Critical Race Theory
October 5, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Anyone who still doubts that “moderate” Merrick Garland’s Justice Department is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the far left should check out the news that Garland has threatened to investigate and prosecute parents who vigorously protest against school boards and teachers intent on indoctrinating school children in the racist, anti-American teachings of Critical Race Theory. Garland did so through this memorandum. Garland claims that free-speech principles must yield when they represent
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October 3, 2021 — John Hinderaker
On September 29, the President and the Interim CEO of the National School Boards Association sent a letter to Joe Biden requesting federal help in dealing with “domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” What is the source of such terrorism and hate crimes? Unhappy parents who have been attending school board meetings. According to the NSBA, school board members, teachers and others are subject to frequent threats of violence: America’s public
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September 20, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Earlier this year, Gov. Kristi Noem signed a pledge to bar “action civics” (mandatory political protests for course credit) and critical race theory (attacks on “whiteness,” “Eurocentrism,” etc.) from South Dakota schools. For doing so, she drew praise from conservatives, including Stanley Kurtz, a leader in the fight against action civics. Stanley warned, however, that Noem had her work cut out for her in order to make good on the
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September 16, 2021 — John Hinderaker
A lot has been said about the fact that the Biden administration is trying to bar people who don’t want to be vaccinated against covid, for whatever reason, from gainful employment. To say that this is a novel incursion on our civil rights is an understatement. But here is a worse one: how about firing anyone who won’t sign on to the racist, anti-American ideology of Critical Race Theory? Shockingly,
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August 11, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Sartell, Minnesota is a small town near the larger city of St. Cloud in central Minnesota. It seems an unlikely place for an ideological controversy, but one has erupted over the application of Critical Race Theory in the Sartell-St. Stephen Independent School District. The District’s administrators hired an outfit called Equity Alliance MN to conduct an equity audit of the school system’s 3rd through 5th grade students. The audit was
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August 9, 2021 — John Hinderaker
The Upper Midwest Law Center, on whose board I serve, got national and even international publicity when it announced a week ago that it was pursuing four cases that generally relate to Critical Race Theory, in both the public and private sectors. On Friday, UMLC filed a complaint against Independent School District 194, which covers Lakeville, Minnesota, and that district’s Superintendent of Schools. The Lakeville schools put up “Black Lives
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August 2, 2021 — John Hinderaker
American Experiment has undertaken what I think is the most effective anti-Critical Race Theory campaign of anyone in the U.S. I have written about that campaign, which included a 17-city tour of the State of Minnesota along with much else, here, here, here, here and here. Thousands of Minnesotans attended our live events, and many thousands more learned of them through local newspaper, radio and television publicity. We got national
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July 30, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Bettina Love is a leading proponent of the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT). Stanley Kurtz calls her 2019 book We Want to Do More Than Survive “arguably the single most comprehensive and up-to-date guide to the ideology of the CRT movement in education.” I call it incendiary, and if you read Kurtz’s summary of the book, you will probably agree. So might Love. Love is a co-founder of the
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July 28, 2021 — John Hinderaker
The main reason why the United States easily outstripped Europe and Asia in economic growth and cultural influence in the 19th and 20th centuries is that we were a meritocracy. Talent and hard work prevailed over privilege of birth and adherence to established ideologies. Sadly, we have lost that advantage. As we have documented many times on this site, the Left’s war on standards has resulted in a dumbing down
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July 27, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Bob Moses, the civil rights leader, died a few days ago. He led voter registration drives in Mississippi during the 1960s and later founded the Algebra Project to teach math to Black students in rural areas and inner cities. Moses didn’t believe math is racist. He believed that math literacy “is the tool to elevate the young into the first class economically.” How did the civil rights movement devolve from
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July 26, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Teaching critical race theory in the public schools is immoral, but it is legal unless the legislature in a given state has banned it. On the other hand, for an employer to inflict CRT training on employees against their will can be legally problematic. And even in the public schools, promoting CRT while discriminating against expression of other viewpoints may violate the First Amendment. Today the Upper Midwest Law Center,
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July 22, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a retired general, held a press conference yesterday. The two managed to demonstrate one of two things. Either they are stupid or they believe the American public is stupid. Let’s start with Austin. He assured reporters that Milley “doesn’t have a political bone in his body.” But at the same conference, Milley could not
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July 20, 2021 — Scott Johnson
I want to draw attention to Aaron Sibarium’s superb Washington Free Beacon column “How Critical Race Theory Led to Kendi.” It actually illuminates the phenomenon of CRT as we find it manifested everywhere in our institutions. Christopher Rufo has doggedly documented the metastasis of this cancer (the link is to Rufo’s City Journal columns). Sibarium’s column struck a personal chord with me. He links to and quotes from Alan Freeman’s
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July 12, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
File this report under “good news if true.” According to NBC News, opposition to attempts to impose left-wing race-oriented propaganda in America’s schools is taking a toll on those who are trying to impose it. NBC leads its story with the case of Rydell Harrison, the superintendent of the Easton-Redding-Region 9 School Districts in Connecticut. He resigned after coming under fire from parents opposed to CRT. NBC tries to make
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July 10, 2021 — Steven Hayward
Once upon a time, “CRT” stood for “cathode ray tube,” sometimes known as “television,” but also oscilloscopes, computer screens, some x-rays, and certain other technical devices designed for testing and calibration. Cathode ray tubes went the way of the Dodo bird quite some time ago, and nowadays CRT means something else: Critical Race Theory. There is one way in which today’s CRT resembles the old tech CRTs—they both depend on
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July 9, 2021 — John Hinderaker
The Democratic Party is rightly concerned that the overwhelming unpopularity of Critical Race Theory will destroy its chances in the 2022 election. Democrats are therefore trying out various messages to try to stem the tide. This one, from NBC News, is comical, but it is not clear that the Democrats have anything better: “QAnon’s new ‘plan’? Run for school board.” In the wake of Donald Trump’s 2020 election defeat and
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July 7, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Critical Race Theory will be a key issue in the 2022 election, and it has become an international issue as well. Last night I appeared on The Bolt Report with Andrew Bolt on Sky News in Australia, talking about CRT in the U.S. It was a good conversation, as always with Andrew, and I thought our readers might enjoy it:
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