Media Panics Over Mounting Opposition to Critical Race Theory
The best evidence that the resistance to CRT is gaining and posing a threat to Democrats is that the mainstream media is trying to marginalize and demonize the movement the way it attacked the Tea Party
The opposition to Critical Race Theory, and most particularly its abusive implementation through race shaming and stoking racial tension, has been growing for a year or more.
CRT as a term burst onto the media landscape when ugly and abusive training session materials and accounts were leaked from campuses, government agencies, and corporations last year. The opposition is organic, but until the last few months has been disorganized. Relative to the CRT and BLM movements, embraced by corporate America to the tune of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, the opposition consists largely of parents who just aren’t going to take it anymore, and state legislators who jumped on a resistance train that already was moving down the tracks.
The best evidence that the resistance to CRT is gaining and posing a threat to Democrats is that the mainstream media is trying to marginalize and demonize the movement the way it attacked the Tea Party: Just a bunch of astroturfed racists. It wasn’t true then, and it’s not true now, but it’s the standard playbook.
Then, as now, the mainstream liberal media is leading the attack. Here are some of the headlines and approaches — “as if” they are reading from the same script.
The media attack is epitomized by an NBC News story today, Critical race theory battle invades school boards — with help from conservative groups:
It’s a movement that has amped up grassroots parental organizing around the country, bringing the lens and stakes of national politics — along with the playbook of seasoned GOP activists — to school boards….
Conflicts like this are playing out in cities and towns across the country, amid the rise of at least 165 local and national groups that aim to disrupt lessons on race and gender, according to an NBC News analysis of media reports and organizations’ promotional materials. Reinforced by conservative think tanks, law firms and activist parents, these groups have found allies in families frustrated over Covid-19 restrictions in schools and have weaponized the right’s opposition to critical race theory, turning it into a political rallying point.
While the efforts vary, they share strategies of disruption, publicity and mobilization. The groups swarm school board meetings, inundate districts with time-consuming public records requests and file lawsuits and federal complaints alleging discrimination against white students. They have become media darlings in conservative circles and made the debate over critical race theory a national issue….
Now, conservative activists are setting their sights on ousting as many school board members as they can, and local Republican Parties have vowed to help, viewing the revolt against critical race theory as akin to the tea party wave from a decade ago.
Critical Race Theory is the new antifa and its just so frustrating to see this boogeyman political tactic work over and over again.
— Brandy Zadrozny (@BrandyZadrozny) June 11, 2021
The “tea party wave” swept Republicans into taking back the House in 2010, and the Senate in 2014, and in many ways led to Trump in 2016. That’s why the media is so scared and leaping into action.
The NBC News article has a reference to Nicole Solas’s situation (it doesn’t mention her name):
In South Kingstown, Rhode Island, the parent of an incoming kindergartener submitted over 200 public records requests in two months, seeking copies of middle and high school curricula, lists of all books related to gender available in the library and 10 years worth of harassment complaints and emails. The district said it would take 300 hours to compile all of the records requested.
Timothy Ryan, executive director of the Rhode Island School Superintendents’ Association, called the onslaught of records requests an effort “to shut the system down.”
“I believe their intent is really to have the public lose confidence in public education,” he said. “There was the ‘war on Christmas,’ and now everybody is teaching critical race theory. I think you’d be hard pressed to find five people in the state who could even define that.”
In reality, the claim of an attempt to “shut down the system” is a fabrication, probably cut from the same cloth that caused the South Kingstown School Committee to hire a Public Relations firm to smear Nicole Solas and Parents Defending Education as “racist.” Same playbook as used against the Tea Party.
That NBC News story forms the basis for a WaPo story, The Scholar Strategy: How ‘critical race theory’ alarms could convert racial anxiety into political energy:
That phrase, “critical race theory,” has become detached from its original academic meaning, an intellectual movement that examines the way policies and laws perpetuate systemic racism. In popular usage now, it refers to a broad mélange of race-related curriculums, claims and anecdotes. The Atlantic last month noted recent polling found only 1 in 5 Americans said they had heard the term. Exploiting that uncertainty, there has been an effort on the right to use the phrase as something of a catchall for nearly any discussion of or focus on race that might trigger frustration….
