Monday, February 1, 2021

CRT Is Sacrosanct and May Not Be Questioned

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/01/crt-is-sacrosanct-and-may-not-be-questioned.php?


CRT Is Sacrosanct and May Not Be Questioned



Critical Race Theory is a poisonous, racist, anti-American set of doctrines, but we are all supposed to pretend we don’t understand that. Criticism of CRT is forbidden, or will be if the Left gets its way.

Take the case of Georgia, where a state representative has questions about the institutions that his constituents support with their taxes:

A Georgia lawmaker is trying to find out whether any of the state’s public universities are teaching about white privilege or oppression, part of a larger national debate over how colleges should teach about American history and race relations.

University System of Georgia Chancellor Steve Wrigley asked the system’s 26 colleges and universities on Jan. 21 to research the information after state Rep. Emory Dunahoo, a Gillsville Republican, submitted questions on the topic to Wrigley following budget hearings.

Some faculty members are bristling at the questions, saying they intrude into a professor’s academic freedom and are part of an effort by Republicans to impose their vision of history and social relations. Conservatives, though, say they’re fighting left-wing indoctrination by professors.

State legislatures have oversight responsibility over public institutions, but any time they try to exercise that responsibility, it is considered dirty pool. Representative Dunahoo’s questions are entirely reasonable:

1) Are any classes within the Georgia public school system or the University System of Georgia teaching students that possessing certain characteristics inherently designates them as either being “privileged” or “oppressed?”

2) Are any classes within the Georgia public school system or the University System of Georgia teaching students what constitutes “privilege” and “oppression?”

3) Are any classes within the Georgia public school system or the University System of Georgia teaching students who identify as white, male, heterosexual or Christian are intrinsically privileged and oppressive, which is defined as “malicious or unjust” and “wrong?”

Inquiring minds want to know! Specifically, Dunahoo says, his constituents.

“The request is an attack on higher education,” [English professor Matthew] Boedy said. “It perpetrates a pernicious agenda. I don’t know why a state representative who won his district by 40 points needs to throw red meat to his base, but this echoes national conservative discourse that has been laughed from the public square by historians and other experts.”

So I take it the answers to the representative’s questions are Yes, Yes and Yes. Actually, it is Critical Race Theory that deserves to be laughed out of the public square. Or, better, ridden out on a rail.


Liberals are free to be racist and anti-American, but it is hard to understand why taxpayers should be expected to support such evils. Certainly if Georgia’s university system were teaching that the Earth is flat, that the South won the Civil War, or that the Holocaust is a myth, no one would suggest that legislators’ interest is misplaced. But the Left fights tenaciously to protect its most important doctrines from scrutiny.