Critical Race Theory

Legislatures Are Coming For DEI

Featured image It is slowly dawning on liberals across America that DEI is, in most contexts, illegal. The whole point of DEI is to discriminate against disfavored groups, and in favor of preferred groups. Liberals have a hard time understanding that there is anything wrong with this, but the courts–most notably, recently, in the Harvard and UNC cases–are beginning to set them straight. In many states, legislators aren’t waiting for litigation to »

Systemically Neutral Law Enforcement

Featured image The dogma that American law enforcement is “systemically” racist is one of the chief pillars of what passes for liberal thought. In truth, that theory has been perhaps the most damaging of all leftist shibboleths. A recent meta-study concludes that there is no empirical evidence that our criminal justice system discriminates against blacks, but that academics nevertheless continue to assert that claim–even in studies whose data actually refute it: An »

Is DEI Training Unconstitutional?

Featured image It wouldn’t be if it were imposed by a private party, although there might be other problems with it. But can a government entity require its employees to assent to a series of political propositions, and to take what is effectively a loyalty oath? I don’t think so. That’s why my organization has moved to participate in the case of Henderson v. Springfield R-12 School District, now on appeal in »

Is Childbirth Racist?

Featured image Everything else is, so why not? This question is prompted by the revelation that the University of Minnesota paid a diversity consultant more than $200,000 to develop an online anti-racism training course for the University’s hospitals and maternity centers. Does anyone seriously think that the University of Minnesota’s hospital system is racist? Of course not. This course is meant to combat “implicit bias,” which means that no one in these »

Liberals, Stop Trying to Keep Black Kids Down!

Featured image In Minnesota, our legislature is considering a proposal to mandate the teaching of “Ethnic Studies” in all classrooms, starting in kindergarten. “Ethnic Studies” basically means wokeism or critical race theory, telling students that America is a hopelessly racist society, that white kids have it easy and black kids are doomed. (Asian kids don’t fit into this narrative.) This proposal, like so much of what we see coming from the Left, »

Only Racists Need Apply

Featured image I don’t know that there has ever been a place and time in American history when only racists were permitted to teach in the public schools. Mississippi in, say, 1935? I don’t know, maybe. But to my knowledge they had no purity test. Contrast that with Minnesota in 2022, where the Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board is considering a new standard that would only allow people who profess »

Critical Ethnic Studies Come to Our Schools

Featured image In recent years, the attitude of liberals toward Critical Race Theory has been summed up as: “It doesn’t exist. And it’s awesome!” But as the infiltration of CRT into curricula across the country has become impossible to deny, promotion of racism and anti-Americanism has come out of the closet. Thus we see the public schools in St. Paul announcing a new “Critical Ethnic Studies” curriculum: So Critical Ethnic Studies is »

Banning Critical Race Theory

Featured image Earlier this month, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves signed legislation intended to ban the precepts of Critical Race Theory from that state’s public schools. According to Campus Reform, Mississippi is the fifteenth state to enact such a ban. The tricky thing, of course, is characterizing the teachings of CRT. The point is not to ban teaching about CRT, but rather to ban the pernicious doctrines that flow from CRT. Mississippi’s approach »

High-Water Mark for CRT?

Featured image Critical Race Theory has been the Holy Grail of the Democratic Party, culminating in the adoption last Summer of a full-throated endorsement of CRT by the National Education Association, which largely runs the public schools. But perhaps the triumph of CRT has been short-lived. Here, Beto O’Rourke, running for Governor of Texas, is asked about CRT and begins with the lie that it is just something they talk about in »

When you wish upon a CRT resolution

Featured image Justin Danhof is executive vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research and a shareholder gadfly. Earlier this week he spoke in favor of his Disney shareholder proposal seeking “to protect Disney from a myriad of legal and reputational risks stemming from its race-based employee training programs.” The center has posted background here. It has also posted the text of Danhof’s statement here. FOX News covers it here. »

Who Is Teaching Our Children?

Featured image A better question might be, who is teaching the people who teach our children? But first, this observation–as I have written before, the liberal position on Critical Race Theory is: “It doesn’t exist. And it’s awesome!” The first line of defense is always to claim that CRT is a bogeyman invented by the right; there is no such thing in our schools. But that claim, which usually is easily proved »

Newton’s first law, etc.

Featured image A look, a book, and a crook (or a crock). What is the question, according to Carnac the Magnificent? I don’t know, but it is the miscellany that I need this morning. Thinking of Carnac makes me laugh. I think I was studying high school physics when I heard him divine the question to the answer: “One fig to a cookie.” The question: “What is Newton’s first law?” It still »

Conservatives flip two Houston school board seats

Featured image The Houston Independent School District board consists of nine members. None is a conservative. That will change soon, however, because conservative candidates won two seats in a runoff election on Saturday. One of them (a man who once lost his job with the city due to sexual harassment allegations) won by fewer than 100 votes in a district where turnout was less than seven percent. The other won more convincingly »

Against book banning

Featured image One of the happiest developments of 2021 has been the national movement of parents pushing back against woke education. As Stanley Kurtz says: Nothing can beat parents organized to halt the erosion of core American ideals like freedom of expression or equality before the law. Thankfully, a record of early successes is rapidly building a larger movement to take back our schools. But Stanley warns that the movement risks committing »

What Are They Teaching Our Children?

Featured image The issue of leftist indoctrination in the public schools has been with us for a while, but it has exploded into public consciousness during the past year. The main focus has been Critical Race Theory, a toxic compound of racism and anti-Americanism. Many people are reluctant to believe that the public schools could possibly be as bad as they are being portrayed. Such skepticism is abetted by school officials who »

They Are After Our Children

Featured image The precepts of Critical Race Theory are only taught to law school students, right? Sure. And also to pre-schoolers. Check out this new program from the University of Texas called GoKAR!. KAR stands for Kids Against Racism. UT is looking for parents “caregivers” who have preschool children ages four to five. They must “identify as white.” This is so the four and five year olds can be subjected to an »

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: Does It Help? [with comment by Paul]

Featured image Controversy is raging over Critical Race Theory and other leftist doctrines in the public schools. Liberals say they don’t teach CRT, they just teach Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. But a basic question is: Why? Why has “equity,” as understood by the Left, come to dominate public education? Presumably liberals would answer that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives benefit students of color, especially black students. If that is not the case, »