But the political utility of the anti-CRT effort was obvious. A useful marker of the prominence of something in right-wing thought and conversations is how often it’s mentioned on Fox News. And in the past few months, Fox News has been talking about CRT far more than it used to and far more than its competitors. At the same time, the network is less likely to talk about “systemic racism.” …
There’s a pushback against that focus, which itself gets blanketed by the appropriated term “woke.” Efforts to teach children about racism, from the well-structured to the clumsily intentioned, are framed as dangerous or dishonest. White parents get ensnared in a tactical pincer — their race on one side, their children on the other — that may aid the Republican Party.
Media Matters is worried about the midterm elections, Fox News’ fearmongering about critical race theory is all about the midterm campaigns, and has it all figured out:
Critical race theory, to those who can actually define it, is an academic and legal framework that examines the impact of systemic racism on American society. For conservatives however, it’s the latest boogeyman they can use to scare people into thinking America’s children are being “indoctrinated” by “woke” leftist teachers. And while that is not even remotely the case, this idea is exploding on Fox News and in Republican-run state legislatures, leading to legislative bans in many states and skyrocketing mentions of critical race theory on the network….
The slipperiness of the right-wing version of “critical race theory” is the point: It is so loosely defined that almost anything of or pertaining to a conversation about race qualifies. In the conservative telling, critical race theory is a loosely defined but awesomely omnipresent phantasmogoric threat that’s infecting schools and institutions across the country. Anyone who speaks up against it is heralded as a hero, fighting on behalf of children who would otherwise be brainwashed into learning about racism and privilege.
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In other words, the same people who tell us, without any evidence, that the biggest threat to America is “white supremacy” and “white supremacists” want us to settle down and accept as fact that CRT is really nothing more than teaching about slavery and Jim Crow … which I learned about in middle and high school.
They see white supremacists lurking everywhere, but they blanch at the suggestion that CRT is something new and could possibly be of concern for parents.
They are the inverse of “The Boy who Cried Wolf.” Nothing to see here, move along. They’re all about parents being involved … until the parents don’t like what’s going on.
Take a lesson from our recent President and call them what they are — constantly — over and over again — RACIST DEMOCRATS. It’s the RACIST DEMOCRATS that are forcing re-education camps based on the color of your skin.
BTW – the RACIST DEMOCRATS are also soft-shoeing this as Social Justice, Social Equity, and Social Equality — however, there is nothing fair, equal, open, and honest about this movement. If your aren’t deemed to be black or brown, you are the Demon. It’s disgusting.
They ARE racists. Their CRT programs involve separating children by race and telling whites “you’re guilty!” and blacks “you’re inferior!”. It’s Nazi brainwashing.
DPtarmigan, I agree, and furthermore pledge to immediately commence using the term in all of my comments with one edit – drop the “c” in democrat – thus: “racist demorats”.
Actually its Marxist brainwashing as it is from the Marxist payroll to demoralize the nation so that their coup/revolution will succeed without the huge bloodbath…that will come later when they start executions of political opponents.
They’re starting them now:
Levin questions standard of justice as Capitol rioters held under strict confinement, while Antifa roams free:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/mark-levin-equal-application-of-justice-capitol-rioters-antifa-blm
These poor people are being beaten and tormented by their captors.
I add an “n”. Racist Demoncrats. IMHO, a more accurate depiction.
The reason Democrats are pushing CRT is because their base is largely composed of black Americans. It is they who will gladly accept being considered the oppressed, especially if retributions may be the result. White Americans, on the other hand, object to being called the oppressors.
How are we going to defeat the media demonization campaign? It is a very effective tool and the media is extremely powerful.
How did the Colonists defeat the British, when they were omnipotent and they were here?
read the Washington Hypothesis by Tim Ballard – great hypothesis of why and how we defeated the British: Divine Intervention, and ONLY Divine Intervention.
