Has anyone discussed critical race theory? No? OK, I’ll chime in

While I have been vocal of wokeness (which I would define as the overapplication of critical race theory as a weapon), the early 2000s version of Orrin Konheim was an enthusiast of critical race theory.

I went to the University of Mary Washington for two years and everything from English 101 to Urban Geography to Film Studies had elements of CRT in them. One of the big four civil rights figures (Congress of Racial Equality co-founder), James Farmer, had a teaching post at Mary Washington when he died and the James Farmer Multicultural Institute bought over several speakers and so I heard Julian Bond and Roger Wilkins. I gobbled all of these lessons up and enjoyed talking about generational wealth and redlining to my peers.

But times have changed. Somewhere around 2015, pop culture writers and twitter activists felt that the easiest way to see the world and ways to fix it through the narrow dichotomy of racist or not racist. What’s more they thrive off oversimplification and have built a cottage industry around exploiting racial grievance.

Despite all that, I can more reasonably make conclusions on where I feel CRT is used tenuously after having studied it in the first place. I also have the credibility to argue against its overuse having known where the bounds are.

The idea of outlawing it for cheap political points with an ignorant base as the Republican party is doing in Texas and Florida can be just as bad. The problem is that Governors Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott are grovelling yes men to Trumpism which discredits any sincerity they have might have in the present and reaffirms the Left’s position that these movements are racist.

But that doesn’t mean that every criticism of Critical Race Theory in schools is invalid. In a Seth Meyers monologue, the late night show host was taking down Senator Ted Cruz’s anti-CRT race theory rant with the defense that CRT was only taught at the college levels so therefore the idea that CRT is invading secondary schools is a classic strawman theory. In other words, Ted Cruz is an imbecile who’s arguing against something that doesn’t exist. I completely agree with the first part that Cruz’s continued presence in Congress is an insult to democracy. However, the latter point fits the (often true) narrative of how the Right often takes up dumb crusades against bogeyman (socialism, the unborn, rock lyrics). But in this case, the left is wrong…