The Patriot Post® · In Brief: The Five Lies of CRT
Besides being dishonest about America and her history, proponents of Critical Race Theory are dishonest about CRT itself. Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, has five examples of lies proponents tell:
1) CRT is not taught in schools
… Of course long, turgid texts by Derrick Bell, Kimberle Crenshaw (godfather and godmother of the discipline, respectively) or any other CRT apologist, are not being assigned to third graders. To do would probably constitute child abuse and violate several UN guidelines. But what matters in CRT is the praxis — the application of the discipline to real life in order to transform it — and this is certainly being done.
It’s extremely difficult to properly equip young children to recognize when CRT filters are being applied to their lessons.
2) CRT is just a way to give previously marginalized people the attention they have lacked
This is probably the most pernicious of the lies. … This particular lie is based on the CRT (and earlier, Critical Theory) notion that physical reality may be apprehended through the five senses, but is comprehended through the conceptual superstructure that orders our thinking. In the race variant of CT — that is, Critical Race Theory — that superstructure is “white supremacy,” which in the words of CRT scholar Richard Delgado is embedded in “the ordinary business of society.” The conceptual superstructure is Eurocentric and wrongly universalizes a male, cisgender, white view of the world. It therefore must be problematized (destroyed).
The most obvious real-world rebuttal of this lie is how leftists attack any minority who doesn’t “speak with a black voice” or some such rubbish. See: Thomas, Clarence.
3) CRT is not Marxist
This is a lie spread by those who know it to be a lie, and then repeated by the gullible (whom the Kremlin used to affectionally call “useful idiots”). All of the CRT firmament knows itself as being Marxist, an affirmation made by Angela Harris, Delgado and others. Critical Race Theory came straight out of Critical Legal Theory (sometimes known as Critical Legal Studies), which came out of the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, which was the first and most important of the Western Marxist schools and which (along with Antonio Gramsci) replaced Karl Marx’s economic determinism with the view that the cultural superstructure (or hegemony) was what dictated the actions or non-actions of the workers, not material relations.
This Marxism was simply wrapped in racial language to appeal to American audiences.
4) Those opposed to CRT just don’t want history taught
… It is not true of anyone in the space that I inhabit. I have never heard Chris Rufo, James Lindsay, Lindsey Burke, Jonathan Butcher, Jay Greene, Nicole Neily, Max Eden, or anyone else with whom I have collaborated express a sentiment even close to this. We all want American history taught, warts and all. Do we want children to be told the lies of the 1619 Project — such as, for example, that the colonists rebelled because they feared Britain would end slavery? No. Because that came from the pen of a fabulist. Nobody in their right mind would want their children to be taught that 2+2=5, either.
5) The Use of CRT is a cynical ploy by Republicans
This falsehood is repeated sometimes by even people who believe there is a problem with what schools are teaching, but who hold also that CRT has been wrongly used by the anti-CRT movement. What we in this movement label CRT is CRT. Far from a cynical ploy, we can say that what is being waged at the moment is battle royal for the soul of America, if not the West itself.
Gonzalez concludes, “What the purveyors of CRT want to do is to replace what they regard as the American hegemonic narrative of white supremacy with their counter-narrative, which is Marxist.” Don’t fall for their lies.
Daily Wire subscribers can read the whole thing here.