Who does not look back on the great moral crises of our past and hope, had we been there, that our courage would have risen to meet the terrible moment? Who does not feel anguish at the almost universal silence which enabled the monsters of our shared history? Would we have just followed orders? Or would we have sheltered Anne Frank? Would we have crossed the Selma bridge? Would we have joined the Salt March? Would we have risked everything? Would we have risked anything?
We think: of course we would. Or at least that’s what we post on Facebook. And then we say a little prayer of thanks that our time is nothing like that. Except that once again it is like that. Paul Rossi has taken a stand for the children he teaches. It cannot help but make a difference for them. In fact it clearly already has. The bigger question is: will it make a difference for the rest of us, suddenly forced by his example into our own moral reckoning, and the awful recognition that for each of us our own time of choosing is here. History is back.
America has largely forgotten history. Most Americans believe in the myth of progress and have lost the tragic sense of life that the greatest generation had. Times have changed.
Unfortunately way too many Americans believe in the "myth of progress" but don't understand the real thing. Progress can be real and has been. I've seen it in my lifetime in all sorts of things, increasing tolerance, increasing prosperity all round, better medicine, etc. The irony is that now real progress is being destroyed by mythical progress.
This is old but I think the issue with “the myth of progress” isn’t that progress doesn’t happen (your examples show that it does) but that time is circular or more like a spiral, not linear, and it is difficult to tell where we are in that. Hopefully that makes sense.
It is time to organize. It i time to politely but firmly stand opposed to the continuous denigrate of Western Civilization with all of its imagined horrors. Are those horrors real? Of course, they are and writings concerning them have been available for anyone with eye to see. They have been available for well over 60 years. They are available because those criticisms are in the paradigm of Western Civilization and the Enlightenment. 1) The scientific method, 2) rationale thought, and 3) progress.
Having achieved three tremendous victories (Victory in Europe over Nazism, Victory Over Japan, and the dissolution of the Russian Empire), the West decided to further human vices such as greed. American Civilization in particular beginning with Ronald Reagan re-embraced the Economic Model of the Antebellum South. Devalue people, decrease investment in the future, decrease access to power, and create simple but seemingly "complex" schemes for wealth redistribution.
History is indeed back and though some might try to hide their complicity in the game perpetuated by the Failed Power Elite of this country but they will fail. People are wising up. The internet is an admittedly blunt and not infrequently a powerful source of misdirection. It is, however, a tremendous source of liberating information. The Power Elite's old games have worn thin. It is easy to keep the peasants fighting amongst themselves when they are uniformly uneducated and without power. It is much more difficult to control a literature population where even the most poorly educated can read and have access to a variety of sources of information.
I think maybe you mean it's time to engage in a purposeful dialogue on the issue(s) with CONVICTION and COURAGE. A definition of polite is "behavior that is respectful and considerate of other people." One of our great problems is that people are not being considerate and respectful of other people. Paul Rossi was being considerate and respectful. Sometimes being considerate and respectful requires conviction and courage.
I have ZERO respect for the people who spout Marxist POISON. NO, there's no reason to be polite with them, they're the enemy of free-thinking people everywhere, and it's time to FIGHT them.
It sounds like you're right and they're wrong. Perhaps you could FIGHT them by setting up some gas chambers or something like that in order to do away with people who spout Marxist POISON, whoever they might be and whatever Marxist POISON is. Waging war certainly might be easier for you than exploring why they might say what they say (stupid or not) and, for that matter, why you say what you say (intelligent or not) ...
“WHY they say what they say” is irrelevant … what matters is the outcome of these Marxist ideas, which has always been tyranny. Paint me as a Nazi if you like, but I never suggested making war or setting up gas chambers. Fighting can take many forms, and there’s a long way between not being polite or respecting another’s opinions, and gas chambers.
Would you mind being quoted for this response? I'd love to highlight Mr. Rossi's story in our local newspaper, along with your excellent questions. Thank you.
When Ibram X. Kendi, antiracism guru, was asked by Politico to take his best shot at solving the problem of inequality in America, he responded by suggesting a constitutional amendment to create and permanently fund a federal agency with the mandate to control everything.
It’s only a thought experiment of course. But I can’t understand why people haven’t revolted at following an ideology promoted by a mind that, when tasked to solve a nuanced problem, comes up with an idea that takes a sledgehammer to the underpinnings of America itself.
Kendi's Department of Antiracism (DOA) would oversee all policy at the local, state, and national level, and monitor public and private entities and public figures for antiracist ideas. The last sentence of his suggestion chills my bones thoroughly - it provides for “disciplinary tools“ to use against those who do not VOLUNTARILY change their minds.
The idea of such a constitutional amendment is laughable today. But will it be so amusing in 20 years after a generation of children have been subjected, as these children have been, to a culture that denies their individualism and treats all disagreement as existential threat to the lives of oppressed minorities?
We have got to get off this path, and we need to do it fast. This ideology has now invaded my public school. I urge everyone, even if you don’t have school-aged children, to find out if your local schools have adopted this philosophy, and get involved to prevent it.
For my fellow liberals who, as I once did, see fear of antiracism teaching as mere hysteria by conservatives, another “blah blah blah Marxism” GOP talking point, here is the link to see for yourself. Turns out the conservatives are right this time - every word is an assault on America herself.
And this man is required reading for educators at every level, all across the country. He has captured our future.
Incredibly eloquent and well worded response. Emily - you should be writing columns as well. I think the world needs more traditional liberal free-speech advocates like Bari and yourself. You are so spot on with your assessment. As I often say, this IS the slippery slope of appeasing the mob that leads us into a totalitarian regime that does not allow dissent. Its incredible to me that so many don't see this... it's like the modern day tulip mania. Everyone is so wanting to virtue-signal their agreement that they don't even consider what they are agreeing with and whether it's morally right. This is what allows a fringe idea to take hold of an entire political party. The desire to virtue-signal becomes a fear to disagree. That fear is what these political grifters count on. Our courage must be to challenge these fraudsters who gain financially and politically from this conflict. God bless you Mr. Rossi. Keep fighting the good fight... Good men must take a stand here and now and call out the truth.
Honestly, finding this piece by Kendi in Politico of all places was like a gut punch to me. I only stumbled on it last week, and I can't figure out why it hasn't been closely covered and examined and analyzed. It's been sitting there since 2019 and yet it hasn't become a discussion point about whether this antiracism movement is what it seems. Even Fox has ignored it! I only found a reference to it in a law enforcement publication and in Reason magazine.
I always thought we liberals were ALL about free speech, and now I'm finding that while I was busy with the ordinary trials and joys of life and tuning out the dysfunctional vitriol of political discourse, so many liberals have abandoned this fundamental, essential liberty. Though I believe there are very, very many like me, who just haven't seen and understood what is being proposed.
My theory is that we've become so extremely divided along partisan lines, so accustomed to assuming that if the other party opposes something then it must be an ok thing. We don't need to look deeper, we don't need to analyze it for ourselves, we can just align ourselves to support what our political adversaries oppose. And since this particular issue revolves around the protection of racial minorities, and blanket accusations of that most evocative and heinous word "racism", we're ready to believe our political opponents are our actual enemies.
And when I say "we" I'm including myself. I'm ashamed to admit that I'd fallen into this thought trap, though I've been on a journey of political analysis this past covid-year where I just kept feeling something wasn't right about our political divide. I knew we shouldn't see each other as actual enemies, but those intense feelings remained. Finding this thought experiment has jolted me all the way out of my complacency.
I only read this piece last week and it has prompted a whirlwind of research into CRT, learning how it is now coming into mainstream public schools in middle America, and how equity doesn't actually mean equality of opportunity, and antiracism actually means that members of the "dominant culture" cannot experience racism, but can only be perpetrators of it. My research led me to discover that the framework has made its way into my local public schools, and I've reached out to a group of concerned parents who oppose it.
Since these parents seem to be pretty much all on the conservative side of the political spectrum, the catch-22 is that it looks like just another partisan issue. I'm incredibly introverted and shy, but I'm going all in with them on local outreach, national (maybe) outreach, whatever it takes. Maybe I can reach my fellow liberals, especially of my generation, and help them see that this is something to examine really closely. Maybe my conservative neighbors will feel less isolated and alienated if our liberal neighbors come together with them in this common and critically important cause we share.
Thanks for your beautiful response and courage to fight for what is right. What you described is called 'tribalism' and the majority of our entire political spectrum has fallen into it. We know longer debate. We simply pick sides and point fingers. Our feckless leaders love this because they have no accountability to it, they just blame the other side. What we need now is push back from within the left and from within the POC community on these ignorant, blatantly racist ideas and this knee-jerk reaction to call everyone a racist that doesnt tow the line. It is going to be up to YOU true liberals to fight this fight. It cannot start anywhere else because, as you point out, it will only be seen as partisan politics. That brings us full circle to our brave leader of this forum - Bari Weiss - who has built this substack for EXACTLY that purpose. For people from all sides of the political spectrum to find the common ground of free speech and and non-racist policies. The liberals need to lead from the front with the courage to tell the woke mob to go F themselves when they come for them simply for disagreeing. Only then can we begin to dismantle this culture of fear from woke totalitarianism. God bless you for your courage.
They are marginal ideologically yet enjoy enormously disproportionate control. Even friends on the fairly far left say things are out of hand.
They are superbly well organised and funded -- a tidal wave of tech money-- Menlo Park Marxists, we must presume -flooded the last election. They control our institutions, media, Silicon Valley and now corporations, from Coke to United. The "inclusion and diversity" HR racket is an exploding industry, tearing us apart. CRT has harnessed social media. They will try to pack the Supreme Court and want to take over elections from the states, no ID, and registration at sixteen. Why not six? They will try to pack the Senate by adding two more states. This is ruthless and fast; the deliberate erasure of checks and balances, the most basic rule of law. Chunks of our cities are no go zones. All to achieve one party, authoritarian rule. The silent majority is voiceless, some are clueless, unaware of what is going on, let alone the magnitude, with no counterveiling organization to mount boycotts or use the tools the authoritarian left is abusing to such advantage. I appreciate what FAIR is doing, and everyday encourage people to join. It is a place, finally, for parents, the censored, or the abused or fired to find succor andvsupport. We can't play this by Marquess of Queensbury rules, or we will lose. We're trying to convince people who aren't listening and don't care. We need to mobilize people to act in concert, to boycott, to call Congress and corporations and be heard. There is no group telling the public to act, when to act, and how. We can start by calling our U.S. Senators.
I distinguish “progressives” from “liberals”. Liberals believe in free speech, reason, logic and the ideals of the Enlightenment generally, progressives believe in pseudoreligious nuttery.
Emily - Critical Race Theory is in the end, a Marxist redistribution scheme. The reason the kids are being indoctrinated is when they come for their property and assets, they have been taught to not say no out of fear of being called racist. Read Chris Rufo's paper on CRT. I have reposted the operable quote below:
"The solution for Harris is to replace the system of property rights and equal protection—which she calls “mere nondiscrimination”—with a system of positive discrimination tasked with “redistributing power and resources in order to rectify inequities and to achieve real equality." To achieve this goal, she advocates a large-scale wealth and property redistribution based on the African decolonial model. Harris envisions a suspension of existing property rights followed by a governmental campaign to “address directly the distribution of property and power” through wealth confiscation and race-based redistribution. “Property rights will then be respected, but they will not be absolute and will be considered against a societal requirement of affirmative action. In Harris’s formulation, if rights are a mechanism of white supremacy, they must be curtailed; the imperative of addressing race-based disparities must be given priority over the constitutional guarantees of equality, property, and neutrality. "
I followed the link, and my word that’s terrifying. This is so self-evidently a destructive path when you finally take a step back and really read it, that I wonder if actually none of our leaders on the liberal side have done any due diligence. Or if they are in thrall to the Twitter mob in a similar way that conservatives trying to hold on to a seat dare not openly oppose even the most “out there” statement Trump has made.
