With the political relevance, Critical Race Theory (CRT) has, liberals somehow still think they have a leg to stand on to claim that it's not taught in schools. There's proof that it has indeed been taught, though, and deep-dive investigations from Tucker Carlson, and others, reveal it's been an issue for years now.
It appears that Carlson was one of the first to bring attention to CRT.
Two years ago, on November 11, 2019, L Hunnicut wrote about how "Carlson Gives Voice To Arizona Parents In 'Deep Equity' Segment" for the Arizona Daily Independent News Network.
Hunnicut, transcribing part of Carlson's episode from November 10, 2019, shared the following.
“If you don’t have kids in school you might imagine that the worst trends in American education are pretty much confined to our most liberal cities – you know in Seattle math is racist, in New York City gifted and talented programs are oppressive, in Berkeley; God knows what they’re doing. The left has abandoned education in favor of naked political propaganda. You know that, but it’s comforting to think it’s not happening near you or your children. Unfortunately, that’s not true. It is happening probably right down the street from where you are. Now an investigation by this show found a radical new curriculum in schools across the country from Arizona to Iowa. The program is called “Deep Equity. It’s produced by a for-profit education company called Corwin which is based in California. Corwin describes “Deep Equity as a teacher training program that is “aimed at producing real school improvement for equity and social justice. So how does deep equity do that? Well mainly by attacking the students on the basis of their skin color. According to “Deep Equity,” America is based on a hierarchy of various oppressions: men oppress women, Christianity oppresses Islam, English oppresses Spanish, white people oppress everyone, and by the way if you have a problem with this explanation you are yourself entrenching oppression. You’re part of the problem according to Corwin….”
“Yet according to one teacher we spoke to who is uses curriculum the “Deep Equity” curriculum forces teachers to become racial activists. Not that you need to interview anyone to find that out. It’s obvious they’re not teaching anything having to do with math or Science or English or Language. They’re teaching racial activism; certain to confuse and wound and divide our kids of all colors.”
Fast forward to 2021, and Carlson has still been instrumental, especially considering he calls CRT out by name, while also detailing how confusing it all is.
In an op-ed for Fox News from June 24, "If 'White rage' is a medical condition, how do you catch it?" Carlson wrote:
In the universities, this is called "critical race theory," so that’s the term many people go with. "Critical race theory" — that’s what we so often debate on TV. But it’s an inaccurate way to describe what’s happening. Like so much academic jargon, the phrase "critical race theory" doesn’t mean anything. It obscures, rather than illuminates. It’s designed to confuse you. What’s happening in our schools and our military and our government is both simpler and easier to recognize than that. It’s not critical race theory. It’s racism. Not "neo-racism" or "reverse racism." Those are meaningless terms. It’s race hate, peddled by the people in charge in the hope it’ll make them more powerful. That’s all it is.
Perhaps those who were so quick to mock Carlson for telling Brit Hume during his November 3 show that "he's never figured out what critical race theory is," should have read that column for context.
In another op-ed from February 19, "The far-left agenda your children are being taught every day," Carlson reminded readers that he's been covering the issue since his show aired, that "we have covered the way our schools are changing and the indoctrination that your kids are suffering through. Over the past four-plus years, the curricula in so many schools has turned from the extremely left-wing to the outright totalitarian."
When it domes to "the outright totalitarian," Carlson went on to warn in a July 6 op-ed that "If you question critical race theory, crazed ideologues will attack you and hurt your children."
Carlson isn't the only one addressing CRT head-on.
Marc Thiessen has brought up the issue in multiple columns for the Washington Post. The entire November 11 column, "The danger of critical race theory," is worth reading, but here's a particularly important explanation:
CRT rejects democracy as a “relic of Enlightenment reason,” [Princeton University professor Allen C. Guelzo] says, and argues that White people “use tricks like democracy and the search for truth … to exploit and oppress and dominate people of color.” Don’t take his word for it. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, authors of “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction,” state that “critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.”
Virginia has gotten a considerable amount of attention, where Republican Governor-Elect Glenn Youngkin made it a priority to discuss CRT on the campaign trail and promised to outlaw it.
Youngkin's opponent, meanwhile, Terry McAuliffe, constantly referred to CRT as "a racist dog whistle" and even claimed that it wasn't taught in Virginia. As I covered last month, though, shortly before the election, the Virginia Department of Education website references CRT concepts.
Parents Defending Education recently posted a list of 20 examples where CRT is being taught in Virginia.
I was assured that CRT was not in the curriculum.
— Larry O'Connor (@LarryOConnor) November 10, 2021
Please read my latest column: CRT Isn't in the Curriculum, It's the Language of the Curriculumhttps://t.co/MOZrplxJo2 https://t.co/YYjmI715g6
In a November 9 column for Townhall, Larry O'Connor aptly summed it up with how "CRT Isn't in the Curriculum, It's the Language of the Curriculum."
This is another column worth reading in its entirety. But here's some excerpts:
Perhaps they're trying to hang their hats on a very narrow, semantic argument here. Since there isn't a "Critical Race Theory 101" class in your local elementary school, they believe they can claim CRT isn't in the curriculum.
But it is a deception not worthy of the best liars in the media.
...
No, CRT is not in the curriculum of these schools. It is woven into the very fabric of the curriculum of these schools.
It would be easy to opt out of the CRT class. It's a lot harder to disentangle the Critical Race Theory philosophy... no, ideology, from every part of the language and framework in the curriculum of nearly every class your kid takes at the school you pay for and apparently aren't allowed to have any input in.
And, as Thiessen had also explained, in "Democrats are lying about critical race theory" from November 9:
The left’s CRT denial is intellectually dishonest. Just because grade-school students are not studying academic treatises on critical race theory does not mean it is not being taught in schools. Most of these students are also not reading Karl Marx, but if they were being instructed by teachers trained in Marxist thought to see everything through the prism of class struggle, they would be learning Marxism. Well, today children are being instructed by teachers trained in CRT to see everything through the prism of race; to believe that the United States is a systemically racist country; and to believe that society is divided into two classes — oppressors and oppressed — and that which you are is determined by the color of your skin. That is critical race theory.
Democrats are gaslighting American parents — telling them not to believe what they can see with their own eyes. Before the pandemic this might have worked. Most parents didn’t know firsthand what their children were being taught. But during last year’s lockdowns that changed. Millions of parents were stuck working from home while their kids were attending school online — which allowed parents to see for the first time what their kids were learning in the classroom. Many did not like what they saw. Nor did they like being told that the promotion of CRT is a figment of their imaginations, when in Virginia, it is right on the Department of Education’s website for all to see. So, they rose up to demand change.
Virginia may have just had a highly publicized statewide election, but CRT is hardly contained to the commonwealth. Parents Defending Education also has an "Indoctrination Map," which shows this is particularly a problem on the East Coast.