For the purpose of making your way adaptively and smartly in a society that is systemically anti-white, you need to understand what distinguishes Critical Race Theory from Marxism and quit the socialism/Marxism theoretical escapism, for once and for all.

Get this into your head: For conflict in society, Marxism fingers social class; critical race theory saddles whites. You, if you are white!

More on this do-or-die distinction in my latest YouTube video, 

“Distinguish Critical Race Theory From Marxism: Your Life Depends On It!”

David Vance and I further flesh out the Marxism vs. Critical Race Theory vexation in our weekly, Wednesday chat.

Whatever conservatives think of Marxism—and this writer follows the antiwar, anti-state, free market Austrian School of economics—Marxism in the origin is serious political economy; an intellectual treatise with gravitas. Critical Race Theory is a priori gibberish.

Scrap that: Befitting the boors who originated CRT anti-whitism—the theory is based on reasoning backwards: if B then A; if white then … complete that sentence with all manner of evil that comes to mind.

We also discuss uni-party politics, the futility of it, and the war on MAGA folks, all 74 million of us. And, prompted by David, I might have thrown in a quip about plagiarism made way back, in a witty joust between Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler—two giants of the West your kids should know, but don’t, because … critical race rot.

Ilana Mercer

Critical race theory is fast becoming America’s new institutional orthodoxy. Yet most Americans have never heard of it—and of those who have, many don’t understand it. It’s time for this to change. We need to know what it is so we can know how to fight it.

In explaining critical race theory, it helps to begin with a brief history of Marxism. Originally, the Marxist Left built its political program on the theory of class conflict. Marx believed that the primary characteristic of industrial societies was the imbalance of power between capitalists and workers. The solution to that imbalance, according to Marx, was revolution: the workers would eventually gain consciousness of their plight, seize the means of production, overthrow the capitalist class, and usher in a new socialist society.

During the 20th century, a number of regimes underwent Marxist-style revolutions, and each ended in disaster. Socialist governments in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba, and elsewhere racked up a body count of nearly 100 million of their own people. They are remembered for their gulags, show trials, executions, and mass starvations. In practice, Marx’s ideas unleashed man’s darkest brutalities.

Critical race theory is an academic discipline, formulated in the 1990s, built on the intellectual framework of identity-based Marxism. Relegated for many years to universities and obscure academic journals, over the past decade it has increasingly become the default ideology in our public institutions. It has been injected into government agencies, public school systems, teacher training programs, and corporate human resources departments in the form of diversity training programs, human resources modules, public policy frameworks, and school curricula.

Christopher F. Rufo

The Biden Department of Education has quietly proposed a new rule prioritizing the use of federal tax dollars for K-12 schools that replace traditional education with “culturally responsive teaching and learning” – more commonly referred to as critical race theory. This is the most significant move by the federal government to redefine the nature of state-funded public schools in U.S. history.

Although the current effort to push public schools receiving federal funding to adopt a detailed indoctrination agenda may feel new and overwhelming for parents, the truth is that the Biden attempt is simply the last phase in a decades-long effort to control local schools and press the progressive agenda on our children. With the power of taxpayer-funded purse strings, the federal government sends a message to public schools that if they want financial aid they must “teach” critical race theory and prioritize its ideologically anti-American, anti-traditional agenda over traditional education.

Under Obama, public schools were thrust into the controversial world of Common Core, a series of federal mandates that included “awareness education” involving a progressive view of race, gender, and so-called “equity” (not to be confused with “equality”).

Under Biden, a far more aggressive level of federal control over our nation’s K-12 classrooms will replace history (and objective truth) with identity politics and a warped view of American civics and institutions. In many cases, teachers are told to hide the racially divisive curriculum from parents. In others, students are encouraged to report the words and views of their parents and caretakers as examples of institutional racism. The initial goal is the indoctrination of young minds, but the long view is to aggregate power behind an alien political worldview that fed the dehumanizing machines of the Soviet Union and communist China.