Prior to Trump, Washington was the richest US president.
And like Trump, Washington had everything to lose by bucking the establishment swamp of his time.
It worked. Stay tuned.
Meantime, our Junta government thinks YOU are a terrorist threat.
It didn’t hurt to have the Donald Trump of the time, George Washington, in the position Trump is in today.
Until Trump, George Washington had been our wealthiest president prior to becoming the first president.
Like PDJT, PGW (he had no middle name) risked it all for principle.
The colonists had traitors within the enemies’ ranks and support from the French. I don’t suppose we can count on either.
Now we have traitors within our own government which are supporting our enemies.
“Support from the French” – very funny. (Though General Lafayette must be turning in his grave.)
The Junta running our country has MILLIONS of people working within it who despise the Junta.
I have a feeling Israel – and oddly Russia – are going to turn out to be America’s savior in the end.
It is the first real test of alternative media. The fewer people who tune into the PWDP (Propaganda Wing of the Democratic Party), the more who will listen to people trying to report the truth behind the lies.
Here’s a hint for oppositional communications:
Always refer to corporate media as “the Propaganda Wing of the Democratic Party (PWDP)”
Always refer to critical race theory as “neo-racism”; rather than pointing out the obvious anti-white racism of the program, refer to its subversion of MLK’s message of integration and brotherhood. Always emphasize how neo-racism hurts black people. This can help avoid the usual charge of “white fragility.”
When referring to the left or democratic “narrative,” use the phrase “false narrative.” When the opportunity arises, call the left narrative “the Big Lie.”
We must escalate the propaganda war. The left has always been better at it, and any notions of fair play in political communications must be jettisoned in the name of cultural survival. The high road is the road to the re-education camp.
I had a conversation with an educated guy of about 35 in New York the other day. I knew him from family, and he had my phone number. He called me to chat about the events fo the day, and we got together for lunch.
He’s in the middle of the road in terms of his politics. But he did state that he is kept abreast of things by reading the NY Times every day (a copy of which he had with him).
You can imagine the rest of the discussion, though I didn’t come on too hard: I just urged him to read information from both sides, because otherwise, he could not be genuinely informed.
He then tried breaking a bottle of ketchup over my head while screaming: “White devil!!!” I avoided the bottle, but then he tried stabbing me with a steak knife, but I used the copy of the NY Times on the table to fend off the knife. He then went running into the street, screaming: “Biden forever!” Police are still looking for him.
For the first time in my adult life, a copy of the NY Times was useful.
I also changed my phone number.
This is a true story.
Maybe.
Thank you that is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for
When neither side will concede any ground on a matter like this, I think the tie breaker can be a fresh set of eyes. That’s why I often love to get my wife’s input (she’s foreign born and raised).
Yeonmi Park in an earlier post from today is those fresh set of eyes. As she said, not even the North Korean leaders are as nuts as CRT and woke activists in academia. That’s saying a helluva lot.
MSM trying to convince people that the shy is actually green when everyone sees that is blue. They say “Trump says it’s blue – so it must be green” and 20% of the zombie base will nod their heads.
>> “You can fool some of the people all of the time”
Why is it that now every possible double entendre (“a fresh set of eyes”) brings up Kamala Harris’ past?
The sign says:
Stop C.R.T. in “our” schools
I like the scare quotes. It’s possible that somebody realizes that the government schools are not “ours” – they belong to unaccountable government bureaucracies.
Stop! CRT in “our” schools. – written more like a warning than a demand given the punctuation.
True, but they belong to bureaucrats only because we went to sleep for too many years and gave the schools to them. It is time for those generations that dropped the ball to help today’s parents to get “our” schools back . I am a pre-boomer, pay property taxes ( support schools) and have every right to have a say in my grandchildren’s education. Get with it old people!
They are starting to understand that the counterculture is underway and will grow.
“trying to marginalize and demonize the movement the way it attacked the Tea Party”
The Tea Party was never as many in number as are opposing or will be opposing CRT.
