You can always count on Teen Vogue to publish some of the most absurdly ridiculous material on the interwebs. Indeed, that particular publication might be quite entertaining, if it didn’t reach the minds of millions of America’s young women.
But in this particular episode of “How Woke Can You Go,” the outlet published a rather interesting piece by Janel George, who is an Associate Professor of Law and the founding Director of the Racial Equity in Education Law and Policy (REELP) Clinic at Georgetown University because of course she is. In her piece, George does the typical progressive schtick of exploiting black trauma and history to unfairly smear those who disagree with her politics.
The author compared those opposing the teaching of elements of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in America’s classrooms to those pushing back against efforts to desegregate schools during the Civil Rights movement. That’s right folks, this lady thinks parents concerned about destructive teachings in K-12 schools are just like the racist mobs who sought to prevent black kids from attending white schools in the 1960s. George writes:
As of November, 28 states have introduced bills or taken other steps to restrict how teachers can discuss racism or sexism, according to an analysis by Education Week. This response appears to be a backlash to the international outcry over systemic racism ignited by the murder of George Floyd and of President Joe Biden’s efforts to promote racial equity.
After you’re done laughing at the idea that President Biden is promoting “racial equity,” we can proceed to the next point George attempts to make. She writes:
The U.S. has experienced this kind of reactionary pushback before. In fact, it closely mirrors the virulent response from white Southern lawmakers and parents who were opposed to school integration in the 1950s and 1960s. Decades after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that separate could not be equal, educators trying to teach students about this history are being silenced.
The author then notes that lawmakers attempting to use legislation to stop the teaching of wokeist ideas to schoolchildren are concerned that CRT “teaches white children to think of themselves as oppressors and that America is an inherently racist country. She also points out that “CRT is an academic framework that is generally not taught in K-12 schools,” and that the theory “does not teach that individuals are inherently racist or that one race is superior.
George is right on the first point; teachers are not going in front of students and asking them to open up their Critical Race Theory books to study the works of Derrick Bell and Mari Matsuda. However, this point is disingenuous because much of what is being used to indoctrinate students stems from the material taught by adherents of the theory.
The notion that CRT doesn’t teach that individuals, specifically white people, are inherently racist is debatable. Many stories have emerged in which educators and administrators label white students as “oppressors” and black students as “oppressed.” Also, people who promote CRT, also called “crits,” regularly engage in anti-white rhetoric. An example of this is the concept of “whiteness,” which they use to describe how whites are the dominant culture, meaning they tend to use their position to oppress minorities.
George went on to recount how some individuals fought tooth and nail to stop the desegregation effort. She wrote:
In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Brown v. Board of Education that school districts could no longer segregate children into Black schools or white schools. Southern members of Congress disagreed with the Court and signed a document called the Southern Manifesto agreeing to exhaust all “lawful means” to oppose desegregation.
These congress members started an era referred to as “Massive Resistance,” in which these officials passed laws designed to make it harder to integrate schools. The author then argued that “[a] direct line can be drawn from Massive Resistance to the current anti-CRT efforts.”
George states that the “opposition to CRT represents a backlash to the 2020 racial reckoning and the presidential election,” and points out that this is also when Republicans began passing new election integrity laws. She also points out that in these anti-CRT laws, legislators are using “civil rights language” because they seek to outlaw “any teaching that one race is superior to another.”
George intimates that this language is used to hide a more nefarious plan: keeping students from “learning about racial inequality.” She then uses a quote from author and activist James Baldwin, who said:
“What is upsetting the country is a sense of its own identity. If, for example, one managed to change the curriculum in all the schools so that [Black students] learned more about themselves and their real contributions to this culture, you would be liberating not only [Black people], you’d be liberating white people who know nothing about their own history.”
I found George’s use of this tweet to be rather adorable, coming from someone who supports Critical Race Theory. The theory, like other forms of woke theology, shies away from any mention of the accomplishments of black Americans past and present. They eschew discussions about black people’s contributions to the country because they tend to fly in the face of the “black folks can’t overcome oppression” narrative.
The notion that a critical race theorist would focus on black people’s “contributions to this culture” is laughable and further reveals how disingenuous this entire article is. The bottom line is that those fighting to include the tenets of Critical Race Theory in public schools are nothing like actual civil rights activists fighting against segregation. They are not fighting just to have accurate history taught – they seek to push curriculum designed to indoctrinate rather than educate.
George’s deceptive arguments might work on those who already want to believe them. But her ilk has failed miserably when it comes to persuading American parents to embrace wokeism in the classroom. With arguments like these, it can’t be a surprise, can it?
