Futile Resistance  

Critical Race Theory

Christopher Rufo, 4 of 6

   Thus far, attempts to halt the encroachment have been ineffective. 

   First, too many Americans have an acute fear of speaking up about social and political issues, especially those involving race. According to a Gallup poll, 77 percent of conservatives are afraid to share their political beliefs publicly. 

   Worried about getting mobbed on social media, fired from their jobs, or worse, they remain quiet, ceding the public debate to those pushing these anti-American ideologies. The institutions themselves become dogmatic, suspicious and hostile to a diversity of opinion. Conservatives in government and schools have told me that their "equity and inclusion" departments serve as political offices, stamping out any dissent from official orthodoxy. 

   Second, critical race theorists have constructed their arguments like a mouse trap. Disagreement with their program becomes irrefutable evidence of a dissenter's "white fragility," "unconscious bias," or "internalized white supremacy." 

   Diversity trainers will make an outrageous claim - such as "all whites are intrinsically oppressors" or "white teachers are guilty of spirit murdering black children." Then when confronted, they adopt a patronizing tone, explaining that participants who feel "defensiveness" or "anger" are reacting out of guilt and shame. Dissenters are told to remain silent, "lean into the discomfort," and accept their "complicity in white supremacy." 

   Third, Americans across the political spectrum have failed to separate the premise of critical race theory from its conclusion. Its premise - that American history includes slavery and other injustices, and that we should learn from that history - is undeniable. 

   But its revolutionary conclusion - that America was founded on and defined by racism and that our founding principles, our Constitution and our way of life should be overthrown - does not rightly or necessarily follow. 

   Fourth, the writers and activists who have the courage to speak out against critical race theory have tended to address it on the theoretical level, pointing out the theory's logical contradictions and dishonest account of history.   

   These (worthy) criticisms move the debate into the academic realm, which is friendly terrain for proponents of critical race theory. They fail to force defenders of this revolutionary ideology to defend the practical consequences of their ideas in the realm of politics. 

Wednesday: Political Engagement

Friday: Courage

 Roots and Plants 

   We buy a potted plant and what do we get? A pot of soil with roots, and the plant or flowers that the roots produce. 

   I see a picture of the Old Testament and the New. If you are like the lady years ago - who said there's no need for the Old Testament - we offer these roots in just one NT book, Matthew:

Hosea 11:1, 6:6 

Deuteronomy 8:3, 6:16, 6:13, 6:5, 5:16 

Psalm 91:11-12; 78.2, 8:2, 118:22-23, 26; 110:1, 22:1

Isaiah 53:4, 6:9, 10; 29:13, 56:7, 13:10 

Hosea 6:6 twice

Micah 7:6 

Malachi 3:1 

Exodus 20:12-16; 3:6 

Genesis 1:27, 2:24 

Daniel 9:27 

Zechariah 13:7, 11:12-13 

   I have printed more than 400 verses in the Revelation alone, and their roots in Old Testament scriptures. 

       Jimmy

 

Do It Now   

   People of faith, Rejoice! Be informed ... but do not despair. The world has been frustrating mankind since the beginning. 

   In Philippians 4, Paul tells us twice to "Rejoice!" Adds Andree Peterson in WORLD magazine, "God deserves it, and our mental health needs it." 

    Faith should make us excited that our present troubles are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed. Romans 8:18. 2 Corinthians 4:17. 1 Peter 5:10.

   Peterson asks, "Are we just supposed to rejoice on command? As a matter of fact, yes!" Don't expect tomorrow or the next day to give us a worldly reason.  

   The people of Israel in rebuilding Jerusalem listened to Ezra read the Book of the Law for hours. Nehemiah 8:1-3. They realized they (their ancestors) had neglected God's book for centuries. They didn't feel like rejoicing, but Nehemiah commanded it: "This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep. Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength." vv. 9-10. 

   "Rejoicing is a choice," Peterson writes. "It is always deliberate." There are two ways, the high way and the low way. Our minds can be on things above or on things below. Colossians 3:2. 

   Isaiah calls for putting on the "garment of praise." v. 61:3.

   Brother Lawrence, a 17th century friar, called it, "practicing the presence of God." Peter wrote of the victory in abiding consciousness of God. 1 Peter 2:19.

   As Tony Campolo liked to say, "It's Friday, but Sunday's coming!" 

             Jimmy

 How It Works 

Critical Race Theory, 3 of 6

   Last year, the FBI was holding workshops on intersectionality theory. The Dept. of Homeland Security was telling white employees they were committing "microinequities" and had been "socialized into oppressor roles." The Treasury Dept. told staff members that "virtually all white people contribute to racism" and that they must convert "everyone in the federal government" to the ideology of "antiracism." 

   The Sandia National Laboratories, which designs America's nuclear arsenal, sent white male executives to a three-day reeducation camp, where they were told that "white male culture" was analogous to the "KKK" "white supremacists" and "mass killings." The executives were forced to renounce their "white male privilege" and write letters of apology to fictitious women and people of color. 

   In Cupertino, California, an elementary school forced first-graders to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities, and rank themselves according to their "power and privilege." In Springfield, Missouri, a middle school forced teachers to locate themselves on an "oppression matrix," based on the idea that straight, white, English-speaking, Christian males are members of the oppressor class and must atone for their privilege and "covert white supremacy." 

   In Philadelphia, an elementary school forced fifth-graders to celebrate "Black communism" and simulate a Black Power rally to free 1960s radical Angela Davis from prison. And in Seattle, the school district told white teachers that they are guilty of "spirit murder" against black children and must "bankrupt (their) privilege in acknowledgement of (their) thieved inheritance." 

   Christopher Rufo is just one investigative journalist, but he claims to have a database of more than 1,000 of these stories. He says critical race theory is becoming the operating ideology of our public institutions - from universities to bureaucracies to k-12 school systems. It has permeated the collective intelligence and decision-making process of American government, with no sign of slowing down, he told his audience at Hillsdale College. 

   When originally established, he said, government institutions were neutral, technocratic and oriented toward broadly-held perceptions of the public good. Today, they are being turned against the American people - from Washington to states, even red states, to county public health departments, small Midwestern school districts and more. This ideology will not stop until it has devoured all our our institutions. 

Monday: Futile Resistance 

Wednesday: Political Engagement

Friday: Courage

Harlem Hellfighters 

   Gen. John Pershing owed his reputation - in part - to the 369th Infantry Regiment, a unit he regarded as "inferior" and lacking in "civic and professional conscience." 

   It was this month, 1918, when the 369th became the first American unit to reach the front. In the Meuse-Argonne offensive, Germans unleashed gun fire at American trenches. Hot shrapnel from shells fell like rain. Enemy biplanes flew overhead. The ground shuddered from incoming artillery. 

   Two years earlier, Harlem civic leaders lobbied to let black men prove themselves as soldiers. During their training in South Carolina, they experienced real Jim Crow law and racial slurs, not today's political jargon. 

   When the U.S. entered WWI in 1917, these men, mostly from New York, became the 369th and were sent to France. They were forbidden from associating with white troops. Their duties included cooking and digging latrines. 

   In spring 1918, French and British armies were depleted. Col. Hayward, their white officer, urged Pershing to send the 369th, which he did while expecting nothing to come of it. It would be a month before other Americans reached the front. 

   Though lightly armed with French rifles, and outnumbered, they repelled the Germans. Their most significant triumph came during the last major offensive on September 30. They took out German machine gunners and American forces launched the attacks that ended the war. 

   France gave the entire unit the Croix de Guerre for bravery, possibly the first U.S. regiment to be so honored. They were the longest serving front-line combat unit in the war - 191 days in theater. The unit never surrendered a trench, earning the nickname "Hellfighters." 

   The men returned home to face bigotry and prejudice, despite a victory parade down Fifth Avenue. If today's activists were accusing whites then, they would have had a case. 

Smithsonian 

 

   

What It Is    

Critical Race Theory, 2 of 6, by Christopher Rufo 

   This is an academic discipline, formulated in the 1990s, built on identity-based Marxism. It has become the default ideology in our public institutions. It has been injected into government agencies, public school systems, teacher training programs and corporate human resources departments. Methods include public policy frameworks and school curricula.

   There are euphemisms to describe critical race theory, including "equity," "social justice," diversity and inclusion," and "culturally responsive teaching." 

   These theorists, masters of language construction, realize that "neo-Marxism" would be a hard sell. Equity on the other hand sounds non-threatening and is easily confused with the principle of equality. Indeed, equality is explicitly rejected by critical race theorists. To them, equality represents "mere nondiscrimination," and provides "camouflage" for white supremacy, patriarchy and oppression.  

   Equity, as defined and promoted by critical race theorists, is little more than reformulated Marxism. In the name of equity, UCLA law professor and critical race theorist Cheryl Harris has proposed suspending private property rights, seizing land and wealth and redistributing them along racial lines.

   Critical race guru Ibram X. Kendi, who directs the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, has proposed the creation of a federal Department of Antiracism. This department would be independent of (i.e., unaccountable to) the elected branches of government. It would have the power to nullify, veto or abolish any law at any level of government and curtail the speech of political leaders and others who are deemed insufficiently "antiracist." 

   The practical result would be the overthrow of capitalism according to Kendi: "In order to truly be antiracist, you also have to truly be anti-capitalist." Identity is the means and Marxism is the end. 

   An equity-based form of government would mean the end not only of private property, but also individual rights, equality under the law, federalism and freedom of speech. These would be replaced by race-based redistribution of wealth, group-based rights, active discrimination and omnipotent bureaucratic authority. 

   Critical race theory prescribes a revolutionary program that would overturn the principles of the Declaration of Independence and destroy the remaining structure of the Constitution. 

Friday: How It Works

 

   

 Beauty on the Outside

   A quarter century had gone by – with five years in college and two in the Army - I’d had only had six months of full-time employment. Now back home, my newspaper gig resumed, it was time to start living.

   Months later Sports Illustrated hooked me with a full-page ad for a Triumph Spitfire. Not a classic Triumph, but it was a spiffy convertible, two seater, and I had to have it. A dealer sold me a bright red one for $2,500. 

                                                                        Growing Up #4   

   A couple years later, Don, an Army buddy then at a TV station in Toledo, ask me to consider working for him. Drafted like me, he was unenthused in our Army office, but he was a perfectionist in his career and knew my work ethic. I knew nothing about TV promotion. I had just spent a month producing an “industrial edition” on top of my regular six newspaper editions per week. I was exhausted, rewarded with a check for all of $100. Boo hoo.

   With tears in his eyes Dad handed me my baseball glove – “Don’t forget this” – and the bright red toy and I headed west. 

   It took 45 minutes to drive six city miles from apartment to work. One morning about halfway there, something wasn’t working. I drifted into a gas station. The fly wheel was shot, red paint or not.

   A year or so later, the engine wasn’t performing well under the hood. There were four cylinders. I could file the valves into compliance. Not! Humbled, I had just enough power to drive it to a repair shop.

   We have our best faces, all smiles, but unless there is true love and integrity “under the skin” something isn’t working well. More than outward spirituality, the (red) heart steers us along the path God has in mind for us.  

1 Samuel 16:7 – Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.