David R. Hoffmann
David R. Hoffman is a retired civil rights and constitutional attorney in the South Bend, Indiana area.
One of the most important bugbears in the right-wing political war against education is critical race theory.
It came as no surprise when one of Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ first acts was to ban it in K-12 grades, when the Florida Department of Education said AP African-American studies “lack educational value.” or when Dr. Suess’s reading of “The Sneetches” was interrupted by an official at Shale Meadows Elementary School of the local Olentangy school district.
Critical race theory is also one of the biggest hoaxes in the right-wing political war on education, because, in truth, many of those who argue against it have little or no interest in protecting children from “hardship.”
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It is time (indeed time past) for people to realize that the artificially fabricated anti-critical racial theory hysteria is more than just a scam by right-wing politicians, pundits and organizations soliciting votes, ratings and funding by appealing to supremacy white .
There are actually two main motivations behind it.
- The first is to define critical race theory so nebulously that any classroom discussion of race, no matter how educational or innocuous, can be readily silenced by labeling it critical race theory.
- The second is to use critical race theory to sow distrust and decrease enrollment in public education, because many of the individuals and organizations currently campaigning against critical race theory hope to financially profit from private “charter” schools. ” who intend to open and manage .
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The other bogeyman
Of course, the powers that be behind the anti-critical race theory movement won’t publicize their true motivations, and instead rely on another bogeyman, Marxism, to stigmatize critical race theory.
But it must be remembered that it was not Marxists who instituted slavery in America; it was not Marxists who made Dred Scott’s infamous decision that would have allowed slavery to proliferate in every state; it was not the Marxists who passed the “Jim Crow” segregation laws; and it was not the Marxists who, in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, proclaimed that the “separate but equal” doctrine did not violate the United States Constitution.
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Have Marxists attempted to exploit the outrage created by the lingering impact of these actions?
Yup.
But is there a political movement, extremist or mainstream, that doesn’t exploit situations and events to suit its own ends? Indeed, aren’t many politicians today, like Huckabee Sanders, DeSantis, and others of their kind, exploiting the anti-critical hysteria of racial theory to catapult themselves into public office?
During the Jim Crow era, American Marxists often advocated racial integration; thus, one might think they were overjoyed when the US Supreme Court finally struck down the “separate but equal” doctrine in Brown v. 1954 Topeka.
But actually the opposite was true.
Marxist support for racial integration was based primarily on the belief that it would never be achieved within the structure of American government, thus leaving revolution as the only option for change. The Brown decision, however, showed that if a system is capable of change, then there is no need to change the system.
It is important to remember these lessons from history.
Marxism, like other extremist ideologies on both the left and right, thrives on outrage and this outrage is routinely found in people whose histories, cultures, voices, social contributions, and indeed their own lives are ignored, devalued and overlooked. by those who are part of it. power.
David R. Hoffman is a retired civil rights and constitutional attorney in the South Bend, Indiana area.
