If you missed the Morning News today you missed another interesting conversation on critical race theory (CRT).  Guest co-host Richard Miller wondered aloud if ten random Yakamanians were asked to define CRT could they do it?  Probably not and part of that may be by design.  It's more difficult to criticize something not easily defined.

OK, so what are we talking about?  The conservative Heritage Foundation describes Critical Race Theory as including these ideas:

  • The Marxist analysis of society made up of categories of oppressors and oppressed;
  • An unhealthy dollop of Nietzschean relativism, which means that language does not accord to an objective reality, but is the mere instrument of power dynamics;
  • The idea that the oppressed impede revolution when they adhere to the cultural beliefs of their oppressors—and must be put through re-education sessions;
  • The concomitant need to dismantle all societal norms through relentless criticism;
  • The replacement of all systems of power and even the descriptions of those systems with a worldview that describes only oppressors and the oppressed.

SO, nobody is innocent because the "system" makes us all guilty...like original sin.  As they say , it's complicated.

One thing we do know is that around the country, state legislatures and parents are pushing back on plans to implement a "woke agenda" and the teaching of CRT in public schools.

The Patriot Post says, "The most recent and maybe the most significant example comes from Loudoun County, Virginia, where a judge ordered an elementary gym teacher, Tanner Cross, reinstated to his position after the school board suspended him for daring to criticize their proposed “transgender” policy. Loudoun County parents have now woken up to this “woke” indoctrination being passed off as education and are boldly speaking out against it."

Another teacher in New Jersey resigned in rebellion of the school's CRT implementation wrote, “The school’s ideology requires students to see themselves not as individuals, but as representatives of a group, forcing them to adopt the status of privilege or victimhood. As a result, students arrive in my classroom accepting this theory as fact. People born with less melanin in their skin are oppressors, and people born with more melanin in their skin are oppressed. Men are oppressors, women are oppressed, and so on. This is the dominate and divisive ideology that is guiding our adolescent students.”

The number of such examples is growing and while the Washington State Legislature and Governor have mandated public employees including teachers get training in CRT, other states are doing just the opposite.

Newsweek reports that Michigan, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, Arizona, Kentucky, Utah and New Hampshire are  debating bans on critical race theory while Iowa, Idaho, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Florida have taken action.

So what's the bottom line?  It's coming here, so bone up, do some research and decide if it's something you think will pull us together through greater understanding or will it push us even farther apart than we already are.

The Washington Policy Center sent a letter to the Governor to reconsider his push on CRT.  Well written, well worth the read:

And finally, here's a parody from AwakenWithJP on YouTube that uses exaggeration (maybe not) to explain Critical Race Theory.

 

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