sold close to a million copies. DiAngelo contends that white people who cry when accused of being racists actually prove their bigotry via these “weaponized tears,” which she deems “white racial bullying.” Postmodernist philosophers added to this a mistrust of the ideals that society claims to be built on: If a society claims as its foundation a narrative that some members are excluded from, then the true meaning of that narrative is found in the exception, rather than the rule. With this, postmodernists argued that the explicit mores of a culture have no objective value, but are instead a way for one group to benefit at the expense of another. From this perspective, the Constitution isn’t a document that established the United States on principles of equality and freedom that the country failed to live up to. Instead, the Constitution is a document fundamental to denying rights to those deemed ineligible, and justifying the ownership of enslaved persons. Your symbol of freedom and equality is nothing more than a tool of repression, postmodernists argue. Failures, even at the margins, expose the hypocrisy of the whole, and define it as a lie. You can see this at work in The New York Times Magazine’s Pulitzer-prize winning “The 1619 Project”... This also explains an anti-Zionist position that is common on the left. As with America, some on the left find it impossible to see Israel as a flawed nation imperfectly striving toward the ideals of its founding. The occupation of the Palestinians can’t be a disastrous injustice. It must be that Israel’s foundation is defined by this injustice, that “Zionism is racism.” But the real threat here is not just mangled logic. It’s the erasure of the possibility of equality, of a common humanity, that requires we treat each other as equals before God and before the law. Today’s progressive left, whose ideas have become prevalent in much of the American establishment that is now repeating its incantations, simply does not believe equality is possible, instead differentiating people by how much power they supposedly have, with no common humanity to call upon. And since the social-justice movement recognizes only power, every one of its proposals is designed not to create a more equal society, but to transfer power from oppressors to oppressed—while allowing those designated as victims to maintain claim to the status of oppressed. This is why race is so important: Race is immutable, so it doesn’t matter how much real power a person of color wields; their race means they will never be anything but oppressed... progressives see themselves as compassionate. What they needed was a way to explain the inequality found in the meritocratic system they hold dear, a way that made them feel they were still on the side of the good without having to disrupt what is good for them"
