Should the woke renaissance one day become a thing of the past, and critical race theory be consigned to the ash bin of history where it belongs, there will be a handful of names our posterity will honor for their willingness to stand up to the social-media inspired neo-racism movement. Discovery Institute's Christopher Rufo will be among them.
Not only is Rufo doing yeoman's work in the pages of City Journal by outing the neo-racism of corporations like Disney, Coca-Cola, and most recently Lockheed Martin, he is also more than willing to go toe-to-toe with the modern prophets of racialism – on their own turf – to expose the regressive worldview that undergirds the woke movement.
Temple professor Marc Lamont Hill was the most recent to host Rufo on his Black News Channel program "Black News Tonight." Perhaps surprisingly, given Hill's intellectual pedigree, the host resorted to the tired "gotcha" set-up for Rufo, clumsily attempting to trap him by attempting to get his guest to adopt a faulty premise.
If you haven't seen the video of the exchange, it's useful not just because Rufo acquitted himself well, but because it reveals the morally objectionable assumptions at the root of CRT thinking.
This is but one short clip in a much longer interview, yet it perfectly reveals the plot and embodies the essence of this fight.
On the one side, you have a race-essentialist. That is, Hill represents the morally stunted perspective that races are biologically distinct, culturally segregated, and genetically separate. The philosophy leads inexorably to racial prejudice, bias, and a categorical thinking that research shows stifles creativity. Locking people into abstract boxes demarcated only along racial lines, it promotes the very stereotypical thinking that the American civil rights movement once wisely rejected.
Rufo points that out when he rightly criticizes the absurd woke narrative that things like high test scores, objectivity, being on time, and rationality are "white" values. But that philosophy is precisely what Hill advocates, suggesting himself that values like culture and tradition make him proud of being black.
Though those values are (intentionally?) generic and vague, would Hill honestly suggest that no other racial group can experience those things? The segregationist mindset is not difficult to detect in this gross neo-racism.
On the other side, Rufo articulates the view once popularized by Martin Luther King, Jr. – that is, the dignity of the individual that necessarily rejects all supremacist thinking, be it white supremacy or black supremacy. Rufo echoes what King called valuing a person for the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, refusing to "buy into the framework that the world can be reduced into these metaphysical categories of whiteness and blackness."
Asserting that wicked, neo-racist framework as American society's new starting point is precisely the objective of this aggressive, woke, CRT push. You saw it in Hill's badgering of Rufo when he interrupted and begged his guest to "indulge me."
To see how deceptive that is, merely substitute a different topic other than race.
ME: "I think you're ugly. A lot of people see you as ugly. What would you say you like about being ugly?"
YOU: "I don't think of myself as ugly. Some may not find me attractive, but others will."
ME: "Well, indulge me. I'm attractive, and I can tell you a number of things I like about being attractive. So again, answer the question. Tell me what you like about being ugly."
Notice, if you did indulge me, you would at that very moment be implicitly acknowledging your unattractiveness. You'd be giving in to my framing of the situation and having to construct all your arguments from my starting point. Or this:
ME: "I think Darwinian evolution is right. A lot of people do. What would you say is the best part of a godless universe?"
YOU: "I don't agree that this is a godless universe."
ME: "Ok, but indulge me."
This is the heart of the CRT movement's cultural strategy – deceive society into embracing a fundamentally dishonest premise about human dignity, and build a prejudiced, neo-racist kingdom from there.
Rufo demonstrated how to defeat it, and we'd all be wise to learn.
