A recent column written by Bonnie Jean Feldkamp of the Cincinnati Enquirer illustrates the shallow, activist-oriented mind that inhabits so many of our newsrooms and has broadly penetrated the education Borg and faculty lounges down to the elementary school a few blocks away. Critical Race Theory IS clearly, unmistakably Marxism in drag. People like Feldkamp seem to be blind to it.
At issue in her piece is the parent opposition to a proposed adoption of a “social equity” course for Highlands High School in Ft. Thomas, Ky. Let’s be clear: “social equity” is a euphemism for critical race theory (CRT). The elements of CRT are at its roots, as is the moniker “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI). Both apples don’t fall too far from the same tree.
Her argument in support of the class was embarrassingly incoherent. She presents the CRT-driven “social equity” course as an attempt to address “outcomes”. She writes,
“When you put the emphasis on outcomes and look at the data, it’s difficult to deny things like systemic racism and white privilege, which hits the core of the pushback on CRT, mostly from conservatives.”
That is, pure and simple, the post hoc fallacy (look below) run amok. Because slavery and Jim Crow preceded today’s lagging socio-economic numbers for African-Americans, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the former caused the latter. That’s jumping to conclusions; that’s ideology; that’s bias; that’s political activism; that’s Marxism in drag!
For the benefit of Feldkamp and CRT enthusiasts, there’s a lot that can come between 160-year-old historical circumstances and today’s crime-ridden slums. Try the War on Poverty. Try the rampant fatherlessness. Try the serial assault on traditional faith.
Try the failing inner-city public schools. Try the serial indoctrination of victimhood that strips a person of their agency. Actually, the conclusion is a baby with many fathers, least of all the one stretching back a full three hundred years.
This isn’t logic. This isn’t even serious history. This is an over-complex scheme to justify a political crusade, a campaign for a militant reverse discrimination. Thus, it is classic indoctrination when imposed on unsuspecting young minds and pushed by half-aware newspaper columnists and a few recruits from the education blob.
The missionaries for CRT, DEI, “social justice”, “social equity” are marinated in the mind of Marx. First, the cognitive monstrosity begins with a huge and unsupportable assumption: groups defined by some physical or socio-economic attribute determine the course of all of our arrangements throughout history. For Marx, it was class. For CRT’s minions, it’s race. From this hunch, it’s open-field running to the end zone of political power. The first stop along the way is to germinate an army of young activists like the child soldiers of the Khmer Rouge who marched off hundreds of thousands to the killing fields and death pits.
Her sources for her opinion are people with the same views. It’s nice to know that she has compatriots who are similarly misguided, but it’s not dispositive of anything, other than the misguided have company. She quotes Education Week Magazine, the organ of the education blob. It suffers from the overweening and smothering lefty orthodoxy of the self-proclaimed socialist John Dewey. I’ve spent 30 years of teaching in public schools and can’t recall spending more than 30 minutes perusing its pages. You learn to teach by teaching, not patterning your job around Dewey’s loopy constructivism.
People like Feldkamp try to thwart any criticism by quoting someone with “prof” before their name. Her “prof” is Phillipe Copeland of Boston University’s School of Social Work and “assistant director of narrative” for Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research. He’s no more coherent than she is. The “Center” is run by the infamous CRT grifter, Ibram X. Kendi. Check out this mass of verbiage from Copeland:
“Critics cannot be satisfied because the criticism about Critical Race Theory is not being made in good faith. It is part of a systematic effort to discredit and undermine anti-racism while generating and manipulating white anxiety and resentment for political gain.”
Wait a minute! He can’t, and doesn’t, prove the theory to begin with, but then rushes to condemn those who would make everyone aware of it. Now that’s a sweet gig at a tidy salary and tenure.
Parents, if you want your kids to be the next edition of the Red Guards, by all means, be my guest, but don’t complain when the world that they create looks more like today’s Minneapolis, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, et al.
The schools are having enough trouble successfully imparting the academic core and any pertinent vocational skills. What plausible educational or fiscal reason can excuse a foray into political activism? I don’t think that statue-toppling and spittle-laced fulminations in the face of police officers are marketable skills.
Please read the piece if for no other reason than to know what we’re up against.
RogerG