Many old people were raised by parents, school teachers, and Sunday mornings spent attending church learned early on that being "liberal" was a good thing.
To most of us, the sermons preached by Dr. Martin Luther King were a powerful call for us to shape a more inclusive society where our children would be judge by the strength of their character rather than the color of their skin.
It meant we could have friends and family members who had different views.
It meant as young adults we could support politicians who were able to cross the barbed wire fence of "us versus them" to create legislation that almost all of us could support.
As a young newspaper reporter I witnessed and admired the men and women in Maine's legislature who nearly always had dear friends in the "other" party.
Your comment would have perfectly fit into the era that shaped my childhood and my transition into early adulthood.
Now, as an old man I struggle to understand what happened to the country I so admired and loved for more than seven decades.
Time is running out for me, but I remain optimistic some of what I call traditional liberal and conservative values will replace the cynicism and despair that now seem to the the hallmarks of our society.
Thank you Emily for sharing your powerful essays with us.
I believe there are more liberals who think this way - we're just tuning out our political opposites because we don't seem to know how to talk to one another, and honestly we do tend to end up demeaning each other's character as opposed to disagreeing with ideas.
I shared Kendi's grand idea with a friend the other day, and she was like, "Ok, whoa, you had me at constitutional amendment. He wants to do what??" This is the response I'm getting from folks in my generation (GenX) who tend share my political views.
Here's a suggestion for anyone reading this: Maybe try sharing the politico link to Kendi's idea with liberals you know. Just ask, in a respectful and non-condescending manner, if they are sure "equity" means what they think it means, if they are sure "antiracism" means what they think it means. And then just leave them to mull it over, without trying to argue a position.
Also, avoid the words "marxism" and "socialism", even though they are actually relevant here. Liberals have heard this from conservatives so often that the words have lost their intended meaning and we largely tune them out.
I am also a life long liberal. I came of age during a time when this meant an opposition to censorship and dogmatism (mostly from the evangelical right) and an embracement of diversity. This summer I was reading about cults (Scientology, Jehovah’s Witnesses) while simultaneously feeling frustrated with what I felt was a constant fanning of the flames from both sides of the political spectrum. Then I had an epiphany: if I am critical of the tribalism and groupthink coming from the right, then I need to hold the left to the same standards of tolerance objectivity. Otherwise, that also makes ME a part of the problem.
Since then, I have read Cynical Theories and have been listening to Benjamin Boyce’s podcast (what an interesting case study the Evergreen story makes as a microcosm, but sadly, also foreshadowing what was to come), amongst similar listening and reading material. I feel very strongly against Critical Theory, but I am also very shy and averse to conflict and confrontation. I don’t usually bring political topics up in conversation. In the one instance when politics were brought up, I told my friend that while I am still a liberal and continue to have the same goals and values as before, I disagree with the methods used by some factions on the left (“Machiavellian” was a word that came to mind, but I did not say that at loud).
I do wish people writing about this topic would leave out the whole Marxism thing though, at least in short pieces like this that serve as explainers. The word has been thrown around by those on the right for so long and about so many things that I think it’s lost potency on the left. Certainly every time I encountered it in this context I tuned out the whole argument as hyperbole. Until I found that Kendi constitutional amendment idea and the hyperbole seemed a little less hyper!
Highlighting cultural Marxism probably works to make other conservatives very concerned, but I’m afraid it’s a barrier to reaching liberals. His example is clear and concise and makes a strong point just on its own, no scary words needed!
In principle, Kendi's societal prescriptions are nearly identical to the theory and practice of Maoist "Self-Criticism" Struggle Sessions, where the goal is to refine a consensus of undeviating conformity with the dictates of the Master Ideologue.
Your statement does sound like easily dismissable hyperbole- but only because Kendi and his acolytes lack sufficient Power to accomplish their extravagantly ambitious goal, of mandating that every sphere of social and economic activity be overseen by AntiRacist Political Cadres.
It's just one of several glaring contradictions of Radical Antiracism: the Radical Wokists mantle themselves in Unimpeachable Virtue, on account of their status of Oppression and Powerlessness- but they're bidding to possess that Power. And Kendi's blueprint for Antiracist Utopia makes it abundantly clear how that Power would be activated, if they were ever to succeed in obtaining it.
Realistically, the prospect of Kendi Thought being imposed in the aftermath of a Wokist Revolution doesn't worry me nearly as much as the liability that his monomaniacal agenda works to discredit legitimate benefits of multiculturalism and universalist precepts of justice and equal rights- and provoking a popular reaction of the sort that might be potentially manipulated for the benefit of the most extremist (and authentically racist) elements of the American Right Wing.
It's also worth noting that the Democratic Party is doing itself no favors by indulging the agenda of Ibram X. Kendi and his acolytes and sympathizers. Kendi is presently getting an increasing amount of name-check recognition in media channels. The usual pop-media superficial level of exposure. But I expect that the more people learn about the actual content of his ideas and proposals, the less the voting citizenry is going to be impressed by what they hear. Including black American voters, incidentally. A substantial number of them know crazy talk when they hear it, right away.
To be fair, the conservatives were right before, just ahead of their time.
Reagan said that if fascism ever came to America, it would come in the name of liberalism. Why? Because conservatives are predominately libertarian and want to be left alone. Liberals predominately want to use government to institute large social changes.
There is nothing wrong at all with identifying as a conservative in this moment, rather we should all be identifying as one. We should all want to conserve what we have now that we understand the alternative. 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s liberals would all want to conserve given these options.
While DOA may still be a thought experiment on the federal level, there are smaller government entities that are already implementing the concept. There is one school district at least (medium sized city) that has a Racial Equity Team, which has devised a racial equity tool/lens. For any decision or policy to be adopted on a district level, it has to be "analyzed" through the aforementioned tool. Kendi's book was a required reading and many copies were purchased for teachers.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The novelist and polymath Frank Herbert added an interesting twist to this. His position was that positions of power attract sociopathic personalities and are thus doomed to corruption and self-dealing. Eventually, they lead to wide swaths of impoverishment and a concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. Does anyone seriously believe that either Mao or Stalin ate simple diets and lived in spartan conditions? I would suggest that anyone who believes that the government should run everything is either horribly naive or an aspiring sociopathic aristocrat.
In his series of Dune novels, Herbert explored the origins of Democracy and the challenges it faces. He created the Bene Gesserit, an order of women, as an institutional memory of humanity that lived through the 1000s of years post an apocalyptic event in human history which occurred 1000s of years after humans left Earth and began to spread into the Cosmos. This order of "witches" would recognize, in the blink of an eye, someone like Ibrim Kendi as a closet aristocrat and clearly not to be trusted with the fate of humanity.
I enjoyed your response immensely. And let us not neglect Ta Nehisi Coates, who in his book, Between the World etc., that he couldn’t (I say “refuses”) see a difference between the first responders on 9/11 to the police who shot an acquaintance from his college days. Or the Yale professor of psychology (who I believe sill has a job) that she would gleefully murder white people. We liberals can point the finger at QAnon but let’s point a few fingers at “liberal” comments too
I’ve been working together with conservatives and independents for months now on school curriculum issues and I have come to believe that the single most important thing we liberals can do is hold our own side to an exacting ethical standard. I watched conservatives and even MAGA Trumpers open up to me every time I condemned a wrong done or acknowledged blatant hypocrisy on my own side. They became so much less of a unified defensive block, more nuanced in the views they express about the right. They listen when I express my own view, even when I am blunt in my criticism of the right, and they share more freely of their nuanced views when they don’t believe I’m hoarding every word to use as a bludgeon to undermine them. Which should be obvious, but it wasn’t until I saw it in action.
When we talked in genuine good faith we found enormous amounts of common ground, even the staunchest of conservatives. From common ground, we can build something. In honest conversation, we can learn to understand each other again. We each want the other side to demonstrate a backbone by standing against our own excesses, but we end up in this pointless battle of whatabout because it’s really damned hard to do. It’s so tempting to just point the finger, but we really do have to start with our own houses. The right is out of my hands, but I can fight for the left to retain the liberal values that have defined us for my whole life. So I will. In my small circle of influence it’s making ripples.
i am unsure why so many people are unable to recognize that this is the same kind of enforced ideology that occurred in stalinist russia and mao's china, something that a decade ago everyone would have insisted never occur in this country. I am having trouble understanding the collapse of intellectual rigor among my liberal tribe and the religious fervor of their conversion. i salute Paul for speaking out on this issue. the only way to stop it is if each of us in our sphere of influence speak out and begin to set limits on those who are espousing the ideology.
This stuff requires a religious level of believe to believe in & at the end of the day, everybody has to worship something. My liberal friends are predominately not “religious” but also believe in this madness. 1 for 1.
Lama Abu Odeh has a good article at Quillette (georgetown's cultural revolution) that parses an integral aspect of why this is happening. I don't especially agree with some of the stuff in the later stages of the article but his analysis of this one aspect of why it is happening i find particularly insightful. VERY simply, the desire by many in the new generation to supplant those now holding positions of power in the middle and upper middle classes while using weaknesses in the philosophical rigor of those now in those positions to stop them from doing so. it is quite elegant. further, in my opinion, the old systems that have provided structure to democratic cultures for so long are failing to appropriately deal with the times we find ourselves in (climate change just being part of that). the core myths no longer hold. and when a people loses their core myth, then fragmentation is inevitable. people begin to seize on anything that explains the world to them, they hold on to it as an article of faith, something to believe in. it really doesn't matter what when it comes right down to it. and the fragmentation is inevitably tribal. for democracies that is dangerous indeed. the republican party did its best to destroy the contract holding the country together (fdr and the new deal) in order to gain power, in the process they destroyed the country, not understanding that fdr had restored the legitimacy of the national story, its myth of inclusion and care for the working class, the poor, the struggling. (and yes, in some ways he did a bad job of it, others were left out.) the real danger in the tribalism of the woke mob left is that there is so little compassion in their position for anyone outside their tribe; fundamentally it is hateful at its core. this is unsurprising since they are oriented around power and power only given their philosophical beliefs (as vapid as they are). Those who are only oriented around power and not common humanity are dangerous by definition. they need to be resisted as strongly as possible and limits set on their behavior or what will come afterwards will be far worse than what we are seeing now.
BTW, the school bills itself in the "Episcopal Tradition". Its website contains the following paragraph:
"The third and fourth grades read Hebrew scriptures, and the fifth grade focuses on the New Testament. These sacred texts are taught neither as truth, nor as literature. Rather, they are presented as a body of powerful stories that have moved millions over thousands of years and serve as truth to those for whom they are true."
It's interesting that whereas scripture is taught as symbolic and open to interpretation, Critical Race Theory is being taught as unquestionable and absolute. In other words, CRT is taught as a fundamentalist, intratextual enterprise.
