There are some folks out there who don't believe that Critical Race Theory exists.  (This despite the fact that many organizations have unapologetically come forward admitting that it does.)  Others believe it's just "teaching our history."  (This despite the fact that we've been "teaching our history," more or less, warts and all, at least since I was in first grade, 36 years ago.)  But I get it.  It's a subjective term and hard to define.  So let's get rid of the hard-to-define terms and go with some hard, factual examples.

This particular example doesn't come from the education sphere, but it does show how race (which, as a reminder, is a made-up construct — we all belong to only one race: the human race) has been "weaponized."  And when everything is racist, nothing is racist.

It involves two "minorities" (again, I don't even know what that particular term really means, but it's what the left would like us to focus on, so I'll play the left's game for the purposes of this example and point it out), Lorena Gonzales, a Hispanic woman, and Bruce Harrell, a half-black, half-Japanese man.

The two are running for mayor of Seattle.  Harrell said something a number of years ago when the gay white mayor at the time was accused by numerous men of child sexual molestation.  (I don't care how much pigment is in your skin or whom you're attracted to, but since this is all about identity politics and that man was elected largely because he was the "gay candidate," I figure I'll include it in the narrative.)

Before all the facts had come to light and that mayor had resigned in disgrace after it was clear the allegations weren't just "a homophobic attack trying to paint all gay men as child sex abusers," Harrell came to his defense by speaking the unspeakable — namely, pointing out that we should, gasp, follow due process and not jump to any conclusions.

Because of Harrell's unspeakable comment, Gonzalez has launched a campaign ad using those and other things he's said out of context as well as having some other people insinuate that he is a "rape apologist."

Dirty politics is nothing new.  What is fairly new is immediately defaulting to "YOU'RE A RACIST!!!"  In this case, according to those deemed worthy to judge these things, Gonzalez is a racist because, apparently, there's some racist trope about black men being rapists, and Harrell is apparently black.  (Not that I've ever given it any thought, but when I saw this article and was forced to think about his race, because I've known of Harrell for a number of years, my immediate thought was, "Isn't he Japanese?")  It can't be that Gonzalez is just playing dirty politics that has nothing to do with Harrell's skin color — although it is good to know where black/Japanese men rank compared to Hispanic women the next time I'm playing "intersectionality bingo."

To bring this back to the beginning, CRT views all of history and socio-political relations through the lens of race.  As I heard one proponent of CRT quip, "racism in America is like a pie; it's baked right in."

If someone cuts you off in traffic and you happen to be black, he's a racist.  If you don't get a job, it's because the company is racist.  The disproportionate number of black people in prison can only be attributed to racism.  There can't possibly be another explanation.  It can't be that the person who cut you off is a bad driver or rushing home because his wife just went into labor.  It can't be that the other person was just more qualified, did a better job at interviewing, or provided better references.  It can't be that over 90% of prison inmates grew up without a father.

If your opponent attacks you in an admittedly dirty way, it can't be that she's just doing what politicians have been doing since the dawn of time and just trying to get a shot in any way she can.  It has to be that she's racist.

It's gotten so bad that it's almost comical.  The L.A. Times ran a column calling Larry Elder "the black face of white supremacy."  "#UncleTim" trended on Twitter after Senator Tim Scott gave the response to the State of the Union address.  Joe Biden told voters "you ain't black" if you won't vote for him.

Examples like this make it clear that this has zero to do with race and everything to do with pushing a statist agenda.  Those who get in line are everything that is good and holy in the world.  Those who don't are racist.

We get what we focus on.  If we want to be divided by race and all the other fun little boxes those who seek to control us are trying to put us in, we'll get those boxes and that division.  Or we could follow the words of Morgan Freeman and just stop talking about it.  There used to be rampant discrimination against Italians, Irish, and Catholics.  Joe Biden's Catholicism was barely mentioned during the 2020 election.

If we don't seek to stop division, it will never be stopped.  Let's say we "solve racism."  People will just find another reason to divide themselves.  (Read "The Butter Battle Book" by Dr. Seuss, which was an allegory for the then-raging Cold War but involved two groups at war over something as silly as whether they ate their toast butter side up or butter side down.  Considering some of the silly things we see fights break out over, I'm not sure that would qualify as satire anymore.)

So the next time someone says something you perceive as mean or unfair, or cuts you off in traffic, or you lose out on a job or a table at a restaurant to someone else who happens to be of a different ethnicity, religion, sex, etc., you can throw yourself a pity party; call up the ACLU, NAACP, and whatever other acronym you can think of; and sue everyone in sight over the great tragedy — or you can think, "Hmm, that person must be having a bad day, or maybe he just has different opinions from mine, and it doesn't have a thing to do with the color of his skin or any other superficial difference that exists, and maybe I should see what I can do to bless him or what common ground we can find."

Image: stevepb via Pixabay, Pixabay license.

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