I hope you are right. The Tea Party was fairly large and was effective, This movement needs to be more “inclusive” in that it needs to include more than CRT, BLM is entrenched in public schools with their flags and posters all over “our” schools. The silly but dangerous gender and identity confusion is rampant in preteens and teens, now carrying over into our 21+ adult? Snowflakes. We need a formidable movement with staying power,
I worked a great deal with the Tea Party, I am expecting that half or more of Americans are going to oppose CRT. My understanding is that the Tea Party was well under 10% of Americans.
I think you are 100% right.
THEY MOVE IN PACKS
I noticed a flood of articles in the last 2 days. from the Ministry of Truth (Main Stream Media). Someone in the DNC must have sent around a memo and lined-up all the editors to hit the same agenda this week.
The memo must have gone something like this.
“Our brainwashed followers are starting to hear an anti-narrative message that might cause them to raise questions slow our Cultural Revolution. Polls are showing a bit of confusion among the indoctrinated. We need to put out a counter-narrative. As usually we will turn the narrative to make the conservatives out to be overly sensitive and out of touch. Call CRT a 40 year old academic theory – that will both legitimize it and make the right look a but nuts. And let’s be sure to bring TRUMP into it and give the impression it’s all his fault. The “Trump Card” always plays well with our moronic (strike tat, I meant to type “loyal”) base. Add a few examples and throw in a school superintendent who we can make the victim of a bunch of racist parents who are behind the times – and we have a winner. Now let’s just hope no one goes checking this stuff on the internet. You know what – let’s get our “fact checker” friends to bless it all and come out against Fox News for identifying this cultural revolution as a threat to America. They can make it seem scary by saying Fox mentioned CRT on air about 1,000 times in the last 4 months (not sure about this one because it may highlight that Dem media has failed to mention it at all – it’s a pretty big miss – but they’ll probably never connect those dots. Those conservatives are all just a bunch of uneducated hillbillies any way, right ?
They get marching orders
Here’s the Project Veritas video blowing the whistle on Fox’s corporate agenda in deception in the news:
Project Veritas releases Ivory Hecker video: Ivory Hecker tells her tale of Hydroxychloroquin censorship to James O’Keefe:
https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/project-veritas-releases-ivory-hecker-video/
I bet that Pharma pulled out all the stops to knock out Hydroxychloroquin treatment.
I know researchers who were blocked from getting data to determine HCQ effectiveness.
>> When Big Pharma has $ billions at state – they will do everything in their power to stop any rivals – especially when those alternatives cost merely pennies.
Personally, I took HCQ. I live in NYC and never got Covid – but many people around me did. FYI – the esteemed Gov of New York, Cuomo, blocked pharmacies from dispensing HCQ. It was purely a political decision because Trump said HCQ might be effective. I was able to get it anyway because my doctor was not a political hack – like so many are in NYC.
Many medical professionals – including doctors – should be ashamed that they put politics over patients lives. They are pathetic and unethical and would voluntarily surrender their license to practice if they had an ounce of integrity.
That her hydroxychloroquine reporting got her in hot water was unfortunate, but that the managers didn’t want a bitcoin report on at 5 p.m. was totally reasonable. Presumably, they have some idea who their audience is.
Having school districts buy this (censored) program for the students is only a small fraction of the problem. Most districts are so cheap they’d buy recycled gum, but this costs major money, so right now it’s just the ‘Woke’ districts who are doing this for political posturing.
If they can get their claws into the *STATE* budgets and mandate this in one or two states, then the money really flows. Or better, sink a tap into the infinite geyser of federal tax dollars and these scammers will be rolling in dough. That’s their goal. As long as districts have the option not to spring for it, the flow of cash will only be a relative trickle. Follow the money.
CRT claims that you are inherently racist because of your skin tone. Um, it works the other way as well.
I’ve noticed it….the black woman at work that is syrupy sweet to you and as nice as can be when you are one on one….but casts sideways glances at you when her peer group is around.
