America has come a long way from my childhood on the issue of race. I remember living in Florida as a boy and discovering separate drinking fountains at Woolworth’s: “white” and “colored.” Blacks were forbidden to drink out of the white fountain. That would be unthinkable today. Or would it? With the ascendency of critical race theory, we may be seeing separate drinking fountains again—only this time whites will be prohibited from using the black fountain. Under CRT, it is open season on whites. Whites are considered unrepentantly racist and should be required to atone for their sins. One of the worst ideas ever invented by the Left, CRT wants to reintroduce racism and segregation to the forefront of American life.
Central to CRT is the idea that racism is much more than individual prejudice and bigotry, it is a systemic feature of our social structure. CRT argues that the US is inherently racist, that minorities and women are oppressed by whites and especially by white men, and that white people achieve their economic and political objectives at the expense of people of color. The Left, says author Ben Shapiro, wants to portray America as “an incurable mass of bigoted whites.”
“Critical Race Theory,” said Greg Gutfeld on Fox, “undermines the positive core beliefs of America by redefining the nation as an engine of oppression.” The oppressors are white and the victims are black. “Progressives,” says David Horowitz in Big Agenda, are using the politically correct term “people of color” to “further isolate the white European American majority as an oppressor of everyone else. It is the old Marxist wine in new bottles,” Horowitz says, “and the results are bound to be similar.”
Critical race theory is unapologetically anti-white. According to CRT, if your skin is white you are automatically guilty of racism simply by virtue of your skin color. In judging people based on the color of their skin, instead of the quality of their character or the fruits of their labor, CRT is destroying the legacy of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement. The result is an inquisition against white people. Under the guise of ending oppression of minority groups and women, the Democratic Party wants to remake whites into the new underclass. An example of the inquisition is provided courtesy of the City of Seattle, which has inaugurated a segregated training session for white city employees to train them to “undo their whiteness” and affirm their “complicity in racism.” Can you imagine if Seattle required all black employees to undo their blackness?
“Today, to be white is to be evil,” writes Robert Spencer in PJMedia. “Being white carries so much of a social stigma that it results in job discrimination and more.” CRT and the allied notion of “equity” seek to abolish the important American value known as meritocracy. Because women and minorities have been oppressed, CRT argues that giving them preference is justified. We are beginning to see hiring quotas based on race and gender. Such quotas violate basic notions of fairness and meritocracy. You cannot say in the same breath that giving preference to white males is racist and sexist but giving preference to women and minorities is not. It has to work both ways.
Tucker Carlson on Fox reports that students in schools across the country are being coerced to confess that they are flawed if they happen to be white. Bank Street School, an elite private school in Manhattan, is a good example. As reported in The New York Post, Bank Street School is teaching white students as young as six years old that “they’re born racist and should feel guilty about benefiting from white privilege,” while their black peers are “taught to feel proud about their race and are rewarded with treats and other privileges.” White parents have complained about how their children are taught to think that systemic racism still exists, that they are part of the problem, and that “any success they achieve is unearned.” Parents are upset that the school “deliberately instills in white children a strong sense of guilt about their race.” A six-year-old came home in tears, saying, “I’m a bad person.”
“[CRT is] a racist ideology that’s being pushed in our schools,” said Center for Christian Virtue Director Aaron Baer. “There’s a massive leap between CRT and respecting and celebrating diversity. If you’re not teaching slavery in your American history classes, you are not a good teacher,” Baer said. “But you’re also a bad teacher if you say a student’s skin color means they are forever oppressors and irredeemable. That is at the core of CRT.”
CRT is also used to justify murder, arson, and looting. Hundreds of American cities and towns were destroyed in 2020 by Black Lives Matter mobs in the name of social justice. Heather Mac Donald, author of The War on Cops, explains how it works. “One’s alleged victimhood at the hands of a racist white male patriarchy entitles one to exemption from the rule of law and norms of bourgeois behavior,” Mac Donald said. “Enough people are seduced and mesmerized and frankly lobotomized by the lies of identity politics and the idea that this is a racist country—which it is not—that they are willing to put up with the destruction of prosperity, of excellence, of future entrepreneurship.”
CRT has been repudiated by respected black figures such as Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Bob Woodson, and Larry Elder. They are unanimous in their agreement that systemic racism and the oppression of blacks is a thing of the past. “Blacks are now the victims of liberalism and wokeism,” said black author Shelby Steele. “That’s what’s keeping us down, not racism. ‘Systemic racism’ is an idea to capture more black victimization.” Rather than exhibiting systemic racism, white Americans have bent over backwards to make life better for blacks. “America is not a racist country,” said black political activist Candace Owens. “Anyone claiming otherwise has a vested interest in keeping us divided. The easiest way to maintain power over any group is to keep those within it at war with one another.”
We are beginning to see pushback against CRT. A notable example is a bill introduced in Ohio to ban CRT in public schools. The bill prohibits teaching that meritocracy is racist or sexist, or that “an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual’s race or sex.” In spite of the backlash, the Biden administration is mandating CRT in government agencies and the military. Trump banned it, but Biden brought it back. Thanks a lot.
“The government should treat all people the same—it should not make exemptions,” said Heather Mac Donald. “We need to say that disparities in this country are not driven by racism, they’re not driven by sexism, they’re driven by bad behavioral choices. The breakdown of the family. Bad cultural influences. Those need to be taken head-on. Talking about racism and sexism—what we’re going to get ad nauseam from the Harris/Biden agenda—is going to bring this country to its knees.”
The demand of CRT and Black Lives Matter that Caucasians must apologize for their skin color is racist and abhorrent. It is time to declare that white people are the objects of racism. Someone should explain to the adherents of critical race theory that white is a color too.
Ed Brodow is a conservative political commentator, negotiation expert, and author of eight books including Tyranny of the Minority: How the Left is Destroying America. He is a former US Marine officer, Fortune 500 sales executive, and Hollywood movie actor.