At its core, critical race theory is the false idea that the United States is a fundamentally racist country and that all of our nation’s institutions – the law, culture, business, economy, education – are designed to maintain white supremacy. Politicians and pundits market critical race theory as inclusive teaching, one that promotes understanding and tolerance. When the truth is exposed, they try to repackage it in a series of euphemisms, including anti-racism, equity, or culturally responsive teaching. But the “scholars,” like Ibram X. Kendi and the 1619 Project behind the related anti-racist rhetoric proposed in the rule – the true believers – admit the truth.

Critical race theory curriculum tells students that they fall into one of two categories – the oppressed or the oppressor – based solely on the color of their skin. It tells students that if they are white then they are privileged and racist, and makes them affirm this ideology through classroom discussion and assignments. Some school districts take it even a step further and physically segregate students based on their race for lessons, reducing them to nothing more than a set of racial stereotypes.

This is not healthy. It erases decades of progress. And it pits our children against each other, teaching them to hate one another. Parents must stay alert because this week’s proposed rule is just the beginning. Senate and House Democrats have already introduced bills, including the Civics Secures Democracy Act, which would require schools to promote critical race theory in exchange for more federal money.

The go-for-broke approach of the Biden administration to upend bulwarks of the American constitutional republic, from Supreme Court-packing to open borders to emptying the public treasury to ensuring federal control of elections, reveals the true agenda: the consolidation of power. And nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in its drive to replace history, reading, and writing with noxious doctrine designed to replace both parental control and constitutional rule of law.

Kimberly Hermann is General Counsel for Southeastern Legal Foundation, an Atlanta-based constitutional public interest law firm and policy center. Kim is committed to promoting individual liberty, the rule of law, and accountability in government. She advances these principles through litigation in federal and state trial and appellate courts.

Nehemiah Leftwich, writing on Facebook:

It has been a long time indeed since I have found myself exclaiming “BRAVO” so loudly and so frequently as I did when reading this post by a friend here on Facebook, a post which consists almost entirely of a letter from a disappointed and thoroughly disaffected parent to New York’s exclusive private school, Brearley, at which his daughter had previously been enrolled. Rarely have I encountered so brilliant an exposition and argument. In fact, I believe Mr. Gutmann’s letter should be committed to memory and shared as widely as possible.

As my friend wrote:

“This is what moral courage looks like. Bravo.

“Please read this letter. It was written by a father who took his daughter out of her expensive NYC private school because of what happened due to Critical Race Theory.”
***********************

April 13, 2021

Dear Fellow Brearley Parents,

Our family recently made the decision not to reenroll our daughter at Brearley for the 2021-22 school year. She has been at Brearley for seven years, beginning in kindergarten. In short, we no longer believe that Brearley’s administration and Board of Trustees have any of our children’s best interests at heart. Moreover, we no longer have confidence that our daughter will receive the quality of education necessary to further her development into a critically thinking, responsible, enlightened, and civic minded adult. I write to you, as a fellow parent, to share our reasons for leaving the Brearley community but also to urge you to act before the damage to the school, to its community, and to your own child’s education is irreparable.

It cannot be stated strongly enough that Brearley’s obsession with race must stop. It should be abundantly clear to any thinking parent that Brearley has completely lost its way. The administration and the Board of Trustees have displayed a cowardly and appalling lack of leadership by appeasing an anti-intellectual, illiberal mob, and then allowing the school to be captured by that same mob. What follows are my own personal views on Brearley’s antiracism initiatives, but these are just a handful of the criticisms that I know other parents have expressed.

I object to the view that I should be judged by the color of my skin. I cannot tolerate a school that not only judges my daughter by the color of her skin, but encourages and instructs her to prejudge others by theirs. By viewing every element of education, every aspect of history, and every facet of society through the lens of skin color and race, we are desecrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and utterly violating the movement for which such civil rights leaders believed, fought, and died.