Please let your readers know how to help Paul Rossi.
It's unbelievable to me that anyone anywhere believes in this, much less forces it upon children. And that religious-based schools do this?? The contrast you make between how they approach scripture and how they approach CRT is alarming...and spot on.
I am normally not an emotional person, but reading this made me angry. Very angry.
We can't continue relying on people like Bari and Paul to risk everything by sticking their necks out while we sheepishly stand by. We need organization from all ends of the political spectrum. We need a database that lists all schools where this kind of indoctrination is occurring, and which teachers and administrators are guilty of pummeling this garbage. We need the financial backing to file lawsuits. We need consistent polling from an independent third party to demonstrate how the vast majority of Americans oppose this woke nonsense.
As a new father, I cannot stomach the thought of my two kids growing up in this America. If we don't all band together and take concrete actions soon, we may not live to see the dawn again.
I am a military veteran and am politically liberal/libertarian depending on issue and I am terrified for my country at present. Please pass these links around. Thank you!
"We need a database that lists all schools where this kind of indoctrination is occurring ..." In a short order of time it will be a database of almost all schools. And I share your concern.
We are parents of a ten-year old in a public school. No problems so far, but we're in California so we know it's coming. The county office of education is already embracing CRT ideas. Our options for dealing with it when the day comes are 1) private school; 2) home schooling; 3) un-teach the poisonous doctrines ourselves. Parents we never thought would take up home schooling have started on it.
Oh wow thanks! I'm really glad a database exists, but it's unfortunate they don't have any k-12 data. Only for colleges and universities. For me, kids in college are capable of rolling their eyes and dismissing this stuff. Forcing these fringe ideas on K-12 kids is where it crosses the line into brainwashing / indoctrination territory. That's what really ticks me off.
I'm guessing the only way to build a database/repository of k-12 school data would be to crowdsource it.
You would be mistaken regarding the kids in college being capable of rolling their eyes and dismissing this stuff. Disagreeing, publically, with the CRT doctrine will get you cancelled, removed from any student positions you hold and possibly expelled. There is a dwindling number of campuses where this is 'not' happening.
This student published this cognizant, well reasoned response to CRT at Cornell anonymously, because it would have subjected him to threats of physical harassment and harm as well as widespreading 'doxxing' if he/she had published their name.
I agree with you - and we also have to vote people out of office that push this stuff too - I don’t want to be political but this stuff had been banned in federal agencies and that was reversed.
The only way this stops is for teachers like Paul to sue on grounds of a hostile work environment and violating his 1st Amendment rights and his right to a freedom of conscience.
Mr Rossi might find a lawyer (check with the Federalist Society's NYC office) and consider a complaint with the Federal/State EEOC agencies on the grounds of viewpoint discrimination. The publicity alone will concentrate the minds of his administrators, and sober some parents to see beyond the status symbolism of this "School"
Let’s start using “neo-racist” (instead of “antiracist”) when referring to CRT and people promoting it as neo-racists (rather then “antiracist”). Words matter. Perhaps more people will realise what is going on.
Congratulations Bari, you have a new subscriber! (From New Zealand) I have been thinking about it for a while but the excellence of this piece and the hope that you will use your editorial skills to effectively build “an alternate paper” finally made me hit the button. What is in this column is truly frightening, but I am convinced by the humanity of the author that it is equally true.
I worry that my “sponsorship” efforts in journalism to date are mainly helping the already mega successful (Taibbi, Greenwald, quillette, spiked) but with you I get the feeling you will find the little known voices and set them in front of me with the reference that they deserve.
The ideologues are firmly in charge of public education and much of private education. Right and wrong don’t matter. Reasoning with people who have political ideology as their religion is hopeless.
Mr. Rossi is showing great moral courage. He will be punished for it. My father spent over a year, and my uncle over two years, killing those who wished to enslave others to an ideology. Mr. Rossi will find that their old maxim of “the nail that sticks up, gets hammered down” is still in the toolbox.
These ideologically motivated educators are equal to those malefactors.
They wish to enslave your child’s mind. Bind it and make it rigid and incapable of reasoning.
What a terrifying piece. Thank you for bringing your experience to wider attention – a courageous move in today’s climate. I have two sons in their early teens who are at school in the UK. The situation is not as bad here as you describe – YET – but it is increasingly obvious that this pernicious orthodoxy is gaining ground.
My concern with this ever-growing trend of Critical Race indoctrination is that the people who are driving it, despite their protestations, have NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER in achieving equality between the races.
Because they are not in the Equality business. They are in the Grievance business.
And business is good at the moment. There are fortunes to be made, stirring the pot, feeding the sense of guilt among Whites and stoking the sense of victimhood among the Black community.
Beyond their own pockets – WHO DOES THAT SERVE? Are these people looking to improve relations between communities? It doesn’t seem so. Their movement only appears capable of creating division. Separating and segregating people based on which “community” they “belong” to.
The liberal-left decries inequality of opportunity and income disparity as the two main evils that are fracturing society. But I’d suggest this Identity politics agenda is a far more pernicious way to separate us.
Identity politics is the very antithesis of the principles of universalism - it suggests what differentiates us is more important than what we have in common. Surely we should treasure more what we share as members of a diverse community rather than seek to silo people and segregate that community into ghettos based on our racial identities, sexual orientation, age, gender or creed?
How do people who claim to speak for progressive attitudes justify shifting the argument from Martin Luther King’s dream of a future where people are judged according to their character rather than the colour of their skin to the point where these activists are calling for PRECISELY THE OPPOSITE? That you are defined, as a person, solely by the groups to which you belong. To abandon that call for universalism in favour of separatism is surely a retrograde step? That point seems so incontestable to me that I am utterly baffled how “progressives” can think their present strategy is advancing the cause of equality.
When it comes to the vast majority of those who’ve bought into the woke agenda, I think it comes from a good place. Many seem unaware of the malignant undertones of the BLM movement, and buy into the simple idea that ‘Black Lives Matter’ – but that is so obvious a statement as to be almost a banality.
How, though, do the well-intentioned woke justify to themselves calling for the cancellation of anyone who counters with ‘All Lives Matter’, or any other push-back against these pernicious doctrine?
I’m not paranoid enough (yet) to believe that the majority of the “woke” actually want to see society divided – but I cannot fathom how they think the divisive, separatist attitudes of their movement can possibly bring us together. It seems so self-evidently self-defeating.
Just a few years ago we were exhorted as a society to be colour-blind, to accept people simply as people, whatever their background, their lifestyle, their “differences”.
What happened to that idea?
For many years I lived in London and worked in an industry (Broadcast TV) that was as diverse as one could possibly find anywhere. As far as I was concerned the arguments of Race, Gender, Creed, Orientation had been fought and largely won. We seemed at the time – perhaps naively – to be enjoying the peace.
Maybe those who are inclined to be activists feel they have to keep picking at the scab and reopening old wounds or there is no point to their existence, but it seems incredible that we’ve gone so far backwards and quite so quickly.
As I say, I have a good deal of sympathy with the young in all this – not the activists who are driving this movement, but those who’ve grown up in this atmosphere. They’ve been fed a constant diet of woke totems and “progressive” thought (actually horribly regressive thought) throughout their education and now must navigate a “thought-crime minefield” where the slightest miss-step can blow up in their faces.
Some, believing what they’ve been taught - and with the best intentions – try to stick to all the latest approved attitudes and mantras and find themselves saying and doing things that (I can only hope) will make them shudder with embarrassment when they look back on them in years to come. I’m optimistic that they’ll be young enough to still have the chance of an awakening (from their awokening?). Others eschew the whole concept of inclusivity and adopt almost a siege mentality that helps no one (the rise of the young alt-right in America is a direct consequence of US College campus PC conformity).
For those cultural Marxists driving this movement and cancelling any who dare gainsay it, of course debate must be silenced. The easiest way to prevent your argument from being examined, its flaws exposed to ridicule, is to prevent any discussion of it in the first place. The easiest way to gain status is to tear down those who would even dare question your argument. That is the defining characteristic of cancel culture. It appears, from the outside, almost a competition as those who vie for greater woke status compete with fellow adherents to identify and criticise (what reasonable people would see as) vanishingly trivial offenses.
You can spend years going along with the progressive herd, but the minute you fall out of lock-step with them on a single contentious issue you will be turned on. Previous adherence to orthodoxy is no defence once you’ve been accused of heresy. Each and every trifling misstep – or statement of biological fact – must be campaigned against as if they are proof positive of racism – or transphobia, sexism or patriarchal oppression.
And so anyone who is not willing to go to war is compelled to agree with this nonsense, or at the very least stay silent on the matter, for fear that they too will be “cancelled” or face accusations of bigotry.
Reagan saw this coming in the mid-70s when he noted “If fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism.”
But not only does the politics of grievance divide us, it makes us weaker. It glorifies victimhood and vilifies anyone who tries to suggest otherwise. The #metoo movement could have been empowering, yet insisting that a clumsy advance, or an unwanted touch of a knee, is somehow equivalent to rape is insane. Who is that empowering? Telling every woman they are a victim, teaching impressionable young women they are likely to become victims, that all men are naturally predatory? Does that heal divisions in society or exacerbate them?
Similarly, teaching young black men that they are oppressed, that society doesn’t value them as much, that the police are not to be trusted. Who does that help? Does it improve their chances of success in life or does it weigh them down with unnecessary baggage? Does it drive a wedge between communities, between groups? I would suggest that, yes, of course it does.
In the end, the politics of grievance can only be defeated by a better politics – but that has to be rooted in honesty, not what fits the narrative. Honest assessments of a situation probably sell fewer newspapers, or get fewer Youtube views, than sensationalised hyperbole. This poses a dilemma for any media outlet that has bought into the identity fixated woke agenda.
The ongoing narrative is blatantly at odds with reality. The “liberal Left” media - in thrall to appearing Woke – has a narrative that drives and supports a worldview that is predicated on catastrophism and a dystopian future – it seems almost as though they are willing such a future into existence.
For each anecdotal instance of intolerance that gets trumpeted as “proof” of widespread bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia, etc there are a million other instances of just everyday acceptance of people, – regardless of colour, nationality or gender – that aren’t worthy of anecdote simply because they are so everyday.
I would suggest that these activists seem not merely willing, but positively hoping, to see the country divided, pitting their Woke agenda against the reality of a tolerant and accepting society. In an attempt to appear Woke they are sleepwalking the country into the very same dystopian future that they imagine our present to be.
Worst of all this movement pits the young against their own families who have not bought into this madness. But the young have been told that any who do not immediately fall into line are somehow the intolerant and hateful ones!
Many of these woke activists would undoubtedly denounce any who’d think to pigeonhole someone whilst, almost in the same breath, constructing a fairly sturdy pigeonhole themselves and stuffing it with a well-fed pigeon.
You can’t win (unless you simply refuse to play their game).
Mr. Patrick: Your comment should be a column all its own. One of the best things I've read (no disrespect to Mr. Rossi; a very fine piece).
