The political and media elites that are whipping up anger over Critical Race Theory are furious with a teachers union leader for exposing their lies.
By John Nichols
The Republican Party’s cynical assault on Critical Race Theory is a political strategy that relies on controlling the message going into the 2022 midterm elections. So partisan apparatchiks, along with the talking heads that populate the GOP’s media echo chamber, have adopted a rigid approach to any dissent from the party line regarding what it hopes will be the new orthodoxy on teaching — or, to be more precise, not teaching—about historic and systemic racial injustice in America. If someone dares to suggest that what Republicans like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are proposing is not just shamelessly anti-historical but also threatening to freedom of speech and honest dialogue in the United States, the response is guaranteed to be rough.
Conservative strategists who see the assault on CRT as vital to their prospects for an electoral comeback are terrified that the absurdity of their arguments will be exposed. They want Democrats and progressives to avoid the subject so that Republican governors and Fox News hosts can convince suburban swing voters that the issue that matters most in their lives is the history curriculum at the local high school. It’s an old “culture wars” strategy, but it only works if the GOP spin goes unquestioned.
So challenges to the big lie du jour are treated as threats. Efforts to explain CRT as an academic project that seeks to expand thinking about systems that perpetuate racism are met with vitriol very nearly as intense as what might target a dissident calling out the false premises of an authoritarian régime.
Read more @ https://www.thenation.com/article/society/critical-race-theory-teachers/