Most people agree that hating, mistreating, or discriminating against people because of their race is morally wrong. But some progressives are trying to co-opt the moral consensus against racism to serve their own ideology, and, in doing so, are distorting it beyond recognition.
Schools disingenuously deny that they teach “Critical Race Theory,” insisting that what they are really teaching is “anti-racism.” “The problem is that ‘anti-racism’ is a linguistic trick,” says Bangert. “Instead of condemning all forms of racism, it seeks to combat one form of racism with another. By doing so, it only perpetuates racial division and strife, harming everyone.” He then cites two different understandings:
In 2007, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts authored an opinion in a case that addressed the legality of plans used by two public school districts to assign students to specific schools. Both schools employed racial quotas to make the assignments. In striking down the quotas, Roberts memorably stated, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Contrast that to another memorable line, this time from author Ibram X. Kendi. In his 2019 book “How to Be an Antiracist,” Kendi, a well-known scholar and proponent of anti-racism ideology, opined, “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
Kendi’s version of “anti-racism” intentionally perpetuates discrimination–against the white “race,” in favor of the black “race”–even though doing so brings back judging people on racial grounds and keeps alive discrimination on that basis.
But that kind of “anti-racism” goes even further. On the principle of “intersectionality,” all “oppressed” people are connected and have a common “oppressor.” Mr. Bangart, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, is representing parents who are suing Albemarle County Public School in Virginia over its “anti-racist” curriculum. He shows how “racism” is broadened out to include opposition to all causes that progressives support:
The district has indoctrinated staff and students alike in a bizarre understanding of racism and race relations. Staff were told that racism is “the subordination of people of color by white people.” Students, in turn, were taught that racism is “the marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.”
Moreover, students were told that “people who are white, middle class, Christian, and cisgender” comprise a “dominant culture” who “chose the damage and rules,” while “black, brown, indigenous people of color of the global majority, queer, transgendered, non-binary folx, cisgender women, youth, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, non-Christian folx, neurodiverse, folx with disabilities, [and] folx living in poverty” were all part of a “subordinate culture.”
Anti-racism, then, means fighting against the “dominant culture” by contesting “white supremacy, white-dominant culture, and unequal institutions and society.” Some of those racist institutions include such things as believing in “colorblindness,” “remaining apolitical,” believing there are “two sides to every story,” and holding the wrong views on political issues like border security, immigration, criminal justice reform, and school financing.
So being a woman is the equivalent of belonging to an oppressed race, and, presumably, in this mindset, opposing abortion would constitute racism.
Being transgendered is a race, so opposing men identifying as women competing in women’s sports would be racism.
Atheism is a race, so arguing for the existence of God would be racism.
This is what is being taught in our schools! But a word so stretched and abstracted that it can refer to everything, means nothing. What is left is discrimination based on race.
Image by truthseeker08 from Pixabay
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