Media
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Here is Christopher Rufo’s tweet:
We have successfully frozen their brand – ‘critical race theory’ – into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.
The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’ We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.
Really think about what he is publicly admitting in that tweet. He is essentially explaining to all of us that his grand plan is to weaponize the phrase “critical race theory” to the point that it becomes an all-encompassing catch phrase for anything having to do with race and culture that he doesn’t like. This effectively makes the concept of CRT a giant blank screen that anyone can project anything they want onto, regardless of how untrue, inflammatory, or damaging it may be.
We've got to hand it to these guys, they have absolutely no problem saying the quiet part out loud.
This is happening in real time. Since these guys have been using CRT as a grenade in their fabricated culture war, practically every racial complexity in this country, however innocuous, has been pulled into the vortex of the CRT tornado, creating a distorted narrative that is quickly spinning out of control.
So far, at least 20 Republican-led state legislatures have banned the teaching of “critical race theory” – as defined by them – in schools, and many others are trying hard to do the same. In fact, there has been no ban attempted in only seven states.
To reiterate – because we know the snipers will try everything under the sun to distort our words – we're not advocating for “critical race theory” to be taught in public schools. We are warning about the broad way it is being defined.
The rules and definitions of “critical race theory” vary from state to state, but most reflect the sentiment of the member of Utah’s state school board who declared that phrases like systemic racism, social justice, restorative justice, white privilege, conscious/unconscious bias, and even the word diversity are just “euphamisms” (ironically, she misspelled the word) for “critical race theory.”
Let’s illustrate this by using an example from your new favorite author…our Chairman Emily Mathews! Some of Emily's writing focuses on social justice issues. And, no, Utah school board lady who can’t spell, we're not using the term “social justice” as a euphemism for critical race theory. We're using the term based on its official definitions: 1) the fair treatment and equitable status of all individuals and social groups within a state or society, and 2) referring to social, political, and economic institutions, laws, or policies that collectively afford such fairness and equity. Now, that doesn’t sound so scary, does it?
Here's what she has said about redlining:
Beginning in the 1930s, as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) created loan programs that lowered down payment requirements and extended the term of home loans from 5 to 30 years – all to make home ownership accessible to more Americans.
That sounds like a nice thing to do! Well, not so fast. To help banks decide who should get loans, the government-run Home Owners’ Loan Corporation created a system for appraising neighborhoods, a practice now commonly referred to as 'redlining.' Essentially, the U.S. government created color-coded maps, assigning green for 'good' neighborhoods and red for 'bad' neighborhoods (literally drawing red lines around what they considered 'bad' neighborhoods, hence the name).
Pretty much across the board, neighborhoods considered to be 'black' were given the worst grade (D) and the classification of red, which deemed them 'hazardous' places to underwrite mortgages. The official explanation given for this was that 'colored infiltration' was 'a definite adverse influence on neighborhood desirability.'
Predictably, since people couldn’t get financing for homes in these neighborhoods, they declined quickly and substantially as businesses left, segregation and discrimination deepened, and predatory lending and slumlords thrived.
As a result, in large cities, black Americans were now confined almost exclusively to the 'inner city' – where housing developments were often the only housing option – and soon freeways bypassed them altogether. Black Americans in rural areas fared no better as they were now relegated to the 'wrong' side of town, or tracks as it were. The very (very) few black Americans who did obtain financing saw their property values plummet as most white Americans refused to buy in what was now firmly labeled 'black' neighborhoods.
She goes on to say:
Redlining was devastating for black Americans. Between 1934 and 1962, the federal government backed $120 billion worth of home loans. Over 98 percent of the loans went to white people. This is a mind-blowing number, but old-school redlining cut far deeper than black people just not getting to own a house ninety years ago. In truth, redlining was one of the very first bricks in the wall that makes it difficult for many black Americans to fully participate in American capitalism to this day.
Although we'd bet everything we have that Christopher, Sean, Tucker, Ted, and the 20 Republican-led state legislatures that have banned the teaching of “critical race theory” would disagree, this is not an example of critical race theory. Rather, it’s simple, straight up cause and effect.