I object to the charge of systemic racism in this country, and at our school. Systemic racism, properly understood, is segregated schools and separate lunch counters. It is the interning of Japanese and the exterminating of Jews. Systemic racism is unequivocally not a small number of isolated incidences over a period of decades. Ask any girl, of any race, if they have ever experienced insults from friends, have ever felt slighted by teachers or have ever suffered the occasional injustice from a school at which they have spent up to 13 years of their life, and you are bound to hear grievances, some petty, some not. We have not had systemic racism against Blacks in this country since the civil rights reforms of the 1960s, a period of more than 50 years. To state otherwise is a flat-out misrepresentation of our country’s history and adds no understanding to any of today’s societal issues. If anything, longstanding and widespread policies such as affirmative action, point in precisely the opposite direction.

I object to a definition of systemic racism, apparently supported by Brearley, that any educational, professional, or societal outcome where Blacks are underrepresented is prima facie evidence of the aforementioned systemic racism, or of white supremacy and oppression. Facile and unsupported beliefs such as these are the polar opposite to the intellectual and scientific truth for which Brearley claims to stand. Furthermore, I call bullshit on Brearley’s oft-stated assertion that the school welcomes and encourages the truly difficult and uncomfortable conversations regarding race and the roots of racial discrepancies.

I object to the idea that Blacks are unable to succeed in this country without aid from government or from whites. Brearley, by adopting critical race theory, is advocating the abhorrent viewpoint that Blacks should forever be regarded as helpless victims, and are incapable of success regardless of their skills, talents, or hard work. What Brearley is teaching our children is precisely the true and correct definition of racism.

I object to mandatory anti-racism training for parents, especially when presented by the rent-seeking charlatans of Pollyanna. These sessions, in both their content and delivery, are so sophomoric and simplistic, so unsophisticated and inane, that I would be embarrassed if they were taught to Brearley kindergarteners. They are an insult to parents and unbecoming of any educational institution, let alone one of Brearley’s caliber.

I object to Brearley’s vacuous, inappropriate, and fanatical use of words such as “equity,” “diversity” and “inclusiveness.” If Brearley’s administration was truly concerned about so-called “equity,” it would be discussing the cessation of admissions preferences for legacies, siblings, and those families with especially deep pockets. If the administration was genuinely serious about “diversity,” it would not insist on the indoctrination of its students, and their families, to a single mindset, most reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Instead, the school would foster an environment of intellectual openness and freedom of thought. And if Brearley really cared about “inclusiveness,” the school would return to the concepts encapsulated in the motto “One Brearley,” instead of teaching the extraordinarily divisive idea that there are only, and always, two groups in this country: victims and oppressors.

l object to Brearley’s advocacy for groups and movements such as Black Lives Matter, a Marxist, anti family, heterophobic, anti-Asian and anti-Semitic organization that neither speaks for the majority of the Black community in this country, nor in any way, shape or form, represents their best interests.

I object to, as we have been told time and time again over the past year, that the school’s first priority is the safety of our children. For goodness sake, Brearley is a school, not a hospital! The number one priority of a school has always been, and always will be, education. Brearley’s misguided priorities exemplify both the safety culture and “cover-your-ass” culture that together have proved so toxic to our society and have so damaged the mental health and resiliency of two generations of children, and counting.

I object to the gutting of the history, civics, and classical literature curriculums. I object to the censorship of books that have been taught for generations because they contain dated language potentially offensive to the thin-skinned and hypersensitive (something that has already happened in my daughter’s 4th grade class). I object to the lowering of standards for the admission of students and for the hiring of teachers. I object to the erosion of rigor in classwork and the escalation of grade inflation. Any parent with eyes open can foresee these inevitabilities should antiracism initiatives be allowed to persist.

We have today in our country, from both political parties, and at all levels of government, the most unwise and unvirtuous leaders in our nation’s history. Schools like Brearley are supposed to be the training grounds for those leaders. Our nation will not survive a generation of leadership even more poorly educated than we have now, nor will we survive a generation of students taught to hate its own country and despise its history.

Lastly, I object, with as strong a sentiment as possible, that Brearley has begun to teach what to think, instead of how to think. I object that the school is now fostering an environment where our daughters, and our daughters’ teachers, are afraid to speak their minds in class for fear of “consequences.” I object that Brearley is trying to usurp the role of parents in teaching morality, and bullying parents to adopt that false morality at home. I object that Brearley is fostering a divisive community where families of different races, which until recently were part of the same community, are now segregated into two. These are the reasons why we can no longer send our daughter to Brearley.