I knew this country was in deep, deep trouble beginning in the late '90s. After serving 12 years in the U.S. Army (graduating #1, #1, and #2 in the three titular schools for NCO advancement), after a 20-year I.T. career at the CIO/CTO level in Fortune 500 (Young & Rubicam; Burson-Marsteller, more); major non-profits (National Food Processors Association; AAUW, Water Environment Federation, more), and gov't. agencies (Pentagon, TS clearance), and writing a Biz-Tech management guide that became an MBA-text at UofW and several other universities, I feel I've long-had a commanding view and perspective on where this country is heading. (I also have a working class background - I feel I'm a rare bird). In the late '90s, two things happened: It became difficult-to-impossible to fire people for cause if they were female and/or Black. That may sound inflammatory - it is simply... Truth. I watched quality positions and teams go down. I watched "good people," including PoC, leave rather than buy into the brand of compromised ethics, quality-of-work, and basic tenets once universally recognized and honored.
I've had these characterizations ripped off and repeated elsewhere, but they are original to me: When planes start falling out of the sky, when the bridge you're driving across falls down, when you can't trust a simple bank balance, you'll know that simple math wasn't racist after all: It was empirical, prudent, and necessary. No: 2+2 never equals anything but 4. Showing your work qualifies you for that "A." Punctuality is a necessary standard that begets and supports many, many others. I love this expression and I employed it to great effect in the business arena and associated projects: On time - on target - on budget. I can't imagine what its like today. I know this: We are in deep, deep trouble.
We're all the way down to the family level in terms of fracturing this country: I'm ostracized from many members - and more and more people tell me the same. Leftists are mentally ill. Might as well face it. Seek people of what I call Plain Sense & Sanity: "Common Sense" has been destroyed.
We now live in a supposed Land of the Free (where you're mandated to wear an unhealthty diaper on your face), and the Home of the Brave
It is the insistence that ones “Lived Experience” somehow carries more weight than facts that is so dishonest.
How many times on Liberal comments pages do you see someone’s comment - packed full of well-attested data - being dismissed out of hand with a Big-Lebowski-like “Yeah, but that’s just, like, your opinion, man”.
It is more than dishonest, it’s just a moronic way to debate anything, and yet it seems to have become a respectable way to defend ones position in discussion.
It would be like pointing out that all the scientific evidence that smoking is bad for you is incontrovertible, and demonstrating all the data that backs that up, and having someone counter that with, “Well, my grandad smoked 60 Woodbines a day and he was playing football into his 80s”.
The only sensible answer to that is, “So f***ing what”.
My generation was taught that we were entitled to our own opinion - but that we better have facts and data to back that opinion up so that we could make the case for what we believed.
Subsequent generations have been taught that they're entitled not merely to their own opinions, but to their own facts as well! Not that it matters much because opinions are more important than facts, and opinions are weighted by belonging to particular groups. The more oppressed and victimised the group, the more weight their opinion carries.
How many people ever preface a statement with - "Speaking as a ….. ….." unless they believe that belonging to that specific group confers on them special insight, or a 'right' to speak, that is denied to those outside the group?
Identity politics means I can't "really" understand you, I can’t really empathise with you, I'm not allowed to because I am not a woman, or I am not black, I am not gay, I am not a Muslim. If I think I do understand you, or if I volunteer an opinion, then I'm mansplaining, I'm arrogantly assuming that my opinion is valid even though I don't have the lived experience of suffering abuse by belonging to the right victim group.
Such are the grisly politics of grievance.
Frankly anyone who thinks that is advancing the cause for equality, or improving society, wants their head read!
Yes: This "My lived experience" idea that different people and cultures yield different standards for groups, and different "correct" answers within empirical disciplines (STEM) is utter rubbish. By the way, I accidentally clicked "Post" above. I meant to finish up with, "Home of the Brave" no more, whereby we're teaching children to run from life's challenges. When a virus that has a 99.9% recovery rate, for whom children are immune, shuts down schools coast-to-coast, destroys children's sports... Let's face it - this is part of a deliberate plan to weaken America. Life will never be perfect. Victimhood (something my childhood training eschewed) is celebrated, honored, and badged. I cannot state here what I think of Dems/modern-day-liberals/head-in-the-sand types. BTW, your original comment caused me to instantly subscribe to this forum, as I paged some other comments.
"How do people who claim to speak for progressive attitudes justify shifting the argument from Martin Luther King’s dream of a future where people are judged according to their character rather than the colour of their skin to the point where these activists are calling for PRECISELY THE OPPOSITE? That you are defined, as a person, solely by the groups to which you belong. To abandon that call for universalism in favour of separatism is surely a retrograde step? That point seems so incontestable to me that I am utterly baffled how “progressives” can think their present strategy is advancing the cause of equality."
Universalism has been abandoned. Post-modernism tells us that politics, knowledge, reason, philosophy, ideology, scholarship, economics are all tools for accumulating power and wealth. If you argue for universalism, you are really arguing for maintenance of the current power structure, for your own ideological interests.
Those who acknowledge this (the "woke") are simply being honest, real. Group power dynamics are how you achieve justice and change. Meritocracy is a lie, individuals can't change the system, only battles among groups can. Thus the relentless categorizing into "us" and "them" and which side you're on.
Patrick, your reply compels me to refrain from adding anything of intellectual substance to this issue. I have been fighting this madness for ten years strong now and as one would expect I have paid a steep price for speaking truth to lies; and you're so right, my 13 years of teaching diverse groups of troubled youth and then changing professions and working tirelessly as a Cook County (Il.) Assistant Public Defender did nothing to impede my own sisters from defaming me (I became a RACIST of course) and did little to prevent my wife and children from abandoning me when I needed their support. They were understandably frightened and too weak to stand beside me but I have remained undaunted (although exhausted) in remaining a vocal opponent of this hateful, divisive, racist, cancer that has metastasized at a rate that may leave this nation terminally impaired. I'm too old and too isolated right now to organized some rational and non violent show of force, some great March on Washington style of protest, but I would drop everything to be part of such an event. I implore people like Barry and the very fine people at FAIR to organize such an event. I love this forum and am encouraged when I learn that there are so many right thinking people out there who share many of my views; however I yearn for an opportunity to be part of a larger voice on these issues. I understand that such a gathering risks drawing in people who like to become disruptive, but these messages that Mr. Rossi and others are now spreading need a larger forum. We need to increase the size of our rather small megaphone if we're to have a chance, no?
Thanks for sharing all these stories, Bari. But until these schools start being sued for racism and discrimination, nothing will change. Accordingly, local politicians should speak up and start introducing local regulation banning this neo-racist teaching.
Is this for real? Why are parents allowing their students to be abused like this. When they get in the real world and find that independent and creative thinking are valued, how in the world are they going to compete and survive. Let alone enjoy relationships with friends or spouse that thrive when there is give and take and openness to differences of opinion.
Unfortunately the real world doesn’t value independent and creative thinking anymore. Corporate America is fully on board with all this. They say “be yourself” but whisper “but only if it’s within our guidelines”.
The ideology has seeped into the real world. That’s part of the problem. When these indoctrinated children graduate, they will either go to a university that will echo their previous indoctrination, or they will find a job at a company that has bought into the same ideology and have HR departments full of university graduates that are soldiers of the same ideology.
Because the mob is ruthless and they are terrified. Even tiny pushbacks or delicate questioning leads to ostacization and loss of moral authority. Most of these people are rich and have a great deal to lose if they speak out. The mob doesn't just get you excommunicated from your social circle and your children thrown out of school (and by extension no other private school will have you either), but they also go after people's livelihoods and careers, digging up dirt wherever they can and working to strip dissenters of all social capital. The hysteria of the truly self-righteous is frightening and intimidating. Most people are shutting up and hoping it goes away. However, I'm afraid they are going to be sadly disappointed.
I know these people. I grew up with these people. They are so convicted of their own righteousness that they can see nothing else.
I so appreciate this teacher and you Bari for publishing his story. I am so proud to be able to support you and your work via substack. I hope that decoupling true journalists from the gatekeepers will save and improve your noble profession. We've never needed journalism so badly as we do now.
This CRT stuff gives me China Cultural Revolution vibes. Why aren't we seeing hundreds of lawsuits? Is that something you can report on? Are lawsuits happening?
Yes, more information about how this is being fought please!! Maybe this site could have a section with links to groups working on this problem. If we can band together to support one another our voice is harder to ignore.
You are so right. Talking is only productive if it produces results. Yes, it can be uplifting and comforting to know that others feel similarly but right now we need action before we're completely bulldozed by this totalitarian juggernaut that is attempting to blitzkrieg their way through our schools and across America. I just read the Nevada lawsuit posted by W. It's very long even if you skim read it but it is frightening in a way that I've never been frightened before, and I'm 65 years old. I've been confronting this insanity for over 30 years now in my often private way. But our kids our going to be in a world of hurt if we don't roll up our sleeves and go after this hateful and divisive ideology. It's not a stretch to see these people seeking to eliminate their opposition if they have the power. We have work to do.
Wow! I predict that this column becomes one of the most important and impactful in the growing battle over critical race theory ("CRT") This tears the seemingly just "anti-racist" branding and facade off of the deeply illiberal substance of CRT. Grace is now boxed: if they further reprimand, punish, or even terminate Paul Rossi, they will be further demonstrating how illiberal the school has become in brooking no ideological dissent. On the other hand, if they take the wiser and more just course of action and take no action against him, then other faculty members and students-- at Grace and other schools -- will be emboldened to dissent from CRT. Such dissent can only weaken the coerced conformity and compliance that is a key component of CRT. Paul Rossi deserves our thanks and praise!
Who does not look back on the great moral crises of our past and hope, had we been there, that our courage would have risen to meet the terrible moment? Who does not feel anguish at the almost universal silence which enabled the monsters of our shared history? Would we have just followed orders? Or would we have sheltered Anne Frank? Would we have crossed the Selma bridge? Would we have joined the Salt March? Would we have risked everything? Would we have risked anything?
We think: of course we would. Or at least that’s what we post on Facebook. And then we say a little prayer of thanks that our time is nothing like that. Except that once again it is like that. Paul Rossi has taken a stand for the children he teaches. It cannot help but make a difference for them. In fact it clearly already has. The bigger question is: will it make a difference for the rest of us, suddenly forced by his example into our own moral reckoning, and the awful recognition that for each of us our own time of choosing is here. History is back.
Chris this is beautifully written.
Terrifying but true. I like the idea of hiding out in my Midwestern town and living a normal life. But here it comes. Insidious and disguised as love.
Wow! One of the most eloquent calls to action I've read in quite some time. Pure inspiration my friend,
America has largely forgotten history. Most Americans believe in the myth of progress and have lost the tragic sense of life that the greatest generation had. Times have changed.
Unfortunately way too many Americans believe in the "myth of progress" but don't understand the real thing. Progress can be real and has been. I've seen it in my lifetime in all sorts of things, increasing tolerance, increasing prosperity all round, better medicine, etc. The irony is that now real progress is being destroyed by mythical progress.
This is old but I think the issue with “the myth of progress” isn’t that progress doesn’t happen (your examples show that it does) but that time is circular or more like a spiral, not linear, and it is difficult to tell where we are in that. Hopefully that makes sense.
Perfectly stated, Chris Nathan. Thank you!
Very true. Let us meet the moment.
It is time to organize. It i time to politely but firmly stand opposed to the continuous denigrate of Western Civilization with all of its imagined horrors. Are those horrors real? Of course, they are and writings concerning them have been available for anyone with eye to see. They have been available for well over 60 years. They are available because those criticisms are in the paradigm of Western Civilization and the Enlightenment. 1) The scientific method, 2) rationale thought, and 3) progress.