Anyone in this country who is naïve (or willingly blind) enough to believe that there are zero instances of black people getting screwed by public policy over the years is out of their mind. From the jump, many U.S. policy decisions – made both intentionally and unintentionally – initiated and perpetuated pervasive division and inequality. They just did. This is not our opinion. It’s a well-documented fact.
Numbers don’t lie. All you have to do is read the astonishingly unequal statistics throughout this website to know inequities exist.
Please take special notice of this: When Emily wrote about the causes and effects of redlining, did she ever insinuate – as Sean Hannity accuses everyone who dares speak about racial issues of thinking – that “white people are collectively all guilty of racism from birth just because they’re white?” Did she ever suggest that “America is fundamentally and irredeemably racist” (Senator Ted Cruz)? Did she ever imply that “every white child and family today is invariably complicit” (Damon Linker)? Nope. Never. And she honestly don’t feel that way.
But, again, here’s the problem: We guarantee the snipers will try to bend her words to fit their “critical race theory” narrative as a way of minimizing the impact of what she is saying. As a result, many in their audiences will pre-judge her words and approach them with phrases like “civilization-ending poison,” “anti-American belief structure,” and “race hate” firmly burned into their brains.
That is the trap that the snipers have set.
… and they are relentless. The crazy part is that we can literally see Christopher Rufo’s tweet playing out right before our very eyes.
< Note: When you read the next few paragraphs, remember his words: “The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’ We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.” >
Sean Hannity on Fox News: “Now, let’s look at this critical race theory debate in the country. Now, this anti-American belief structure that is rooted in Marxism, it claims that white people are collectively all guilty of racism from birth just because they’re white.” Then, Sean expertly links “critical race theory” to Democrats: “Democrats want to teach this to every student in every school in America. They want them to learn this radical ideology from an early age.”
When he was still on Fox, Tucker Carlson – hot off pushing his white nationalist conspiracy theory about “replacement” politics (i.e., the idea that Democrats are plotting to replace the white American electorate with “more obedient voters from the third world”) – told his audience, “In schools they are teaching this. Race hate. The question is, and this is the question that we should be meditating on day in and day out, is how do we get out of this vortex, this cycle, before it’s too late? How do we save this country before we become Rwanda?”
Rwanda? Really? Well, that certainly escalated quickly. Just as a reminder, the Rwanda genocide took the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who were part of the country’s minority ethnic group.
This is also the genius who says “critical race theory” – as he defines it, of course – is “civilization-ending poison,” and we will never know how rampant these teachings are across our schools until “we finally get cameras in the classroom… to oversee the people teaching your children, forming their minds.”
Never one to be left out of the fun, Michael Savage at Newsmax chimed in: “Now they’re beating up white children in schoolrooms … attacks on white people is exactly what was done to the Jews in Germany in the ‘30s. Don’t fall for this garbage. This is the road to the death camps.” Ahhh… playing the beating up white children and Nazi cards. Of course. But really? “Death camps?” That’s where Michael Savage sees this going?
Others claimed, falsely, that the Black Lives Matter movement was founded solely on critical race theory and that every single violent act that took place during the 2020 protests after George Floyd’s death were fueled 100% by CRT.
All this begs the question: Why now? The concept of critical race theory has been around for over four decades. What’s with the timing? Why all the sudden – before, during and after one of the most heated presidential elections in modern history – was “critical race theory” being mentioned on Fox News A LOT?
< Sidebar: The Washington Post reported that the term “critical race theory” was mentioned just 132 times on Fox News in all of 2020. However, in the first six months of 2021, CRT was mentioned 1,860 times. On one Tuesday in June, “it was mentioned 48 times on shows across the network’s lineup.” >
What’s with the timing? Easy answer: At a time when randomly screaming Build that Wall, Stop the Steal, and Lock Her Up had become tiresome, the snipers needed a new divisive, manipulative topic to fuel their culture war. Basically, they need a new boogeyman.