I’ve seen y’all be envious of Eric L because of his, as y’all put it, “high yellow” complexion. I’ve witnessed you laugh at Loretta D, saying sheis so black, they her in a bottle and called it Pepsi.
Go shove your racist crap up your own ass.
After Samantha Josephson was brutally raped and murdered by an opportunistic gang of CRT victims, and national media ignored it you want me to prostrate myself in front of a group that is bloodthirsty for revenge against something that took place seven or more generations ago? Go away.
The generation count for many of us is far less. My great-grandfather, 3 generations back, born in 1859, was too young to join battle. One of his brothers fought for the North, another two for the South. And his first cousins, same generation, were split between the two sides. So for my grandchildren- that’s only 5 generations.
But- to be brutally honest, for a larger percentage of blacks than whites, it is 7 generations back. Depends on how old the mothers were when they started having children, and when they stopped.. In all my lines of ancestry, 23-25 is average for first birth. One great grandmother, age 16, with a 4 month premature baby based on marriage date…. is the one exception in 5 generations. But that line came over from England in the 1870s-1890s, so weren’t involved at all. My mother 24, both grandmothers 23. My wife 23- me 25. Around where I live now- I know several 32 year old grandmothers.
CRT is discrimination in reverse against those who had nothing to do with past discrimination and it is stirring up animosity between races and causing hate crimes to sky rocket.
Don’t focus on just “Critical Race Theory”. Just as bad, and allowed to fly under the radar, are “Equity” and “Antiracism”. I would guess that if one joins equity and antiracism (as defined by Kendi) together, it pretty much enables all of CRT.
Our school board passed a policy last fall, when there was an unstoppable tsunami of mea culpas over what supposedly happened in Minneapolis, supporting antiracism and equity. Not a word on antiracism. A recent leftist candidate for the board said she didn’t even know what CRT is, but of course it was a lie and it pervaded everything she said. But it’s deemed normal to support DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion). Most people would support diversity and inclusion, so they are used here as a Trojan horse to bring in equity.
Equity is simply communism.
Antiracism, as defined by Kendi, basically says white people are not allowed to have good mental health or self-esteem.
We’ve got a real problem in our school district, because that policy directs the administration to implement equity and antiracism. Any effort to right the ship will be hobbled until that policy can be made to disappear.
Basically, they’ve won. And all without using the words “Critical Race Theory”.
Now can a populist backlash sweep them out?
Should be: “Not a word on critical race theory.” above in the middle of the 2nd paragraph. (I wrote “antiracism” in that sentence.)
The media allies of the CRT and BLM tribalism proponents are panicked because they know they have over reached. They went too far too fast with a d/progressive wishlist of policy items and with CRT are directly impacting children.
Most people will go a fair distance to avoid a confrontation. Until their children are directly impacted. Now they have CRT as the wedge that opens up the window into the rest of the agenda.
They have made a critical error here. CRT will be the point from which all the other d/progressive policy items are framed. Not only will opposition to CRT intensify but as some folks wake up and take another look at what the d/progressive agenda and Biden administration is actually doing v what they campaigned on, the rest of the agenda is imperiled as well.
That is the reason AOC was panicked into denouncing blue State SEN other than Manchin last week for their failure to fully embrace the agenda of the far left.
The d/progressive are trying to ram through everything they can before they lose the HoR in 2022. The mounting opposition to their agenda is causing fractures in the d coalition while MAGA voters remain united.
Raise awareness at the local level. Volunteer and take training as a poll watcher or election official. Organise people to attend County commission, City Council and school board meetings. Make the people serving aware that the public is watching them, aware of their acts or failures to act and will be organized and present to vote.
CommoChief , rather optimistic fellow, ain’t you? I prefer the conservative echo chamber myself (Ben Shapiro, Mike Huckabee, Liz Wheeler, Mark Dice..) but I fear most Americans have never heard of these noble patriots and suckle from the teats of CNN and ilk.
Otherwise, I pray that I’m wrong and that you are correct about the level of pushback.