Having achieved three tremendous victories (Victory in Europe over Nazism, Victory Over Japan, and the dissolution of the Russian Empire), the West decided to further human vices such as greed. American Civilization in particular beginning with Ronald Reagan re-embraced the Economic Model of the Antebellum South. Devalue people, decrease investment in the future, decrease access to power, and create simple but seemingly "complex" schemes for wealth redistribution.
History is indeed back and though some might try to hide their complicity in the game perpetuated by the Failed Power Elite of this country but they will fail. People are wising up. The internet is an admittedly blunt and not infrequently a powerful source of misdirection. It is, however, a tremendous source of liberating information. The Power Elite's old games have worn thin. It is easy to keep the peasants fighting amongst themselves when they are uniformly uneducated and without power. It is much more difficult to control a literature population where even the most poorly educated can read and have access to a variety of sources of information.
it's time to STOP being POLITE!
I think maybe you mean it's time to engage in a purposeful dialogue on the issue(s) with CONVICTION and COURAGE. A definition of polite is "behavior that is respectful and considerate of other people." One of our great problems is that people are not being considerate and respectful of other people. Paul Rossi was being considerate and respectful. Sometimes being considerate and respectful requires conviction and courage.
I have ZERO respect for the people who spout Marxist POISON. NO, there's no reason to be polite with them, they're the enemy of free-thinking people everywhere, and it's time to FIGHT them.
It sounds like you're right and they're wrong. Perhaps you could FIGHT them by setting up some gas chambers or something like that in order to do away with people who spout Marxist POISON, whoever they might be and whatever Marxist POISON is. Waging war certainly might be easier for you than exploring why they might say what they say (stupid or not) and, for that matter, why you say what you say (intelligent or not) ...
“WHY they say what they say” is irrelevant … what matters is the outcome of these Marxist ideas, which has always been tyranny. Paint me as a Nazi if you like, but I never suggested making war or setting up gas chambers. Fighting can take many forms, and there’s a long way between not being polite or respecting another’s opinions, and gas chambers.
Would you mind being quoted for this response? I'd love to highlight Mr. Rossi's story in our local newspaper, along with your excellent questions. Thank you.
Please feel free to quote my response. And thank you for checking.
I'll let you know if I can interest our newspaper to run it. Thanks!
So well said!
When Ibram X. Kendi, antiracism guru, was asked by Politico to take his best shot at solving the problem of inequality in America, he responded by suggesting a constitutional amendment to create and permanently fund a federal agency with the mandate to control everything.
It’s only a thought experiment of course. But I can’t understand why people haven’t revolted at following an ideology promoted by a mind that, when tasked to solve a nuanced problem, comes up with an idea that takes a sledgehammer to the underpinnings of America itself.
Kendi's Department of Antiracism (DOA) would oversee all policy at the local, state, and national level, and monitor public and private entities and public figures for antiracist ideas. The last sentence of his suggestion chills my bones thoroughly - it provides for “disciplinary tools“ to use against those who do not VOLUNTARILY change their minds.
The idea of such a constitutional amendment is laughable today. But will it be so amusing in 20 years after a generation of children have been subjected, as these children have been, to a culture that denies their individualism and treats all disagreement as existential threat to the lives of oppressed minorities?
We have got to get off this path, and we need to do it fast. This ideology has now invaded my public school. I urge everyone, even if you don’t have school-aged children, to find out if your local schools have adopted this philosophy, and get involved to prevent it.
For my fellow liberals who, as I once did, see fear of antiracism teaching as mere hysteria by conservatives, another “blah blah blah Marxism” GOP talking point, here is the link to see for yourself. Turns out the conservatives are right this time - every word is an assault on America herself.
And this man is required reading for educators at every level, all across the country. He has captured our future.
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2019/how-to-fix-politics-in-america/inequality/pass-an-anti-racist-constitutional-amendment/
Incredibly eloquent and well worded response. Emily - you should be writing columns as well. I think the world needs more traditional liberal free-speech advocates like Bari and yourself. You are so spot on with your assessment. As I often say, this IS the slippery slope of appeasing the mob that leads us into a totalitarian regime that does not allow dissent. Its incredible to me that so many don't see this... it's like the modern day tulip mania. Everyone is so wanting to virtue-signal their agreement that they don't even consider what they are agreeing with and whether it's morally right. This is what allows a fringe idea to take hold of an entire political party. The desire to virtue-signal becomes a fear to disagree. That fear is what these political grifters count on. Our courage must be to challenge these fraudsters who gain financially and politically from this conflict. God bless you Mr. Rossi. Keep fighting the good fight... Good men must take a stand here and now and call out the truth.
Thank you for the very kind words!
Honestly, finding this piece by Kendi in Politico of all places was like a gut punch to me. I only stumbled on it last week, and I can't figure out why it hasn't been closely covered and examined and analyzed. It's been sitting there since 2019 and yet it hasn't become a discussion point about whether this antiracism movement is what it seems. Even Fox has ignored it! I only found a reference to it in a law enforcement publication and in Reason magazine.
I always thought we liberals were ALL about free speech, and now I'm finding that while I was busy with the ordinary trials and joys of life and tuning out the dysfunctional vitriol of political discourse, so many liberals have abandoned this fundamental, essential liberty. Though I believe there are very, very many like me, who just haven't seen and understood what is being proposed.
My theory is that we've become so extremely divided along partisan lines, so accustomed to assuming that if the other party opposes something then it must be an ok thing. We don't need to look deeper, we don't need to analyze it for ourselves, we can just align ourselves to support what our political adversaries oppose. And since this particular issue revolves around the protection of racial minorities, and blanket accusations of that most evocative and heinous word "racism", we're ready to believe our political opponents are our actual enemies.
And when I say "we" I'm including myself. I'm ashamed to admit that I'd fallen into this thought trap, though I've been on a journey of political analysis this past covid-year where I just kept feeling something wasn't right about our political divide. I knew we shouldn't see each other as actual enemies, but those intense feelings remained. Finding this thought experiment has jolted me all the way out of my complacency.
I only read this piece last week and it has prompted a whirlwind of research into CRT, learning how it is now coming into mainstream public schools in middle America, and how equity doesn't actually mean equality of opportunity, and antiracism actually means that members of the "dominant culture" cannot experience racism, but can only be perpetrators of it. My research led me to discover that the framework has made its way into my local public schools, and I've reached out to a group of concerned parents who oppose it.
Since these parents seem to be pretty much all on the conservative side of the political spectrum, the catch-22 is that it looks like just another partisan issue. I'm incredibly introverted and shy, but I'm going all in with them on local outreach, national (maybe) outreach, whatever it takes. Maybe I can reach my fellow liberals, especially of my generation, and help them see that this is something to examine really closely. Maybe my conservative neighbors will feel less isolated and alienated if our liberal neighbors come together with them in this common and critically important cause we share.
I hope.
Thanks for your beautiful response and courage to fight for what is right. What you described is called 'tribalism' and the majority of our entire political spectrum has fallen into it. We know longer debate. We simply pick sides and point fingers. Our feckless leaders love this because they have no accountability to it, they just blame the other side. What we need now is push back from within the left and from within the POC community on these ignorant, blatantly racist ideas and this knee-jerk reaction to call everyone a racist that doesnt tow the line. It is going to be up to YOU true liberals to fight this fight. It cannot start anywhere else because, as you point out, it will only be seen as partisan politics. That brings us full circle to our brave leader of this forum - Bari Weiss - who has built this substack for EXACTLY that purpose. For people from all sides of the political spectrum to find the common ground of free speech and and non-racist policies. The liberals need to lead from the front with the courage to tell the woke mob to go F themselves when they come for them simply for disagreeing. Only then can we begin to dismantle this culture of fear from woke totalitarianism. God bless you for your courage.
They are marginal ideologically yet enjoy enormously disproportionate control. Even friends on the fairly far left say things are out of hand.
They are superbly well organised and funded -- a tidal wave of tech money-- Menlo Park Marxists, we must presume -flooded the last election. They control our institutions, media, Silicon Valley and now corporations, from Coke to United. The "inclusion and diversity" HR racket is an exploding industry, tearing us apart. CRT has harnessed social media. They will try to pack the Supreme Court and want to take over elections from the states, no ID, and registration at sixteen. Why not six? They will try to pack the Senate by adding two more states. This is ruthless and fast; the deliberate erasure of checks and balances, the most basic rule of law. Chunks of our cities are no go zones. All to achieve one party, authoritarian rule. The silent majority is voiceless, some are clueless, unaware of what is going on, let alone the magnitude, with no counterveiling organization to mount boycotts or use the tools the authoritarian left is abusing to such advantage. I appreciate what FAIR is doing, and everyday encourage people to join. It is a place, finally, for parents, the censored, or the abused or fired to find succor andvsupport. We can't play this by Marquess of Queensbury rules, or we will lose. We're trying to convince people who aren't listening and don't care. We need to mobilize people to act in concert, to boycott, to call Congress and corporations and be heard. There is no group telling the public to act, when to act, and how. We can start by calling our U.S. Senators.
Liberals ARE all about free speech. They’re not liberals. Time to take back the word.
I distinguish “progressives” from “liberals”. Liberals believe in free speech, reason, logic and the ideals of the Enlightenment generally, progressives believe in pseudoreligious nuttery.
Two short sentences that perfectly frame the struggle we face as we try to replace nihilism with optimism, Coco.
I only wish I could be so concise.
Emily - Critical Race Theory is in the end, a Marxist redistribution scheme. The reason the kids are being indoctrinated is when they come for their property and assets, they have been taught to not say no out of fear of being called racist. Read Chris Rufo's paper on CRT. I have reposted the operable quote below:
"The solution for Harris is to replace the system of property rights and equal protection—which she calls “mere nondiscrimination”—with a system of positive discrimination tasked with “redistributing power and resources in order to rectify inequities and to achieve real equality." To achieve this goal, she advocates a large-scale wealth and property redistribution based on the African decolonial model. Harris envisions a suspension of existing property rights followed by a governmental campaign to “address directly the distribution of property and power” through wealth confiscation and race-based redistribution. “Property rights will then be respected, but they will not be absolute and will be considered against a societal requirement of affirmative action. In Harris’s formulation, if rights are a mechanism of white supremacy, they must be curtailed; the imperative of addressing race-based disparities must be given priority over the constitutional guarantees of equality, property, and neutrality. "
https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/report/critical-race-theory-would-not-solve-racial-inequality-it-would-deepen-it?mc_cid=2b8bc10da2&mc_eid=7443cd65ce&fbclid=IwAR2TwKOeEE44OsUKB57EfpXmiArkESndELOec4ZQox1m_mk-GBo6snkXwCE
I followed the link, and my word that’s terrifying. This is so self-evidently a destructive path when you finally take a step back and really read it, that I wonder if actually none of our leaders on the liberal side have done any due diligence. Or if they are in thrall to the Twitter mob in a similar way that conservatives trying to hold on to a seat dare not openly oppose even the most “out there” statement Trump has made.
Is anyone actually steering this ship?
Many old people were raised by parents, school teachers, and Sunday mornings spent attending church learned early on that being "liberal" was a good thing.
To most of us, the sermons preached by Dr. Martin Luther King were a powerful call for us to shape a more inclusive society where our children would be judge by the strength of their character rather than the color of their skin.
It meant we could have friends and family members who had different views.