Over the past several months, I have personally spoken to many Brearley parents as well as parents of children at peer institutions. It is abundantly clear that the majority of parents believe that Brearley’s antiracism policies are misguided, divisive, counterproductive and cancerous. Many believe, as I do, that these policies will ultimately destroy what was until recently, a wonderful educational institution. But as I am sure will come as no surprise to you, given the insidious cancel culture that has of late permeated our society, most parents are too fearful to speak up.

But speak up you must. There is strength in numbers and I assure you, the numbers are there. Contact the administration and the Board of Trustees and demand an end to the destructive and anti-intellectual claptrap known as antiracism. And if changes are not forthcoming then demand new leadership. For the sake of our community, our city, our country and most of all, our children, silence is no longer an option.

Respectfully,
Andrew Gutmann

The way you think determines whether you embrace freedom and liberty — or eschew them.

At least subconsciously, we all have a theory of human nature. One widespread, yet false, theory of human nature: We’re determined by other people. Either we’re conditioned by their behavioral reinforcements, or we’re simply the product of other factors over which we have no control.

Critical race theory is the dominant view today among our intellectuals — and that viewpoint has “trickled down” to the business world, the political world and — I’m suspecting — a third to half of the ordinary population. Critical race theory means that you can’t help but act according to your racial makeup. If you’re black or brown, you’re oppressed, whether you think so or not; if you’re white (and male, heterosexual and Christian in particular), then you’re an oppressor, whether you think so or not. The basic point: You can’t help it. It’s your nature.

The specifics of critical race theory, while toxic, aren’t as bad as the underlying premise: That you cannot do anything about your destiny as a white or black/brown person. It’s programmed by your DNA, and by social conditioning — neither of which you can ever escape. That’s what leads to the blowing up of our Bill of Rights. A Bill of Rights is for people who ARE free to achieve, thrive, fail, suffer, triumph or pursue happiness. A Bill of Rights is for people who make choices. Critical race theorists believe we have NO choices.

Tragically, there are no choices in the world being shaped by today’s shameless politicians and corporate fascists serving those politicians. As totalitarianism spreads from mandatory masks and vaccines to other areas of life (as is happening on social media and elsewhere), the only choice will be NO choice. If you’re one race and gender, you can’t help but be an oppressor, we’re told. If you’re unsuccessful, you’re not a threat. But if you are successful, then it’s because you oppressed others to get there. Based on what facts? Facts aren’t necessary. Your race and gender tell the whole story.

THIS is the evil viewpoint obliterating our freedom, the same way that Hitler’s similarly anti-choice views led, inevitably, to the totalitarianism and fascism of his toxic state. You’re not only obliged to hold this viewpoint and refrain from dissenting; you’re obliged to STATE the prevailing views, even if you don’t mean them. If you don’t state them, then you’re a criminal (first morally, then legally). This is the meaning of “Silence Kills.” They’re basically saying: “Agree with me, and say so; otherwise, you’re a murderer.” This is how all dictatorships work, especially the more sophisticated and toxic ones. It’s proceeding in America exactly as it did in Maoist China, Hitler’s Nazi Germany and elsewhere. It’s stunning in its predictability and ugly elegance.

If you really believe that people — including yourself — are the product of genetic or cultural characteristics over which you have no control, then choice is irrelevant. And once choice is irrelevant, freedom is irrelevant too. In fact, freedom gets in the way.

The alternative to critical race theory or anything else like it? To use Ayn Rand’s beautiful phrase, “Man is a being of self-made soul.”

While there are many things about your life, body and brain that you don’t directly control, you are, fundamentally, what you make of yourself. Nothing will ever change that. It’s just the way it is. Of course, what you make of yourself can’t be given a fair shake unless you’re free. Today, everyone is losing their freedom. This includes the alleged victims as well as the alleged victimizers. When the statists are all done, we will ALL be wards of the state, hostage to the false and toxic idea that we never had the capability to shape ourselves … when we most certainly did, all along.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason