{"id":1034,"date":"2021-03-14T19:13:23","date_gmt":"2021-03-14T19:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=1034"},"modified":"2025-09-29T05:38:47","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T05:38:47","slug":"how-to-oppose-critical-race-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=1034","title":{"rendered":"How to oppose Critical Race Theory"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Critical<\/a><\/p>\n

This is a pretty good article that takes maybe five minutes to read (but with lots of links to follow up on).<\/p>\n

In a word, fight it with ideas and free speech, not by trying the CRT tactic of censoring people who oppose their ideas.<\/p>\n

A new orthodoxy has taken over our educational institutions with frightening speed. People who likely never heard the phrase \u201ccritical race theory\u201d (CRT) before this summer are now getting emails from their children\u2019s schools about \u201cDecentering Whiteness at Home.\u201d They are discovering that their children\u2019s elementary-school teacher has read them \u201ca book about whiteness\u201d that teaches them how much \u201ccolor matters\u201d and encourages them to confront \u201cthe painful truth\u201d about their \u201cown family\u201d \u2014 i.e., that they are being raised by racists. And that\u2019s just the tip of the iceberg.<\/a><\/p>\n

It is understandable, therefore, that the ascendancy of CRT in our educational institutions is deeply frightening to so many people. People feel like their children are being indoctrinated. In many cases, they are right. This ideology is not simply being presented as one way of looking at the world. It is being taught as the Truth with a capital \u2018T,\u2019 and you will be cast into outer darkness or punished for questioning it. Just ask David Flynn, the father of two children in the Dedham, Mass., public schools who was fired from his position as head football coach there after raising concerns about changes to his seventh-grade daughter\u2019s history curriculum. (Flynn is now suing the school district<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

We need to fight the rise of this toxic and destructive orthodoxy if we want America to be a place where, as Martin Luther King said, our children are judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. But we have to fight it in the right way, without compromising the very freedoms we seek to preserve.<\/p>\n

******************<\/p>\n

As journalist and author Jonathan Rauch has so eloquently written<\/a> \u2014 in opposition to the kinds of hate-speech prohibitions common on campuses around the country \u2014 the tolerance of hateful speech is critical to freedom and progress:<\/p>\n

\n

I feel more confident than ever that the answer to bias and prejudice is pluralism, not purism. The answer, that is, is not to try to legislate bias and prejudice out of existence or to drive them underground, but to pit biases and prejudices against each other and make them fight in the open. That is how, in the crucible of rational criticism, superstition and moral error are burned away.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Rauch is right. The battle against these identity-based ideologies needs to be waged in the marketplace of ideas, not through censorship. Proponents of CRT, critical feminist theory, postcolonial theory, etc. have every right to argue for the validity of their positions, just as we have the right to argue for the validity of ours. We must recognize their rights even as we try to convince the world of the dangers of their arguments.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a pretty good article that takes maybe five minutes to read (but with lots of links to follow up on). In a word, fight it with ideas and free speech, not by trying the CRT tactic of censoring people who oppose their ideas. A new orthodoxy has taken over our educational institutions with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1034"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7483,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034\/revisions\/7483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}