It meant as young adults we could support politicians who were able to cross the barbed wire fence of "us versus them" to create legislation that almost all of us could support.
As a young newspaper reporter I witnessed and admired the men and women in Maine's legislature who nearly always had dear friends in the "other" party.
Your comment would have perfectly fit into the era that shaped my childhood and my transition into early adulthood.
Now, as an old man I struggle to understand what happened to the country I so admired and loved for more than seven decades.
Time is running out for me, but I remain optimistic some of what I call traditional liberal and conservative values will replace the cynicism and despair that now seem to the the hallmarks of our society.
Thank you Emily for sharing your powerful essays with us.
As an early Vietnam era vet, Lightwing, I share your point of view.
Thank you for crafting such a clearly written and accurate comment.
Brave and shrewd!!
Very well stated. I am so thrilled to learn that some liberals out their think as I do on this subject. CRT is totalitarian and very dangerous.
I believe there are more liberals who think this way - we're just tuning out our political opposites because we don't seem to know how to talk to one another, and honestly we do tend to end up demeaning each other's character as opposed to disagreeing with ideas.
I shared Kendi's grand idea with a friend the other day, and she was like, "Ok, whoa, you had me at constitutional amendment. He wants to do what??" This is the response I'm getting from folks in my generation (GenX) who tend share my political views.
Here's a suggestion for anyone reading this: Maybe try sharing the politico link to Kendi's idea with liberals you know. Just ask, in a respectful and non-condescending manner, if they are sure "equity" means what they think it means, if they are sure "antiracism" means what they think it means. And then just leave them to mull it over, without trying to argue a position.
Also, avoid the words "marxism" and "socialism", even though they are actually relevant here. Liberals have heard this from conservatives so often that the words have lost their intended meaning and we largely tune them out.
Maybe it will help. I hope.
I am also a life long liberal. I came of age during a time when this meant an opposition to censorship and dogmatism (mostly from the evangelical right) and an embracement of diversity. This summer I was reading about cults (Scientology, Jehovah’s Witnesses) while simultaneously feeling frustrated with what I felt was a constant fanning of the flames from both sides of the political spectrum. Then I had an epiphany: if I am critical of the tribalism and groupthink coming from the right, then I need to hold the left to the same standards of tolerance objectivity. Otherwise, that also makes ME a part of the problem.
Since then, I have read Cynical Theories and have been listening to Benjamin Boyce’s podcast (what an interesting case study the Evergreen story makes as a microcosm, but sadly, also foreshadowing what was to come), amongst similar listening and reading material. I feel very strongly against Critical Theory, but I am also very shy and averse to conflict and confrontation. I don’t usually bring political topics up in conversation. In the one instance when politics were brought up, I told my friend that while I am still a liberal and continue to have the same goals and values as before, I disagree with the methods used by some factions on the left (“Machiavellian” was a word that came to mind, but I did not say that at loud).
I listened to Cynical Theories a couple weeks ago. Brilliant and totally eye-opening!
Love your comments Emily! I appreciate the ideas
Here's a primer on what they really mean when they say "equity." https://thenakeddollar.blogspot.com/2021/01/critical-race-theory-and-equity-scam.html
Thanks, that’s a very vivid explanation!
I do wish people writing about this topic would leave out the whole Marxism thing though, at least in short pieces like this that serve as explainers. The word has been thrown around by those on the right for so long and about so many things that I think it’s lost potency on the left. Certainly every time I encountered it in this context I tuned out the whole argument as hyperbole. Until I found that Kendi constitutional amendment idea and the hyperbole seemed a little less hyper!
Highlighting cultural Marxism probably works to make other conservatives very concerned, but I’m afraid it’s a barrier to reaching liberals. His example is clear and concise and makes a strong point just on its own, no scary words needed!
Agreed, even if Marxism does heavily influence CRT, bringing it up is a distraction.
The problem is neoracism being enforced through totalitarian methods, and that needs to be the focus.
Great suggestions. Thank you.
It’s a Maoist horror show.
In principle, Kendi's societal prescriptions are nearly identical to the theory and practice of Maoist "Self-Criticism" Struggle Sessions, where the goal is to refine a consensus of undeviating conformity with the dictates of the Master Ideologue.
Your statement does sound like easily dismissable hyperbole- but only because Kendi and his acolytes lack sufficient Power to accomplish their extravagantly ambitious goal, of mandating that every sphere of social and economic activity be overseen by AntiRacist Political Cadres.
It's just one of several glaring contradictions of Radical Antiracism: the Radical Wokists mantle themselves in Unimpeachable Virtue, on account of their status of Oppression and Powerlessness- but they're bidding to possess that Power. And Kendi's blueprint for Antiracist Utopia makes it abundantly clear how that Power would be activated, if they were ever to succeed in obtaining it.
Realistically, the prospect of Kendi Thought being imposed in the aftermath of a Wokist Revolution doesn't worry me nearly as much as the liability that his monomaniacal agenda works to discredit legitimate benefits of multiculturalism and universalist precepts of justice and equal rights- and provoking a popular reaction of the sort that might be potentially manipulated for the benefit of the most extremist (and authentically racist) elements of the American Right Wing.
It's also worth noting that the Democratic Party is doing itself no favors by indulging the agenda of Ibram X. Kendi and his acolytes and sympathizers. Kendi is presently getting an increasing amount of name-check recognition in media channels. The usual pop-media superficial level of exposure. But I expect that the more people learn about the actual content of his ideas and proposals, the less the voting citizenry is going to be impressed by what they hear. Including black American voters, incidentally. A substantial number of them know crazy talk when they hear it, right away.
To be fair, the conservatives were right before, just ahead of their time.
Reagan said that if fascism ever came to America, it would come in the name of liberalism. Why? Because conservatives are predominately libertarian and want to be left alone. Liberals predominately want to use government to institute large social changes.
There is nothing wrong at all with identifying as a conservative in this moment, rather we should all be identifying as one. We should all want to conserve what we have now that we understand the alternative. 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s liberals would all want to conserve given these options.
Keep writing Emily! Your observations are all too common at a time when this combination of courage and eloquence is in short demand.
While DOA may still be a thought experiment on the federal level, there are smaller government entities that are already implementing the concept. There is one school district at least (medium sized city) that has a Racial Equity Team, which has devised a racial equity tool/lens. For any decision or policy to be adopted on a district level, it has to be "analyzed" through the aforementioned tool. Kendi's book was a required reading and many copies were purchased for teachers.
Now that I've had my blinders removed, it seems like this stuff is everywhere!
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The novelist and polymath Frank Herbert added an interesting twist to this. His position was that positions of power attract sociopathic personalities and are thus doomed to corruption and self-dealing. Eventually, they lead to wide swaths of impoverishment and a concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. Does anyone seriously believe that either Mao or Stalin ate simple diets and lived in spartan conditions? I would suggest that anyone who believes that the government should run everything is either horribly naive or an aspiring sociopathic aristocrat.
In his series of Dune novels, Herbert explored the origins of Democracy and the challenges it faces. He created the Bene Gesserit, an order of women, as an institutional memory of humanity that lived through the 1000s of years post an apocalyptic event in human history which occurred 1000s of years after humans left Earth and began to spread into the Cosmos. This order of "witches" would recognize, in the blink of an eye, someone like Ibrim Kendi as a closet aristocrat and clearly not to be trusted with the fate of humanity.
I enjoyed your response immensely. And let us not neglect Ta Nehisi Coates, who in his book, Between the World etc., that he couldn’t (I say “refuses”) see a difference between the first responders on 9/11 to the police who shot an acquaintance from his college days. Or the Yale professor of psychology (who I believe sill has a job) that she would gleefully murder white people. We liberals can point the finger at QAnon but let’s point a few fingers at “liberal” comments too
I’ve been working together with conservatives and independents for months now on school curriculum issues and I have come to believe that the single most important thing we liberals can do is hold our own side to an exacting ethical standard. I watched conservatives and even MAGA Trumpers open up to me every time I condemned a wrong done or acknowledged blatant hypocrisy on my own side. They became so much less of a unified defensive block, more nuanced in the views they express about the right. They listen when I express my own view, even when I am blunt in my criticism of the right, and they share more freely of their nuanced views when they don’t believe I’m hoarding every word to use as a bludgeon to undermine them. Which should be obvious, but it wasn’t until I saw it in action.
When we talked in genuine good faith we found enormous amounts of common ground, even the staunchest of conservatives. From common ground, we can build something. In honest conversation, we can learn to understand each other again. We each want the other side to demonstrate a backbone by standing against our own excesses, but we end up in this pointless battle of whatabout because it’s really damned hard to do. It’s so tempting to just point the finger, but we really do have to start with our own houses. The right is out of my hands, but I can fight for the left to retain the liberal values that have defined us for my whole life. So I will. In my small circle of influence it’s making ripples.
Wow, did he not realize how toltartarian that is?
Don't forget Kendi's sidekick and leader of the White Saviors, Robin DiAngelo.
That article is scary!
Sadly and infuriatingly: (1) this school administration sounds like a Maoist/JimJonesian cult, and (2) it’s become a cliche to say (1).
Thank you, Mr Rossi, for your courage.
i am unsure why so many people are unable to recognize that this is the same kind of enforced ideology that occurred in stalinist russia and mao's china, something that a decade ago everyone would have insisted never occur in this country. I am having trouble understanding the collapse of intellectual rigor among my liberal tribe and the religious fervor of their conversion. i salute Paul for speaking out on this issue. the only way to stop it is if each of us in our sphere of influence speak out and begin to set limits on those who are espousing the ideology.
This stuff requires a religious level of believe to believe in & at the end of the day, everybody has to worship something. My liberal friends are predominately not “religious” but also believe in this madness. 1 for 1.
Lama Abu Odeh has a good article at Quillette (georgetown's cultural revolution) that parses an integral aspect of why this is happening. I don't especially agree with some of the stuff in the later stages of the article but his analysis of this one aspect of why it is happening i find particularly insightful. VERY simply, the desire by many in the new generation to supplant those now holding positions of power in the middle and upper middle classes while using weaknesses in the philosophical rigor of those now in those positions to stop them from doing so. it is quite elegant. further, in my opinion, the old systems that have provided structure to democratic cultures for so long are failing to appropriately deal with the times we find ourselves in (climate change just being part of that). the core myths no longer hold. and when a people loses their core myth, then fragmentation is inevitable. people begin to seize on anything that explains the world to them, they hold on to it as an article of faith, something to believe in. it really doesn't matter what when it comes right down to it. and the fragmentation is inevitably tribal. for democracies that is dangerous indeed. the republican party did its best to destroy the contract holding the country together (fdr and the new deal) in order to gain power, in the process they destroyed the country, not understanding that fdr had restored the legitimacy of the national story, its myth of inclusion and care for the working class, the poor, the struggling. (and yes, in some ways he did a bad job of it, others were left out.) the real danger in the tribalism of the woke mob left is that there is so little compassion in their position for anyone outside their tribe; fundamentally it is hateful at its core. this is unsurprising since they are oriented around power and power only given their philosophical beliefs (as vapid as they are). Those who are only oriented around power and not common humanity are dangerous by definition. they need to be resisted as strongly as possible and limits set on their behavior or what will come afterwards will be far worse than what we are seeing now.
