Jeff M. Lewis – It is encouraging to see that at least some of the broader culture’s acceptance of Critical Race Theory (CRT) is waning, but we can be assured the zeal among CRT’s adherents will not wane. Therefore, we must mimic the radical left’s tactics and keep the pressure on, to reveal the whole vacuous pack of lies. Understanding CRT’s effects on people and reading what a rising CRT star—Bettina Love—wants to do to America’s Black students, help expose those lies.

The Democrat party’s radical left is a soul-crushing autocracy. Their ideologies do not empower anyone to pursue happiness or to succeed and are not what America’s youth need to be taught about our country or how to live and thrive in the greatest nation on earth. Leftists everywhere demand allegiance and compliance, and dissent cannot be tolerated, because a close examination of their doctrines exposes them as morally bankrupt and utterly insufficient.

It is not racist to say CRT and its activists are wrong. It would be racist to acquiesce to the falsehoods, inherent racism, and bigotry espoused in their ideologies and to allow them to go unchallenged. There are more than sufficient real-life examples to prove how wrong they are.

Let’s try a sports analogy. Suppose there were two teams. The teams’ racial diversity is inconsequential; both teams possess sufficient talent to compete at the requisite level and to meet one another in sanctioned competition. Imagine there is one big difference—one team acknowledges and competes according to the rules of the game. The other team does not, either because its players lack knowledge of, preparation for, or regard for the rules of competition.

Sports competition is analogous to real life. Every member of the team has his or her unique talents, gifts, and abilities. For the individual players and the team to succeed (for the system to work) all members of the team makes the best use of their abilities and play by the rules. Moreover, there is an abiding culture in which “sportsmanship” and acceptable behavior enhance and reinforce the rules of the game.

Imagine the chaos that would ensue during the game if one team played by the rules and one did not. According to the rules, penalties would be called and enforced. The infractions could prevent the penalized team from scoring points and the game might end in a crushing and embarrassing defeat. Worse, if the infractions continued and were severe enough, that team might be permanently disqualified from competing.

In this analogy, the Left would protest “the system” and the rules of the game as unjust. They would deny their loss was a legitimate consequence because their team failed to abide by the rules or compete in good sportsmanship, which could have allowed them to win. The Left has an unrelenting desire to see every inequity as an injustice and the inherent inequality in life’s outcomes among individuals and among people of different races as evidence that the “system” is irredeemably flawed.

Enforcing the rules is not racist, and neither is playing by the rules to succeed and win in life.

Bettina Love may be less known outside the CRT activist sphere of influence than her comrades Ibrahim X. Kendi, Nicole Hannah-Jones, or Robyn DiAngelo but, according to Gabe Kaminsky, writing at The Federalist, her profile and influence are rapidly rising. She is an “anti-racist” professor at the University of Georgia, and her 2019 book, We Want to Do More Than Survive has been called the most up-to-date and unvarnished presentation of the CRT movement in education. Kaminsky quotes Love:

… schools have participated in “the spirit murdering of Black and Brown children” since there is “a death that is built on racism and intended to reduce, humiliate, and destroy people of color.”

In a 30 July 2021 column in National Review, Stanley Kurtz writes,

[Love] disdains the efforts of educators and policymakers to instill in “dark children” traits like problem solving, zest, self-advocacy, grit, optimism, self-control, curiosity, and gratitude. Love considers education designed to encourage character traits like hard work, discipline, and personal responsibility to be anti-Black.

A thorough read and clear-eyed assessment of the articles quoted above should leave little doubt that Bettina Love’s goal (along with CRT) is to abolish not only America’s capitalist economic system but America itself.

That goal is concerning enough (abolish America to replace it with what?) but the “indictment” she presents, that the educational system has been “spirit murdering” people of color, is patently false. In her words, American education is “anti-Black” because it teaches “dark children” foundational values and norms such as hard work, discipline, personal responsibility, self-control, problem-solving, joy, self-advocacy, optimism, and gratitude.

In her own words and by their literal meaning, Love is saying either one of two things:

• people of color are incapable of those attributes, attitudes, and values she listed, and teaching them is abusive, or
• those attributes, attitudes, and values are not what is necessary for people of color to thrive and succeed.

Either possible conclusion is so utterly flawed that both should be rejected outright, forcefully, and in the most explicit terms.

I cannot think of a more insulting attitude toward any person of any race or ethnicity than to tell them those beneficial personal values and qualities that lead to success are not attributable to them because of their race or ethnicity. Also, it is the epitome of the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” It is not racist to expect anyone, of any race or ethnicity, to behave in a manner that is a proven path to success.

It is supremely ironic that the title of her book, and what she advocates, are so diametrically opposite. As an educator or mentor, Love’s position is bankrupt and should be rejected. Can there be any worse advice? Yet those are the tenets of the BLM movement and CRT adherents.

Therefore, we reach the inescapable conclusions that CRT is not about building up people of color, but is a “spirit-murdering,” soul-crushing worldview. The Colorado father who in August 2021 addressed his local school board said it best, that racism in America would “by and large be dead” except that there are institutions “keeping it on life support.”

In Critical Theory, from its Marxist origins to Critical Race Theory, every facet and nuance is meant to crush the souls of people of color by exploiting an attitude of victimization and to crush the souls of White people with the guilt attributed to the color of their skin. By destroying our faith in ourselves and in one another, they seek to destroy America and the free-market economy that has created more prosperity than any other in the world.

They want to burn it all down. Their goal is to rebuild it into a system that has never worked in human history and it will not work now.

There is nothing about CRT that can be of any earthly good to anyone. By its adherents’ rejection of the timeless values that are critical to an individual’s success, CRT crushes the soul. It is a pernicious lie and is the “spirit-murdering” ideological cancer metastasizing in our culture. Like any illness, must be cured or it will kill its host.

SF Source American Thinker Oct 2021