Critical Race Theory (CRT) is the ultimate in explicit racism:  It has race at the very center of its name, and at the core of its curriculum.  Its corrupting influence on education, government, our military, and organizational principles of all kinds, public and private, is becoming pervasive.

CRT threatens to turn our country into something so corrupt that it becomes a grotesque caricature of its founding principles, purposes, and standing as the greatest country in the history of humanity and the world.  There is a simple way to prevent this.

Here, I must note that “simple” is not the same as “easy.”  It is a simple thing to quit smoking; you simply don’t put the next cigarette in your mouth -- forever.  However, it’s not easy:  You have to beat the nicotine addiction and the social habit.

Likewise, quitting CRT is simple but not easy.  But let’s start with a primary point:  Most of us are not what we are forced to identify as.  In my case, I am not White.  Nor are people such as me White.  As regards “people of color,” more and more are rejecting CRT, and they are going on record in television interviews, school board meetings, university showdowns, and more.  Many non-Whites (for lack of a better term) are rejecting racism, that is, the segregating of people based on skin color; the assignment of beliefs, behaviors, and various levels of “privilege” -- or complete lack -- based on skin color. It is heartening that people of all stripes are, increasingly, rejecting CRT.

I am forced to check a box, “White,” on many government forms, and am perceived to be merely “White” by many others in the conduct of general life.  Yet, if I hold typing paper next to my face I am clearly not white in color.  For that matter, most people forced to identify as “Black” (or who self-identify that way, willingly or no) are not actually black.  They are brown.  So, what are we identifying as?  Rather than guess at government’s or society’s motivations, I prefer my own rational understandings.  (Note:  Medicine, policing, and disciplines that have necessary needs for these identifications get a pass here.  There are reasons to know a person’s medical history, including ethno-racial-geographical concerns and inherited ethno-etiologies.  In policing, it’s imperative to use every identifier possible when seeking suspects).

So, for socialization, education, etc... what am I?  Who am I?

I am Scottish, Irish, Slovak.  Referring to me as “White” shows complete disrespect for my ethnicities and ancestors.  Further, lumping people together as merely “Black,” “Hispanic,” “Indian,” “Native American,” “Asian-American,” etc., does the same thing.  There are many distinctions to accommodate if we’re to mount true respect.

In terms of ethno-identification(s) -- that is, my race, my people, my background history and culture -- what do I have in common with a French-American?... a German-American?... an Italian-American?... a Belgian-American?... etc. -- as well as any combinations, all of whom may look “White” and be forced to identify as “White”?  

They look similar to me such that they are forced to check “White” boxes on/in various forms, media, training exercises, forums, and many straight-jacketing practices.  We may have many or few things in common.  But certainly, there are large differences and appreciations to be had.  Arguing otherwise is to dehumanize people.  This is what CRT does.

Lumping people into groups in order to pit groups against one another is wrong.  Assigning feelings of privilege, guilt, debts owed, against purported modern-day victims -- hopeful collectors on so-called debts -- diminishes everyone.

This theory and its propagation are wrong, but we’re intimidated against speaking out.  The “woke” snowball has been provided a downhill trajectory, with a favorable gravity, such that it is gaining size, mass and influence, even as it takes us to the bottom. 

What we’re doing to vulnerable children is abominable.  We’re injecting malleable minds with the theory’s components that simply cannot present themselves to kids in any natural sense.  Watch kids play from two, three, four years of age.  And as those integrated kids grow and mature, they continue to work in harmony, play in harmony, create in harmony, and produce useful things in harmony -- so long as “woke” and overly-politicized adults steer clear and concentrate on teaching and counseling regarding practical things.  In these “woke” circumstances, we’re limiting the school day -- bending it from critical Readin’, ‘Ritin’, and ‘Rithmetic that needs to be occurring, and occurring according to standards of empiricals, excellence, and accountabilities. 

Schedules eaten up by measures of CRT are a tragic impact on students’ attention in two regards.  1) It removes time for things legitimate, and 2) The resultant space in these minds is injected with garbage.  All so students, K-to-University, can become whiners and criers, pointing outside themselves with expanding imagination and efficiency for things owed them absent better efforts and merit. 

This theory teaches denigration of country, society, and allied ideals -- to hate the aforementioned with virulency.  Spreading this hate is required.  For, if you are not a booster of CRT you are an enemy.  You must be attacked and removed.  CRT adherents have us indoctrinating and building people from their earliest school days, when individuals’ minds are at their most impressionable, in creating an ever-larger number of minds that are incapable of thinking independently:  A fish doesn’t know it’s wet; CRT’s goal is an environment that is so dominant that people haven’t a clue regarding “the swim they’re in.”  America is racist, sexist, and mounted atop “White Privilege.” 

Rather, from her founding moments, America has been the land of freedom and opportunity.  America is not responsible for her offices being occupied by people who fell short of her ideals, as enshrined and codified in our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, our Declaration of Independence, and other documents.  Those are America.  People are human, often fallible and corrupt.  Politicians, appointees, officeholders, and the general citizenry who oppressed others in diametric opposition to America’s ideals and codes are responsible for past racism, sexism, injustices, and suppressions -- not America.   America is not a land of systemic racism but rather a country of systemic opportunity.  This is why people storm our border and hang onto the wheel-wells of airplanes in hopes of getting here… and staying here. 

We need to crush CRT. Now.

David Scott Strain is a retired I.T. executive and the author of The Grim Grind of Life:  A PI’s strange bounces through a surfeit of eateries, juke joints, and dark doorways.

Image: Pixabay

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