BTW, the school bills itself in the "Episcopal Tradition". Its website contains the following paragraph:
"The third and fourth grades read Hebrew scriptures, and the fifth grade focuses on the New Testament. These sacred texts are taught neither as truth, nor as literature. Rather, they are presented as a body of powerful stories that have moved millions over thousands of years and serve as truth to those for whom they are true."
It's interesting that whereas scripture is taught as symbolic and open to interpretation, Critical Race Theory is being taught as unquestionable and absolute. In other words, CRT is taught as a fundamentalist, intratextual enterprise.
Please let your readers know how to help Paul Rossi.
https://www.gcschool.org/about-gcs/episcopal-identity#
The irony. The complete cognitive dissonance of these people is baffling. It's inexplicable.
Modern witch trials. The Puritan strain in American culture rearing its head once again in a ugly and illogical ideology.
or an acknowledgement that one has persisted through time and the other is fragile (and antithetical to the first)
It's unbelievable to me that anyone anywhere believes in this, much less forces it upon children. And that religious-based schools do this?? The contrast you make between how they approach scripture and how they approach CRT is alarming...and spot on.
Exactly. Having escaped from fundamentalist religion myself, I too clearly see the parallels.
You make an excellent point
I am normally not an emotional person, but reading this made me angry. Very angry.
We can't continue relying on people like Bari and Paul to risk everything by sticking their necks out while we sheepishly stand by. We need organization from all ends of the political spectrum. We need a database that lists all schools where this kind of indoctrination is occurring, and which teachers and administrators are guilty of pummeling this garbage. We need the financial backing to file lawsuits. We need consistent polling from an independent third party to demonstrate how the vast majority of Americans oppose this woke nonsense.
As a new father, I cannot stomach the thought of my two kids growing up in this America. If we don't all band together and take concrete actions soon, we may not live to see the dawn again.
I subscribed to this Substack just to share this link with you: https://www.fairforall.org/ Check out the board of advisors to view and impressive list of people who are standing up: https://www.fairforall.org/about/board-of-advisors/ I have determined to donate to all lawsuits fighting this scourge. There are two that I know of currently: https://www.fairforall.org/fundraiser-for-gabrielle-clark/ and https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-jodi-stand-up-to-smith-college
I am a military veteran and am politically liberal/libertarian depending on issue and I am terrified for my country at present. Please pass these links around. Thank you!
"We need a database that lists all schools where this kind of indoctrination is occurring ..." In a short order of time it will be a database of almost all schools. And I share your concern.
We are parents of a ten-year old in a public school. No problems so far, but we're in California so we know it's coming. The county office of education is already embracing CRT ideas. Our options for dealing with it when the day comes are 1) private school; 2) home schooling; 3) un-teach the poisonous doctrines ourselves. Parents we never thought would take up home schooling have started on it.
Check out this link - https://criticalrace.org. Might be a resource you could use.
Oh wow thanks! I'm really glad a database exists, but it's unfortunate they don't have any k-12 data. Only for colleges and universities. For me, kids in college are capable of rolling their eyes and dismissing this stuff. Forcing these fringe ideas on K-12 kids is where it crosses the line into brainwashing / indoctrination territory. That's what really ticks me off.
I'm guessing the only way to build a database/repository of k-12 school data would be to crowdsource it.
You would be mistaken regarding the kids in college being capable of rolling their eyes and dismissing this stuff. Disagreeing, publically, with the CRT doctrine will get you cancelled, removed from any student positions you hold and possibly expelled. There is a dwindling number of campuses where this is 'not' happening.
This student published this cognizant, well reasoned response to CRT at Cornell anonymously, because it would have subjected him to threats of physical harassment and harm as well as widespreading 'doxxing' if he/she had published their name.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/04/student-cornell-faculty-senate-must-reject-proposed-critical-race-re-education-mandates-on-faculty/
I agree with you - and we also have to vote people out of office that push this stuff too - I don’t want to be political but this stuff had been banned in federal agencies and that was reversed.
The only way this stops is for teachers like Paul to sue on grounds of a hostile work environment and violating his 1st Amendment rights and his right to a freedom of conscience.
Mr Rossi might find a lawyer (check with the Federalist Society's NYC office) and consider a complaint with the Federal/State EEOC agencies on the grounds of viewpoint discrimination. The publicity alone will concentrate the minds of his administrators, and sober some parents to see beyond the status symbolism of this "School"
Time to fight back.
Let’s start using “neo-racist” (instead of “antiracist”) when referring to CRT and people promoting it as neo-racists (rather then “antiracist”). Words matter. Perhaps more people will realise what is going on.
Thank you. It is unbelievable that this propaganda has captured our schools without most of us even noticing. It seems like it happened overnight.
Congratulations Bari, you have a new subscriber! (From New Zealand) I have been thinking about it for a while but the excellence of this piece and the hope that you will use your editorial skills to effectively build “an alternate paper” finally made me hit the button. What is in this column is truly frightening, but I am convinced by the humanity of the author that it is equally true.
I worry that my “sponsorship” efforts in journalism to date are mainly helping the already mega successful (Taibbi, Greenwald, quillette, spiked) but with you I get the feeling you will find the little known voices and set them in front of me with the reference that they deserve.
I just became a new subscriber as well for exactly the same reason. Great information.
The ideologues are firmly in charge of public education and much of private education. Right and wrong don’t matter. Reasoning with people who have political ideology as their religion is hopeless.
Mr. Rossi is showing great moral courage. He will be punished for it. My father spent over a year, and my uncle over two years, killing those who wished to enslave others to an ideology. Mr. Rossi will find that their old maxim of “the nail that sticks up, gets hammered down” is still in the toolbox.
These ideologically motivated educators are equal to those malefactors.
They wish to enslave your child’s mind. Bind it and make it rigid and incapable of reasoning.
May God bless Mr. Rossi and strengthen him.
Thank you, Ms. Weiss for publishing this.
What a terrifying piece. Thank you for bringing your experience to wider attention – a courageous move in today’s climate. I have two sons in their early teens who are at school in the UK. The situation is not as bad here as you describe – YET – but it is increasingly obvious that this pernicious orthodoxy is gaining ground.
My concern with this ever-growing trend of Critical Race indoctrination is that the people who are driving it, despite their protestations, have NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER in achieving equality between the races.
Because they are not in the Equality business. They are in the Grievance business.
And business is good at the moment. There are fortunes to be made, stirring the pot, feeding the sense of guilt among Whites and stoking the sense of victimhood among the Black community.
Beyond their own pockets – WHO DOES THAT SERVE? Are these people looking to improve relations between communities? It doesn’t seem so. Their movement only appears capable of creating division. Separating and segregating people based on which “community” they “belong” to.
The liberal-left decries inequality of opportunity and income disparity as the two main evils that are fracturing society. But I’d suggest this Identity politics agenda is a far more pernicious way to separate us.
Identity politics is the very antithesis of the principles of universalism - it suggests what differentiates us is more important than what we have in common. Surely we should treasure more what we share as members of a diverse community rather than seek to silo people and segregate that community into ghettos based on our racial identities, sexual orientation, age, gender or creed?
How do people who claim to speak for progressive attitudes justify shifting the argument from Martin Luther King’s dream of a future where people are judged according to their character rather than the colour of their skin to the point where these activists are calling for PRECISELY THE OPPOSITE? That you are defined, as a person, solely by the groups to which you belong. To abandon that call for universalism in favour of separatism is surely a retrograde step? That point seems so incontestable to me that I am utterly baffled how “progressives” can think their present strategy is advancing the cause of equality.
When it comes to the vast majority of those who’ve bought into the woke agenda, I think it comes from a good place. Many seem unaware of the malignant undertones of the BLM movement, and buy into the simple idea that ‘Black Lives Matter’ – but that is so obvious a statement as to be almost a banality.
How, though, do the well-intentioned woke justify to themselves calling for the cancellation of anyone who counters with ‘All Lives Matter’, or any other push-back against these pernicious doctrine?
I’m not paranoid enough (yet) to believe that the majority of the “woke” actually want to see society divided – but I cannot fathom how they think the divisive, separatist attitudes of their movement can possibly bring us together. It seems so self-evidently self-defeating.
Just a few years ago we were exhorted as a society to be colour-blind, to accept people simply as people, whatever their background, their lifestyle, their “differences”.
What happened to that idea?
For many years I lived in London and worked in an industry (Broadcast TV) that was as diverse as one could possibly find anywhere. As far as I was concerned the arguments of Race, Gender, Creed, Orientation had been fought and largely won. We seemed at the time – perhaps naively – to be enjoying the peace.
Maybe those who are inclined to be activists feel they have to keep picking at the scab and reopening old wounds or there is no point to their existence, but it seems incredible that we’ve gone so far backwards and quite so quickly.
As I say, I have a good deal of sympathy with the young in all this – not the activists who are driving this movement, but those who’ve grown up in this atmosphere. They’ve been fed a constant diet of woke totems and “progressive” thought (actually horribly regressive thought) throughout their education and now must navigate a “thought-crime minefield” where the slightest miss-step can blow up in their faces.
Some, believing what they’ve been taught - and with the best intentions – try to stick to all the latest approved attitudes and mantras and find themselves saying and doing things that (I can only hope) will make them shudder with embarrassment when they look back on them in years to come. I’m optimistic that they’ll be young enough to still have the chance of an awakening (from their awokening?). Others eschew the whole concept of inclusivity and adopt almost a siege mentality that helps no one (the rise of the young alt-right in America is a direct consequence of US College campus PC conformity).
For those cultural Marxists driving this movement and cancelling any who dare gainsay it, of course debate must be silenced. The easiest way to prevent your argument from being examined, its flaws exposed to ridicule, is to prevent any discussion of it in the first place. The easiest way to gain status is to tear down those who would even dare question your argument. That is the defining characteristic of cancel culture. It appears, from the outside, almost a competition as those who vie for greater woke status compete with fellow adherents to identify and criticise (what reasonable people would see as) vanishingly trivial offenses.
You can spend years going along with the progressive herd, but the minute you fall out of lock-step with them on a single contentious issue you will be turned on. Previous adherence to orthodoxy is no defence once you’ve been accused of heresy. Each and every trifling misstep – or statement of biological fact – must be campaigned against as if they are proof positive of racism – or transphobia, sexism or patriarchal oppression.
And so anyone who is not willing to go to war is compelled to agree with this nonsense, or at the very least stay silent on the matter, for fear that they too will be “cancelled” or face accusations of bigotry.
Reagan saw this coming in the mid-70s when he noted “If fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism.”
But not only does the politics of grievance divide us, it makes us weaker. It glorifies victimhood and vilifies anyone who tries to suggest otherwise. The #metoo movement could have been empowering, yet insisting that a clumsy advance, or an unwanted touch of a knee, is somehow equivalent to rape is insane. Who is that empowering? Telling every woman they are a victim, teaching impressionable young women they are likely to become victims, that all men are naturally predatory? Does that heal divisions in society or exacerbate them?
Similarly, teaching young black men that they are oppressed, that society doesn’t value them as much, that the police are not to be trusted. Who does that help? Does it improve their chances of success in life or does it weigh them down with unnecessary baggage? Does it drive a wedge between communities, between groups? I would suggest that, yes, of course it does.
In the end, the politics of grievance can only be defeated by a better politics – but that has to be rooted in honesty, not what fits the narrative. Honest assessments of a situation probably sell fewer newspapers, or get fewer Youtube views, than sensationalised hyperbole. This poses a dilemma for any media outlet that has bought into the identity fixated woke agenda.
