How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory

How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory

"To Christopher Rufo, a term for a school of legal scholarship looked like the perfect weapon.
By Benjamin Wallace-Wells
June 18, 2021

Remote work turned out to be advantageous for people looking to leak information to reporters. Instructions that once might have been given in conversation now often had to be written down and beamed from one home office to another. Holding a large meeting on Zoom often required e-mailing supporting notes and materials—more documents to leak. Before the pandemic, if you thought that an anti-racism seminar at your workplace had gone awry, you had to be both brave and sneaky to record it. At home, it was so much easier. Zoom allowed you to record and take screenshots, and if you were worried that such actions could be traced you could use your cell phone, or your spouse’s cell phone, or your friend’s. Institutions that had previously seemed impenetrable have been pried open: Amazon, the I.R.S., the U.S. Treasury. But some less obviously tectonic leaks have had a more direct political effect, as was the case in July, 2020, when an employee of the city of Seattle documented an anti-bias training session and sent the evidence to a journalist named Christopher F. Rufo, who read it and recognized a political opportunity.
.....

The next morning, Rufo was home with his wife and two sons when he got a phone call from a 202 area code. The man on the other end, Rufo recalled, said, “ ‘Chris, this is Mark Meadows, chief of staff, reaching out on behalf of the President. He saw your segment on ‘Tucker’ last night, and he’s instructed me to take action.” Soon after, Rufo flew to Washington, D.C., to assist in drafting an executive order, issued by the White House in late September, that limited how contractors providing federal diversity seminars could talk about race. “This entire movement came from nothing,” Rufo wrote to me recently, as the conservative campaign against critical race theory consumed Twitter each morning and Fox News each night. But the truth is more specific than that. Really, it came from him."

... https://www.newyorker.com/news/anna...vented-the-conflict-over-critical-race-theory​

Nice long read. Hopefully it won't block anybody (it should come up as a free sample, essentially, if you're not signed up and haven't read other articles lately).

Anyway, you can see from this how a bogeyman has been crafted that fits the modern culture war dynamic very fittingly. It's so sad that people like Rufo are financially rewarded for coming up with crap that only divides and harms our country. That is the modern (alternative) media and faux-political environment for you. The only solution is for people to stop letting guys like Rufo here purposely misinform them and get them riled up over a whole lot of lies and no substance.

 

Rufo didn't "come up with crap that only divides and harms our country", the mis-named Seattle Office for Civil Rights did. Rufo just made it public. You understand that, right?

 

the issue here as I understand it is that the information was discovered.

 

Yes, that's what the whole first paragraph is about: lamenting that they can't keep their racist "training" from the prying eyes of the public as easily anymore.

 

Just another "moderate" Leftist running to the defense of Neo-Marxist hate propaganda...

 

In what way did Rufo misinform anyone? What lies did he tell? And the information seems pretty substantial to me. I read that article and Rufo seems like a heroic investigative journalist.

 

The fact that there is such a vehement reaction to nothing shows the depths of white guilt so many have. If it weren't so painful, the truth would be accepted.

 

The truth is acceptable. Seattle city government just doesn't come within a country mile of anything even remotely resembling it. If you imagine our disgust with Seattle's lies is a symptom of "white guilt", then Seattle isn't the only one miles from the truth.

 

Yup, white guilt as clear as the day is long. Otherwise teaching the truth wouldn't be a big deal. They feel guilty because they know the system is rigged but are too lazy to bother understanding why.

 

You should feel guilt when posting such claptrap....

 

The only people I can think who would oppose teaching anti-bias, anti-racism, anti-bigotry, ... are people who are biased, racist and bigoted (again: not necessarily referring to anybody in this forum... hopefully). These are people who are easily manipulated by creeps like Tucker Carlson and Rufo.

 

It is just the other way around. It is the guilty whites who support anti-racist teaching. What is being taught?

1. All Whites are racist.
2. If you object to this idea you are really, really racist.
3. The only way to absolve yourself of the sin of racism is to become anti-racist.

Hence it is guilty Whites who are anti-racist.

 

I don't do paywall or data mining articles and you should not be using them to post with.

 

Here is another class of people you can think of. Some of the .people who object to this teaching are those who object to being called racist.

 

post like this do not help

be like black people getting upset that someone says blacks are criminals and then when they voice that concern of being racially attacked, they get attacked again, saying they must have black guilt

don't fall into their trap, they want to divide whites and blacks

the truth is, black or white, no one wants to be accused of the crimes of others of the same race as themselves that they took no part in

 

that is not what the majority are teaching

but yes, there will always be the crazies that take it that far, they are the ones both should be against, regardless of their race

 

"if you thought that an anti-racism seminar at your workplace had gone awry, you had to be both brave and sneaky to record it. At home, it was so much easier. Zoom allowed you to record and take screenshots, and if you were worried that such actions could be traced you could use your cell phone"

the ironic thing is, most mega corps use this training to attack anyone against foreign outsourcing of their jobs more than anything else nowadays

 

Look at these two just spewing their white guilt...



We should be teaching kids to not judge a person by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. We will only continue racism the more we inject color as a factor of class.

 

And those crazies write NYT bestsellers and are invited onto network talk shows.

But I am glad to see that you are on the side of the protesting parents.

 

Yet CRT teaches there is a permanent victim class which in itself is racist. Anti-bias, anti-racism, and anti-bigotry can still be taught in school but an offbeat spinoff of Marxist Critical Theory born out of left wing academia is indoctrination, not education.

What is interesting to watch is the left now trying to turn this into a vast rightwing conspiracy.

 

Seems relevant to discussion

 

Same as the whole "COVID leaked form a lab is a right wing conspiracy" to now "The Wuhan Covid 19 lab leak theory has evolved and we should look into it".

It's mind numbing watching the left shift positions. I never thought I'd see the day where Marxism was so widely accepted.

 

Only those who object to being called racist because they actually are racists. Those who are not racist are more than happy that there are classes where what racism is and is not is taught and discussed.

 

So when your children and grandchildren call you a racist you won't object?

 

Your statement demonstrates that teaching "Critical Race Theory" (God, I hate that name!) is not only necessary but urgent.