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Yascha Mounk on What’s Next

The idea that critical race theory is an academic concept that is taught only at colleges or law schools might be technically accurate, but the reality on the ground is a good deal more complicated. Few middle or high schoolers are poring over academic articles written by Richard Delgado or Kimberlé Crenshaw. But across the nation, many teachers have, over the past years, begun to adopt a pedagogical program that owes its inspiration to ideas that are very fashionable on the academic left, and that go well beyond telling students about America’s copious historical sins.

In some elementary and middle schools, students are now being asked to place themselves on a scale of privilege based on such attributes as their skin color. History lessons in some high schools teach that racism is not just a persistent reality but the defining feature of America. And some school systems have even embraced ideas that spread pernicious prejudices about nonwhite people, as when a presentation to principals of New York City public schools denounced virtues such as “perfectionism” or the “worship of the written word” as elements of “white-supremacy culture.” …

For anybody who cares about making sure that Donald Trump does not become the 47th president of the United States, it is crucial that Democrats avoid repeating the mistakes that just put a Republican in Virginia’s governor’s mansion. It is impossible to win elections by telling voters that their concerns are imaginary. If Democrats keep doing so, they will keep losing.

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And Brett Stephens:

[N]ote the way in which the controversy over critical race theory is treated by much of the left as either much ado about an obscure scholarly discipline or, alternatively, a beneficent and necessary set of teachings about the past and present of systemic racism in America.

But C.R.T. is neither obscure nor anodyne. It is … a “politically committed movement” that often explicitly rejects notions of merit, objectivity, colorblindness and neutrality of law, among other classically liberal concepts.

That’s no reason to ban teaching it or any other way of looking at the world. But it is dishonest to argue that it is anything less than ideologically radical, intensely racialized and deliberately polarizing. It is even more dishonest to suggest that it exists only in academic cloisters…

No wonder the debate over C.R.T.-influenced pedagogies in public schools — which liberals insist don’t even exist in the state’s public schools – although they clearly do – had such a galvanic effect on the Virginia race. It exposed the myth that the illiberal currents at play in the United States today are solely a Republican phenomenon. They are not.

Margaret Soltan, November 3, 2021 1:19PM
Posted in: democracy

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3 Responses to “Yascha Mounk on What’s Next”

  1. Matthew McKeon Says:

    I teach high school and have for a long, long time. Whatever people understand is critical race theory never, ever comes up. Certainly there are ugly and racist episodes in American history, and history shapes our current world. But we(hs teachers) have to teach to state curriculum standards, not some nefarious wrongthink.

    Some of the news articles coming out of Texas: lists of banned books,the purging of libraries are more concerning, as are the hysterics and threats at various school committee meetings.

  2. Matthew McKeon Says:

    It feels very politically motivated. A vaguely defined enemy, lots of emotion, both fear and loathing, and the sweet kick of adrenaline when the rage takes over, the same group yelling about masks, or bathrooms.

    Governor Abbott wipes his brow with relief. No one’s wondering why Texans freeze to death or die of covid. Not while enough people are engaged in ensuring the schools are transenfrei.

  3. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Matthew: I read “CRT” as shorthand for some stuff that goes on in public schools that some parents have some grounds for resenting, objecting to. Note how carefully I’m phrasing this. I don’t agree with you that it’s largely a matter of venting rage; that describes a few parents. Most just quietly voted for Youngkin.

    (Sure looks as though CRT-related stuff is getting readied for schools in UD‘s Bethesda.)

    (Andrew Sullivan: “Of course K-12 kids in Virginia’s public schools are not explicitly reading the collected works of Derrick Bell or Richard Delgado — no more than Catholic school kids in third grade are studying critiques of Aquinas. But they are being taught in a school system now thoroughly committed to the ideology and worldview of CRT, by teachers who have been marinated in it, and whose unions have championed it.”)

    Certainly parents can see ahead; they can see that once their kids are in college they may well be made to undergo group exercises in race and gender awareness, with an eye (if they’re white) toward their guilt, and more broadly toward the one correct approach to take to these matters. CRT symbolizes the arguably very narrow range of acceptability of opinion on race and gender in high school and college: Anything short of what often looks like radical and divisive stuff is often dismissed – cancelled – as bigoted. Much damage is done, especially to professors whose position fails to conform. I’ve followed, on this blog, many such destructive attacks on professors.

    Parents are aware of these larger cultural currents, and I think the instinct of some to resent them, is, broadly speaking, understandable. Certainly many smart political observers are calling, post-debacle, for a “woke detox.”

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