The ongoing narrative is blatantly at odds with reality. The “liberal Left” media - in thrall to appearing Woke – has a narrative that drives and supports a worldview that is predicated on catastrophism and a dystopian future – it seems almost as though they are willing such a future into existence.
For each anecdotal instance of intolerance that gets trumpeted as “proof” of widespread bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia, etc there are a million other instances of just everyday acceptance of people, – regardless of colour, nationality or gender – that aren’t worthy of anecdote simply because they are so everyday.
I would suggest that these activists seem not merely willing, but positively hoping, to see the country divided, pitting their Woke agenda against the reality of a tolerant and accepting society. In an attempt to appear Woke they are sleepwalking the country into the very same dystopian future that they imagine our present to be.
Worst of all this movement pits the young against their own families who have not bought into this madness. But the young have been told that any who do not immediately fall into line are somehow the intolerant and hateful ones!
Many of these woke activists would undoubtedly denounce any who’d think to pigeonhole someone whilst, almost in the same breath, constructing a fairly sturdy pigeonhole themselves and stuffing it with a well-fed pigeon.
You can’t win (unless you simply refuse to play their game).
Mr. Patrick: Your comment should be a column all its own. One of the best things I've read (no disrespect to Mr. Rossi; a very fine piece).
I knew this country was in deep, deep trouble beginning in the late '90s. After serving 12 years in the U.S. Army (graduating #1, #1, and #2 in the three titular schools for NCO advancement), after a 20-year I.T. career at the CIO/CTO level in Fortune 500 (Young & Rubicam; Burson-Marsteller, more); major non-profits (National Food Processors Association; AAUW, Water Environment Federation, more), and gov't. agencies (Pentagon, TS clearance), and writing a Biz-Tech management guide that became an MBA-text at UofW and several other universities, I feel I've long-had a commanding view and perspective on where this country is heading. (I also have a working class background - I feel I'm a rare bird). In the late '90s, two things happened: It became difficult-to-impossible to fire people for cause if they were female and/or Black. That may sound inflammatory - it is simply... Truth. I watched quality positions and teams go down. I watched "good people," including PoC, leave rather than buy into the brand of compromised ethics, quality-of-work, and basic tenets once universally recognized and honored.
I've had these characterizations ripped off and repeated elsewhere, but they are original to me: When planes start falling out of the sky, when the bridge you're driving across falls down, when you can't trust a simple bank balance, you'll know that simple math wasn't racist after all: It was empirical, prudent, and necessary. No: 2+2 never equals anything but 4. Showing your work qualifies you for that "A." Punctuality is a necessary standard that begets and supports many, many others. I love this expression and I employed it to great effect in the business arena and associated projects: On time - on target - on budget. I can't imagine what its like today. I know this: We are in deep, deep trouble.
We're all the way down to the family level in terms of fracturing this country: I'm ostracized from many members - and more and more people tell me the same. Leftists are mentally ill. Might as well face it. Seek people of what I call Plain Sense & Sanity: "Common Sense" has been destroyed.
We now live in a supposed Land of the Free (where you're mandated to wear an unhealthty diaper on your face), and the Home of the Brave
It is the insistence that ones “Lived Experience” somehow carries more weight than facts that is so dishonest.
How many times on Liberal comments pages do you see someone’s comment - packed full of well-attested data - being dismissed out of hand with a Big-Lebowski-like “Yeah, but that’s just, like, your opinion, man”.
It is more than dishonest, it’s just a moronic way to debate anything, and yet it seems to have become a respectable way to defend ones position in discussion.
It would be like pointing out that all the scientific evidence that smoking is bad for you is incontrovertible, and demonstrating all the data that backs that up, and having someone counter that with, “Well, my grandad smoked 60 Woodbines a day and he was playing football into his 80s”.
The only sensible answer to that is, “So f***ing what”.
My generation was taught that we were entitled to our own opinion - but that we better have facts and data to back that opinion up so that we could make the case for what we believed.
Subsequent generations have been taught that they're entitled not merely to their own opinions, but to their own facts as well! Not that it matters much because opinions are more important than facts, and opinions are weighted by belonging to particular groups. The more oppressed and victimised the group, the more weight their opinion carries.
How many people ever preface a statement with - "Speaking as a ….. ….." unless they believe that belonging to that specific group confers on them special insight, or a 'right' to speak, that is denied to those outside the group?
Identity politics means I can't "really" understand you, I can’t really empathise with you, I'm not allowed to because I am not a woman, or I am not black, I am not gay, I am not a Muslim. If I think I do understand you, or if I volunteer an opinion, then I'm mansplaining, I'm arrogantly assuming that my opinion is valid even though I don't have the lived experience of suffering abuse by belonging to the right victim group.
Such are the grisly politics of grievance.
Frankly anyone who thinks that is advancing the cause for equality, or improving society, wants their head read!
Yes: This "My lived experience" idea that different people and cultures yield different standards for groups, and different "correct" answers within empirical disciplines (STEM) is utter rubbish. By the way, I accidentally clicked "Post" above. I meant to finish up with, "Home of the Brave" no more, whereby we're teaching children to run from life's challenges. When a virus that has a 99.9% recovery rate, for whom children are immune, shuts down schools coast-to-coast, destroys children's sports... Let's face it - this is part of a deliberate plan to weaken America. Life will never be perfect. Victimhood (something my childhood training eschewed) is celebrated, honored, and badged. I cannot state here what I think of Dems/modern-day-liberals/head-in-the-sand types. BTW, your original comment caused me to instantly subscribe to this forum, as I paged some other comments.
nice comment. you write:
"How do people who claim to speak for progressive attitudes justify shifting the argument from Martin Luther King’s dream of a future where people are judged according to their character rather than the colour of their skin to the point where these activists are calling for PRECISELY THE OPPOSITE? That you are defined, as a person, solely by the groups to which you belong. To abandon that call for universalism in favour of separatism is surely a retrograde step? That point seems so incontestable to me that I am utterly baffled how “progressives” can think their present strategy is advancing the cause of equality."
Universalism has been abandoned. Post-modernism tells us that politics, knowledge, reason, philosophy, ideology, scholarship, economics are all tools for accumulating power and wealth. If you argue for universalism, you are really arguing for maintenance of the current power structure, for your own ideological interests.
Those who acknowledge this (the "woke") are simply being honest, real. Group power dynamics are how you achieve justice and change. Meritocracy is a lie, individuals can't change the system, only battles among groups can. Thus the relentless categorizing into "us" and "them" and which side you're on.
This sort of thinking leads to these conclusions:
https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333
This is the future unless people decide to dust of their philosophy books and get to work.
Patrick, your reply compels me to refrain from adding anything of intellectual substance to this issue. I have been fighting this madness for ten years strong now and as one would expect I have paid a steep price for speaking truth to lies; and you're so right, my 13 years of teaching diverse groups of troubled youth and then changing professions and working tirelessly as a Cook County (Il.) Assistant Public Defender did nothing to impede my own sisters from defaming me (I became a RACIST of course) and did little to prevent my wife and children from abandoning me when I needed their support. They were understandably frightened and too weak to stand beside me but I have remained undaunted (although exhausted) in remaining a vocal opponent of this hateful, divisive, racist, cancer that has metastasized at a rate that may leave this nation terminally impaired. I'm too old and too isolated right now to organized some rational and non violent show of force, some great March on Washington style of protest, but I would drop everything to be part of such an event. I implore people like Barry and the very fine people at FAIR to organize such an event. I love this forum and am encouraged when I learn that there are so many right thinking people out there who share many of my views; however I yearn for an opportunity to be part of a larger voice on these issues. I understand that such a gathering risks drawing in people who like to become disruptive, but these messages that Mr. Rossi and others are now spreading need a larger forum. We need to increase the size of our rather small megaphone if we're to have a chance, no?
Thanks for sharing all these stories, Bari. But until these schools start being sued for racism and discrimination, nothing will change. Accordingly, local politicians should speak up and start introducing local regulation banning this neo-racist teaching.
Local regulation? Expect DeBlasio to charge this brave man with a hate crime.
Is this for real? Why are parents allowing their students to be abused like this. When they get in the real world and find that independent and creative thinking are valued, how in the world are they going to compete and survive. Let alone enjoy relationships with friends or spouse that thrive when there is give and take and openness to differences of opinion.
Unfortunately the real world doesn’t value independent and creative thinking anymore. Corporate America is fully on board with all this. They say “be yourself” but whisper “but only if it’s within our guidelines”.
The ideology has seeped into the real world. That’s part of the problem. When these indoctrinated children graduate, they will either go to a university that will echo their previous indoctrination, or they will find a job at a company that has bought into the same ideology and have HR departments full of university graduates that are soldiers of the same ideology.
Because the mob is ruthless and they are terrified. Even tiny pushbacks or delicate questioning leads to ostacization and loss of moral authority. Most of these people are rich and have a great deal to lose if they speak out. The mob doesn't just get you excommunicated from your social circle and your children thrown out of school (and by extension no other private school will have you either), but they also go after people's livelihoods and careers, digging up dirt wherever they can and working to strip dissenters of all social capital. The hysteria of the truly self-righteous is frightening and intimidating. Most people are shutting up and hoping it goes away. However, I'm afraid they are going to be sadly disappointed.
I know these people. I grew up with these people. They are so convicted of their own righteousness that they can see nothing else.
I so appreciate this teacher and you Bari for publishing his story. I am so proud to be able to support you and your work via substack. I hope that decoupling true journalists from the gatekeepers will save and improve your noble profession. We've never needed journalism so badly as we do now.
This CRT stuff gives me China Cultural Revolution vibes. Why aren't we seeing hundreds of lawsuits? Is that something you can report on? Are lawsuits happening?
Yes, more information about how this is being fought please!! Maybe this site could have a section with links to groups working on this problem. If we can band together to support one another our voice is harder to ignore.
You are so right. Talking is only productive if it produces results. Yes, it can be uplifting and comforting to know that others feel similarly but right now we need action before we're completely bulldozed by this totalitarian juggernaut that is attempting to blitzkrieg their way through our schools and across America. I just read the Nevada lawsuit posted by W. It's very long even if you skim read it but it is frightening in a way that I've never been frightened before, and I'm 65 years old. I've been confronting this insanity for over 30 years now in my often private way. But our kids our going to be in a world of hurt if we don't roll up our sleeves and go after this hateful and divisive ideology. It's not a stretch to see these people seeking to eliminate their opposition if they have the power. We have work to do.
Here's one that FAIR is supporting. Agree we need many more.
https://www.fairforall.org/gabrielle-pdfs/schoolhouserights-org-nevada-complaint_compressed.pdf
Wow! I predict that this column becomes one of the most important and impactful in the growing battle over critical race theory ("CRT") This tears the seemingly just "anti-racist" branding and facade off of the deeply illiberal substance of CRT. Grace is now boxed: if they further reprimand, punish, or even terminate Paul Rossi, they will be further demonstrating how illiberal the school has become in brooking no ideological dissent. On the other hand, if they take the wiser and more just course of action and take no action against him, then other faculty members and students-- at Grace and other schools -- will be emboldened to dissent from CRT. Such dissent can only weaken the coerced conformity and compliance that is a key component of CRT. Paul Rossi deserves our thanks and praise!