There’s a simple reason I saved this post for last. After weeks of reading, listening to and thinking about arguments from those on the right and counterarguments from those on the left, there are only two things I know for sure about critical race theory (CRT):
1) Everybody’s wrong.
2) We can blame activist Christopher F. Rufo for all our time and energy wasted arguing about it.
Even one of CRT’s founders thinks everyone - on the right and the left - is a little bit off their rocker about the topic.
Extreme reactions are no good to anyone
Diversity training programs across the country were the catalyst that ignited the alt-right CRT flame. Law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the phrase critical race theory and is one of the most prominent people connected to CRT, has witnessed some of those programs. She seems to consider the content in these programs disproportionate to the task, telling The New Yorker, “I’ve been witness to trainings that I thought, Ennnnnh, not quite sure that’s the way I would approach it.”
“I’ve been witness to trainings that I thought, Ennnnnh, not quite sure that’s the way I would approach it.” - Kimberlé Crenshaw
Some of those more exaggerated training classes are perhaps best illustrated by the implicit-bias curriculum shared by journalist Christopher F. Rufo. That class, allegedly part of Seattle’s Office for Civil Rights, included topics like “Internalized racial superiority for white people” and “What do we do in white people space?” PowerPoint slides suggested attendees would work “through emotions that often come up for white people like sadness, shame, paralysis, confusion, denial.”
For Crenshaw, those types of anti-racism trainings are often little more than checking a box and hoping for the best. “The fact is there aren’t any easily digestible red pills,” she told The New Yorker. “Sometimes people want a shortcut. They want the one- to two-hour training that will solve the problem. And it will not solve the problem. And sometimes it creates a backlash.”
But the right’s reaction is just as extreme, if not more so, and is indicative of an age-old tactic: diverting attention away from more complicated challenges. And though liberals are mostly correct when they argue that conservatives denouncing CRT don't know a lot about CRT, Crenshaw believes the fervor - similar to that found on the Bay Village Citizens for Transparency’s website - suggests “a deeper historical pattern.” Simple retrenchment by conservatives faced with the fallout of George Floyd’s murder and all that came with it.
“If we’re really going to dig our way out of the hole this country was born into, it’s gonna be a process,” she told The New Yorker.
In other words, the argument over critical race theory is - and has always been - all bark and no bite.
And the whistle that started all the barking? Christopher F. Rufo.
Christopher F. Rufo, deleted tweet from March 15, 2021
Ruf - eh - o
Why are we all fighting about it, then? Why is the BVCT sounding the alarm about Bay schools when there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that CRT, or anything like it, is part of the curriculum?
Look no further than conservative-activist Rufo.
In his own words, Rufo admits liking the sound of “critical race theory,” believing it could be the kind of phrase the conservative base would respond to, whether they knew anything about CRT or not. Rufo likely knew very little about the actual discipline himself. All the conservative journalist-turned-activist wanted to do was toss the whole world of diversity and inclusion into the term and - as he told The New Yorker - “weaponize it.”
“We have successfully frozen their brand - 'critical race theory' - into the public conversation and steadily driving up negative perceptions,” Rufo tweeted on Mar. 15, 2021, and then, soon after, deleted. “We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.”
In other words, never mind what critical race theory honestly is. Instead, appropriate the term and make it whatever we want it to be.
The deceit manifested on the BVCT website
To see this strategy in action, look no further than the Bay Village Citizens for Transparency's website. This “everything and the kitchen sink” approach is how the the secret group's Critical Race Theory section is wholly constructed.
It is thin on authentic information about critical race theory, its resources consisting mostly of opinion pieces, conspicuously attributed as factual, and regurgitated speculation from alt-right resources, including the conservative group, Every Black Life Matters (not to be confused with Black Lives Matter, wink, wink, nudge, nudge).
Irrefutable proof of CRT in Bay schools, according to the BVCT, includes books from third-party reading list shared with parents and students via the Rocket Family Summer Camp web portal. We cover how the BVCT twists this public resource - focused on giving parents the power to choose reading materials and activities to do together with their Bay students - in great detail in our deconstruction of its CSE section. Read through that to learn how the BVCT pushes prejudicial opinions about the LGBTQ+ community with its Rocket Family Summer Camp concerns. A lot of the same arguments can be made here.
We also dug into the simplicity of understanding the difference between “equality” and “equity,” and how the concepts are interwoven, in our blog post about one candidate’s misinterpretation of a graphic shared on the district’s website.
The BVCT also calls out reading lists for the district’s Diversity and Equity Committee as indictive of CRT, but then argues about issues it has with the books' content, never establishing how - or if - that content is included in official student curriculum. Are adult educators incapable of discerning a book's message? Can teachers choose what concepts they agree with and which they do not? If reading is an issue with educators, how does the BVCT plan on policing the content Bay educators consume when they're off the clock?
In fact, the BVCT’s overall issue with alleged CRT in Bay Schools underscores the right's biggest problem with diversity and inclusion initiatives - they make them feel bad.
The CRT paradox
"A paradox lies at this largely conservative campaign against CRT," writes Aziz Huq in Time. "If you slice through the rhetoric, it rests on a view of free speech that the political right, until now, stridently and correctly rejected: That speech can and should be curtailed because it makes some people feel uncomfortable or threatened."
To this end, the the most powerful argument against CRT’s critics comes from those same critics, writes Huq.
"Perhaps it’s a mistake to look for a stable definition of CRT threading together the case against it. For at the core of the case against CRT is instead the simple idea that people shouldn’t be made to feel uncomfortable about their advantages or others' disadvantages," Huq continues. "This is a version of the ‘belief in a just world’ that psychologists long ago identified."
The just-world hypothesis is the belief that, in general, the social environment is fair, such that people get what they deserve, according to iResearchNet.com. The concept was developed in part to help explain observations that to preserve a belief that the world is a just place, people will sometimes devalue a victim.
"But here it has a partisan edge," writes Huq. "It is about appealing to people —especially those in ‘swing districts’ targeted by Republicans in 2022 — who feel unease in their present relative advantage, but find it costly to dissect such discomfort.
“The case against CRT, in short, is not about a fixed set of ideas. It is about wanting to avoid certain feelings of discomfort or even shame. But the right has encountered this idea before—and seemed not to like it.
Conservatives disparage arguments made by ‘snowflake’ college students. But the case against CRT is made of the same stuff.
When the argument is “we don’t like it because it makes us sad,” then there’s no argument. Not in a country that built its foundation on free speech. In other words, there’s no “there” there in the fight against CRT. Just that retrenchment Crenshaw talked about.
And there’s no “there” there in the BVCT’s case against Bay Schools, either.
No stopping us now
This post is short by design, because it seems clear the Bay Village Citizens for Transparency aren’t going anywhere soon, even after Tuesday’s election. And it is likely this ridiculous argument about CRT - about conservatives not liking their place in the history books - will continue long after.
It’s also worth digging into every argument on the Bay Village Citizens for Transparency’s website, challenging those ideas, churning prejudicial thought into dust, and finding common ground if and when possible.
So stay tuned. The BVCT Debunked is only getting started.
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