The debate is over. Prophet Ibram X. Kendi has spoken.
Also, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia and there is no war in Ba Sing Se.
In this garbage article, Kendi (born "Henry Rogers") spouts the lie that the Left has been employing recently: that opponents of CRT don't understand what it is.
This claim has been exposed as a lie by those such as Chris Rufo of the Discovery and Manhattan institutes. Here's a brilliant analysis where he dissects tactics like the one Kendi is employing in this propagandistic article.
You can also find a complete and thorough definition of Critical Race Theory here, here, and here.
Here's what Kendi says:
Republican operatives have buried the actual definition of critical race theory: "a way of looking at law's role platforming, facilitating, producing, and even insulating racial inequality in our country," as the law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, who helped coin the term, recently defined it. Instead, the attacks on critical race theory are based on made-up definitions and descriptors.
Ah, yes, those "Republican operatives" and their nefarious scheme to keep America from being divided by race.
Let me remind you that Kendi has suggested there should be an unelected government agency called the "Department of Antiracism" that would enforce CRT's ideology on the local, state, and federal level.
He then lumps politicians trying to keep schools segregated (reminder: Democrats such as the father of Al Gore were overwhelmingly the ones trying to do that) with parents trying to keep CRT out of schools today.
In the 1950s and '60s, the conservators of racism organized to keep Black kids out of all-white schools. Today, they are trying to get critical race theory out of American schools.
Way to frame average parents as racists! I am all here for your insanity, man!
He then calls people's dislike of CRT an "obsession."
After it was cited 132 times on Fox News shows in 2020, critical race theory became a conservative obsession this year.
Oh, you mean people suddenly became aware of what CRT acolytes have been teaching kids for years in our public schools? That must have been really annoying for you.
The Ministry of Truth... err, "Department of Antiracism" was probably set back a few years by that!
Kendi goes to try to prove, rather desperately, that his "equity" ideas are not inherently racist.
I proposed that an example of racial equity would be "if there were relatively equitable percentages" of racial groups "living in owner-occupied homes in the forties, seventies, or, better, nineties."
For this, I'll turn to Dr. Voddie Baucham, who addresses this quote specifically in his new book "Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism's Looming Catastrophe."
"How, for example, would we apply the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25 to this kind of thinking? For the antiracist, the goal is equitable outcomes. A goal that, as we will see, is neither biblical, reasonable no achievable. In fact, at no time in the history of the world has the kind of equity Kendi seeks existed."
Baucham goes on to list two quotes that are extremely relevant to Kendi's quote as well.
As the legendary economist Thomas Sowell (who is black) notes, 'This conception of fairness requires that third parties must wield the power to control outcomes, overriding rules, standards, or the preferences of people."
...
The words of Milton Friedman serve as a fitting caveat: 'A society that puts equality – in the sense of equality of outcome – ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.'
Let me remind you again that Kendi wants a Constitutional amendment to create the Department of Antiracism, and I quote straight from the horse's mouth:
The DOA would be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.
Kendi sees no problem with this use of force.
In his article, Kendi then takes aim at election integrity laws (because our elections are great and why would you ever need voter verification???).
Case in point: GOP state legislators are claiming that the 28 laws they've enacted in 17 states as of June 21 are about election security, even though voter fraud is a practically nonexistent problem. They claim that these laws aren't intended to make it harder for Black voters or members of other minority groups to cast ballots, even as experts find that's precisely what such laws have done in the past, and predict that's likely what these new laws will do as well.
The overwhelming majority of Americans, including a majority of Democrat and black/Hispanic voters, support voter ID, but it's all about that Narrative that the GOP are a bunch of white guys that want to oppress the masses!
I'll let smarter and more prominent voices (those Kendi refused to address in this screed) respond to some of his specific claims regarding source material and definitions.
But Kendi's assertion that the debate over CRT isn't real and that concerned parents, leaders, and citizens are just alt-right dumb dumbs arguing with themselves is absolutely insane and deserves to be outright laughed at.
[W]hat's happening now is something entirely different and destructive—not constructive. This isn't a "culture war." This isn't even an "argument." This isn't even "criticism." This is critics arguing with themselves.
At best, Kendi is so caught up in his delusions that he doesn't understand how this neo-Marxist ideology is being taught in every major institution of America. Perhaps he sees himself as the underdog instead of the puppet of the terrifying establishment that is mandating his teachings from preschool all the way up to the halls of the Pentagon.
At worst, Kendi is an outright liar who will continue to lie in order to see the revolution and the Marxist utopia of the antiracist man come to full fruition.
As a student of history, I know the early revolutionaries always lose their heads to their students. There is always a Napoleon behind the Robespierre and a Lenin behind the Plekhanov.
