As Progressives Lose Critical Race Theory Debate, They Change the Narrative | Opinion

Progressive educators and administrators tried to indoctrinate your kids with lesson plans influenced by critical race theory (CRT). They hoped you wouldn't find out. But parents caught on and fought back. Now, after some victories, activists are trying to change the narrative.

Activists disingenuously claim that the toxic ideology forced upon kids merely amounts to lessons about slavery—as if there's a single textbook presently in use that omits this topic. Teachers just want to teach about the Tulsa race massacre or the history of redlining, activists argue. And if you get in the way, you deny racism!

"Why wouldn't you want your kid to understand the roots of slavery and the legacy of slavery?" Chris Cuomo asked through a meandering and, at times, nonsensical segment with Don Lemon on CNN.

It's a relatively transparent strategy. But it's what left-wing activists do.

Using innocuous buzzwords like "equity," "inclusion" and "anti-racist," activists had hoped parents would be less alarmed. Who could be suspicious about teaching equity, after all? Inclusion is what we strive to engender in our kids! And, of course, parents want their kids to be against racism.

If this debate were simply about adding meaningful historical events to the curriculum, the anger wouldn't have gained much traction nationally.

In reality, schools introduced curricula to convince impressionable minds that this country is founded on white supremacy, and that our most cherished and essential institutions must be dismantled and rebuilt. Just take a look at the curriculum in the blue state of Washington.

Democrats in the Washington State Legislature pushed through bills mandating that public school staff receive CRT training, including how they can be "anti-racist" educators. Though the training isn't required until the 2023 school year, many districts have already introduced the radical worldview into their classrooms.

In Bothell, not far from Seattle, one teacher was caught showing a video on "white privilege" to her eighth-grade science students. The teacher told children that one's racial identity determines if one is privileged or marginalized. In fact, as one adult in the video said, "no amount of hard work or even legislation could make up" for the gap between privilege and oppression.

That's the message we're sending to kids?

Was the curriculum connected at all to science? No—and they don't even pretend that there's a connection. It was simply introduced as part of the district's commitment to "anti-racist" education.

In the majority-minority Highline School District, it seems the district's staff are race-obsessed. The district even holds an annual race symposium, most recently featuring a white teacher near tears as she discusses how she just finally realized she was white:

"I felt like yesterday I realized that I'm white and that I have all the advantages of being part of that group," she said. "Privileges that I don't really think I fully understood until yesterday. I was reading White Fragility, and I'm like, 'Oh, OK.' I think I'm taking that next step in my journey to understanding what's happening, what equity is about, what racial equity is about, what anti-racism is about and what racism is about."

CRT represents a fringe, radical belief that parents must keep out of schools despite left-wing school boards' unsubtle attempts at indoctrination. Sober-minded parents caught on thanks, in part, to the remote learning mandated by COVID restrictions. While science never backed keeping kids isolated at home, parked in front of computer screens, hearing their kids' teachers drone on about institutionalized racism or white privilege allowed parents to intimately meet the worldview brainwashing their kids. And what they heard shocked them.

"I consider CRT a very racist concept, and it's oppressive to all races. It has no place in our schools. Teachers should just stick to the basics and leave the rest to the families," one parent said at a recent Williamsburg-James City County Public Schools meeting in Virginia last week.

The disgust is fueling parental activism all across the country. And it explains why CRT cultists are now changing the narrative.

Left-wing "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd told Mediaite last week that concern over CRT is "a creation. ...It's a faux controversy that's being ginned up."

Meanwhile, MSNBC partisan Joy Reid claims CRT lessons simply teach that slavery was abhorrent. "Currently, most K-12 students already learn a kind of 'Confederate Race Theory,' whereby the Daughters of the Confederacy long ago imposed a version of history wherein slavery was not so bad and had nothing to do with the Civil War, and lynchings and violence never happened," she falsely claimed.

"And what is critical race theory? It's acknowledging our history," Laura Fink, a California Democratic Party surrogate, told FOX News.

Also on FOX News, during a debate with me on CRT, liberal talk show host Richard Fowler claimed that the current curriculum doesn't teach about slavery or even Jim Crow. "Basically, we had slaves in this country," he said. "We treated them pretty terribly. There was a thing called Jim Crow. During Jim Crow, African Americans were lynched. They weren't allowed to vote. They weren't given their rights. We had a failed war on drugs that impacted Black people badly. I don't understand what's wrong with teaching the truths about American history. It's what actually happened in this country."

Is there a single history textbook in this country that doesn't include meaningful lessons on slavery and Jim Crow? Or that lynching never happened? Of course not.

CRT advocates know this, but they argue the opposite to conceal the lesson plans that CRT opponents cite. In line with their go-to argumentative strategy, progressives then call you racist for pushing back against their actually racist curriculum. In short, they're hoping they can bully you into silence.

But the recent momentum from CRT opponents shows progressives' strategy is failing. And that is a very good development for our nation's children.

Jason Rantz is a frequent guest on Fox News and is the host of the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH Seattle, heard weekday afternoons. You can subscribe to his podcast here and follow him on Twitter: @jasonrantz.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.