A very troubling trend in recent years has been what I can only describe as an attack on white people, especially on our university campuses. I am not talking so much as physical attacks (which do often occur in our cities) as I am about the attack on "whiteness". I put that word in quotes because if it has always technically existed as a word, it has not been part of our everyday lexicon.
Until now.
The term whiteness essentially now means the entire white culture, the entire white identity, and, indeed, the entire white race, and it is used in a pejorative sense. I don't know who coined this new term, but I would bet the farm it was either a university professor or some activist whose term was picked up by a university professor and popularized. Suffice to say, the term has exploded on university campuses across the nation, and, as stated, in a pejorative way.
This is what a large part of Critical Race Theory is all about. This theory, which is also exploding on our campuses, teaches that America is an irredeemably racist country and that white people are inherently racist and privileged due to their "whiteness". It naturally follows that black and brown people are the downtrodden victims of white racism. Not just black and brown people, but "people of color", gay, lesbian, transgender, etc.
It may surprise you that many of the proponents of this theory of are white progressives, white university professors, and white activists in general.
Of course, the objective of all this is to make sweeping changes to America.
Not only is this nonsense sweeping higher education as taught by our ethnic studies and gender, gay studies departments, but it is also now creeping into the secondary schools. Some states have managed to pass laws to keep this poison out of their educational systems. As we speak, California is on the verge of passing legislation that would mandate the teaching of this in schools. Under the proposed California version, there is also the teaching of our kids that Jews are simply categorized as whites (privileged whites, don't you know). Not only that, California school kids will be taught about all the horrible things the Jewish state of Israel does to the poor, downtrodden Palestinians. Never mind that we are facing a true explosion of anti-Semitism and that Jewish students are facing rough times in school and university, they get no sympathy or support from Critical Race Theory beyond pointing out the Nazis and present-day white nationalists while ignoring Arab or Muslim anti-Semitism, not to mention anti-Semitism within some segments of the African-American community. Historically, Jews have gotten it from every direction, and that is still true today.
Under President Trump, the Department of Education tried to stop this toxic teaching, but under Biden, it will be given free rein.
So why is Critical Race Theory teaching bad if it condemns racism and teaches our kids that things like slavery and segregation, indeed, existed in our nation's history, the teaching of neither of which I object to? Here's why. At a time when our nation is bitterly divided and our race relations are deteriorating, Critical Race Theory will only exacerbate the problem. As I write, there is news out of Stanford University this week that an African-American candidate for the student government was writing on her social media last year that she was hoping for the "eradication of whites". How sad. How scary.
Critical Race Theory is divisive, not only between blacks and whites but also between whites and other minorities. In addition, the California model, at least, will further increase anti-Semitism in our schools, university campuses, and into our communities.
It is also wrong and inaccurate to teach that all white people are inherently privileged and racist. Since the Civil Rights era, we have had generations of white kids raised to believe that prejudice and racism are wrong. You literally have tens of millions of whites in this country who are supportive of equality and want to contribute to that ideal, but they are now being pushed away-especially on our college campuses, where white students are expected to be silent and listen to the voices of "students of color".
To be clear, I support the teaching of our children about slavery. I also support the teaching about President Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War that brought an end to slavery. I support the teaching of the history of segregation and Jim Crow. I also support the teaching of the Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King, and the Civil Rights Act. If you want to teach that America, once upon a time, was a racist country, I am on board with that because, in my view, it was a racist country-even during my childhood in the 1950s and 1960s.
But if you want to teach our kids that America is a racist country today, I am not on board because I don't believe America today is a racist country. (There is a difference between a racist country and a country with racial divisions.) If you want to teach about past systemic racism in the South, where discrimination and segregation once carried the force of state and local laws, I am fine with that because it was true. But America today is not systemically racist. Today, whites especially discriminate at their own legal risk. There are racists, sure, but they have no real power and represent only a fringe few.
In addition, it should be obvious at this point that every group has its bigots including minorities. As one who follows anti-Semitism closely, I am not convinced that it is KKK-types and white nationalists who account for the majority of anti-Semitic incidents in this country. And as one who taught at a major California university for 18 years, I refuse to believe that minorities are being discriminated against or treated badly by our universities. Quite the opposite is true. Today, there are two groups who are fair game on our university campuses.-Jews and whites in general.
What this essentially boils down to is that we have a growing number of leftist educators and activists who want to teach our non-white children that whites are their enemy and are trying to keep them down and keep them from achieving their goals and dreams in life. That is simply not true.
With the Democrats in control in Wahington, it is going to be up to the states to stop this toxic pedagogy from taking root.
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