Actually I am cynical by nature. Though I do try to adopt a ‘glass half full or silver lining’ perspective.
IMO, local advocacy among friend, family, neighbors, co-workers and other members of the community is vastly more important than anyone on TV, radio or internet.
In marketing terms those are ‘prestige referrals’. They are valuable because they come from someone you know and trust v some jabroni on TV.
As more folks wake up to CRT and it’s impact on the children of a community they realize that this is an immediate problem. A problem that they as taxpayers and voters have the ability to confront independently of a Federal or State politician.
They don’t need some Congressional committee or National or State body or advocacy group to push back. They can do it themselves, right there in the local school district.
Obviously a set of best practices taken from prior successful actions that are distributed nationwide as a reference and working with like minded people across district lines to create and build political momentum helps.
Based on the widespread number of actions being undertaken to push back against CRT the fire has been lit. Now we just need to keep the flame burning and pass the torch from district to district until CRT is burned away.
If the left can get their wishlist into policy and law, they can happily let the backlash come, secure in knowing that it would be damned hard to undo those policy steps. I don’t even think they overreached. They’ll take as much as they can.
They lost the last election overwhelmingly, and suffered little punishment for their overreach between 2016-2020. Nobody on their side got locked up, while DC protesters who did little to nothing sit and rot in solitary confinement and are getting health issues apparently. They didn’t have to play nice then, and they have even less reason to do so now.
Their goal is to F you up. Plain and simple.
So far the Senate isn’t moving the game changing legislation like HR1 ECT. Manchin has stated I don’t know how many times very publicly that he opposes and will not vote to end the filibuster.
Additionally the Senate Parliamentarian has now stated that use of reconciliation can only be used once and it has been. That means 60 votes required for bizarre wishlist legislation.
I don’t disagree with you that AOC and the squad would prefer to disenfranchise everyone who voter for DJT and put every MAGA voter into a reeducation camp to undergo some Maoist reprogramming.
They don’t have the votes nor the stones to actually implement it. Even if they did I don’t believe most folks are going to voluntarily comply with that program. I certainly wouldn’t.
Bottom line is the d/progressive rode a perfect storm in 2020. Those conditions were a one off. They ain’t going to be replicated.
As it stands today they will lose the HoR. The question is by how many seats. On the current path and including no DJT on the midterm ballot to vote against the Senate isn’t out of reach.
The Senate races are a tough hand to play given the number of r seats to defend but far from impossible. Not likely but if this trends to a wave election? Just maybe doable.
Update – Manchin was outed on a leaked phone conference basically admitting he is playing both sides. Not that we didn’t already know that. His commitment to retaining the legislative filibuster may more shaky than previously thought.
SEN Sinema has also said she isn’t in favor of ending it either. I suspect that she and a few other d Senators were happy to let Manchin take the heat while they could avoid making their opposition more public.
In any event it’s really only critical this session in the short term. No way the d want to blow up the filibuster in an election year and they will lose the HoR in 2022. IMO, they won’t get the votes to end it. Senate control does change hands and it would be useful to have a lever against a r President with a r HoR in the future.
“They went too far”
They went too far with Zimmernan, and a long list of others. It was predictable that blacks would be emboldened, and they have been. This should have been nipped in the bud, since it wasn’t, setting things straight, will probably pretty hard on those who riot, loot, burn, assault and otherwise break laws.
Not any looting where I live. Could be widespread firearm ownership. Could be there really isn’t any reason for it here. Nothing much to protest. Rural County, no private schools. Integration completed in 1970. All the ‘old south’ BS is in the past on all sides.
Everyone’s kids from the ditch digger to the County Judge attend the same schools, play sports, extracurricular activities together. Which means everyone is equally invested in making sure those schools are as good as possible. No CRT here.
About the most excitement for Police and Sheriff comes from busting underage drinking. Some crime, domestic, drugs, DUI, burglary, assault. Very seldom a homicide of any kind.
Everyone gets along because we made a concerted effort to do so 50 years ago and maintained that commitment. We didn’t setup private academies. Middle-class folks from all walks were welcomed into neighborhoods, at least eventually.
In some Northern States and cities a true effort wasn’t made and the strife and division we see today in those areas is easy to manufacture because of the half measures taken there. IMO.
Remember: it was crazy white girls who did most of the rioting.
Sexually frustrated, tattooed, angry, barren crazy white girls.
In a quick search I discovered dozens of lesson plans for elementary, middle and high school teachers on how to teach about white privilege, racial equity and social justice. I skimmed about 10 of these and all were framed to lead children to believe white privilege is real and oppressor/oppressed groups fall along specific racial lines. These concepts were not being presented as ideas or ways to interpret culture, but as facts. Most of the lessons ended with action assignments on how to “make a difference” and “get involved” in your community.
The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) offers an extremely detailed lesson plan utilizing and referencing left-leaning resources. It even includes a “Privilege Aptitude Test” for kids to take during the lesson. Not one of these lesson plans, including this one, mentioned CRT in any form.
I have no idea if any teacher in my state or yours has ever downloaded and used the NASP lesson plan or any of the other ones I sampled, but the fact that most of them have been offered as resources for several years (NASP’s plan was published in 2016, for example) would suggest that indeed, there is a “market” for them and some teachers somewhere have employed them in their classrooms. The issue is not that teachers are explicitly teaching CRT as a theory, but instead, that when they teach about social justice issues they are teaching CRT core tenets as if they were facts.
I like how Media Matters and others in the press attempt to define Critical Race Theory: “Critical race theory, to those who can actually define it, is an academic and legal framework that examines the impact of systemic racism on American society.”
But Critical Race Theory is not just “an examination.” The writings in CRT actually draw conclusions to their examination.
The first is that White Supremacy exists and is maintained within our society using the structure of our laws. And second, racial emancipation can only be achieved through a radical transformation between the law and racial power.
Beyond that, proponents of Critical Race Theory base their arguments in “critical theory”, a philosophical movement first started in the Frankfurt School of philosophers–a school of thought dedicated to promoting Marxism by examining the failures of Marx’s original notion that the proletariat would pick up the Marxist banner to overthrow the bourgeoisie. (Marx predicted the workers of the world would unite–and when they didn’t, the Frankfurt School of thinkers dedicated themselves into trying to understand why this was. Mostly their commentary on human nature is pretty miserable–more or less boiling down to “people are stupid, we need to make them better.”)
Critical theory attempts to assess society by examining the societal and cultural power structures that exist within a society–and argues that societal problems exist due to societal structures (that is, societal groups and group affiliation in cultural or societal groups–such as “white people” and “black people” and “latinos” and the like) and the power imbalances between those groups.
And critical theory is heavily influenced by post-modernism, where the “modernism” we’re supposedly “post-” is the “modernism” of Enlightenment rationality. That is, post-modernists who are part of the Critical Theory movement (and Critical Race Theory, which applies CT to race) are “post-rational.”
Part of that movement, by the way, presupposes that “Truth” (such as the truth of 2+2=4) is societally constructed–and based on perception rather than an underlying world of facts. That, by the way, is where we get this popular meme that “2+2=5”–though those proponents of this meme forget that the idea “2+2=5” was first floated by a supporter of Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring: “If the Führer wants it, two and two makes five!”
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So “Critical Race Theory” is not just some benign examination of racism in our society.
It’s heavily influenced by the Marxist Frankfurt School, based on Critical Theory (of which Gramsci of the “long march through the institutions” fame was a proponent), which itself is a critical examination of social groups (which implicitly rejects individualism) and their ‘power structures’, which itself is based on the post-modern rejection of Truth as a literal underlying (though perhaps not perfectly perceivable) foundation of reality.
And it is this rejection of reality on which Media Matters wants to hang its hat.
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Now it is not to say that the entirety of all of this should just be rejected out of hand. There are some things that are worth examining.
Like road kill.
But you don’t want to make road kill the center focus of our educational system.