The stance from Democratic politicians, liberal activists, and some
journalists on Critical Race Theory (CRT) in public education could be justly summarized:
“CRT isn’t being taught in our schools, and it’s a great thing that it is!”

Parent activist groups like Parents Defending Education, No Left Turn in Education, Moms for Liberty, and others have been highlighting horror stories of students being segregated by race or assigned books that declare that whiteness is a contract with the devil. Conservative media have amplified those stories. But mainstream journalists brush off the outrageous anecdotes by insisting broadly: “That’s not Critical Race Theory!” As our colleague Rick Hess has shown, mainstream media coverage of CRT largely focused on the assertion that schools should be addressing slavery, racism, and history, but rarely mentioned concerns about CRT-aligned practices or bedrock assumptions of CRT, such as its explicit rejection of rationality and objectivity.

Amid the duels over definitions and the accusations flying between
both sides of bad faith, racism, and propagandizing, it’s all enough to make a
principled conservative wonder: Have they lost their minds? Or have we?

But a couple recent articles bring solace that highly intelligent, elite liberals can reach largely the same conclusions as rank-and-file conservatives. For example, in an article in the very liberal The Nation, Yale University professor David Bromwich, who has been described as one of the “most well informed, cogent, and morally uncompromising writers on the left,” addresses the battle over how to define CRT thus:

The BLM at School Movement seems to have been the first name it gave itself, but its enemies stole a march on the popular mind and rechristened it ‘the CRT curriculum.’ The left-wing dodge was to say that conservative critics were simply confused, since critical race theory is an intricate program, excogitated by a few legal academics in the 1980s and ’90s, which could not possibly be conveyed to children still learning their ABCs. The deflection deserved to fail, and it did fail. No matter what you call it, something new is plainly happening.

Bromwich writes that he doesn’t “see how one can deny that
anti-racism is a doctrine; and its prominence brings up a question about the
place of doctrine in education.” It also brings up a question about the nature
of this particular doctrine, which leads to new practices that Bromwich notes are
“marked by a certain severity, a pressure to clean and catechize.” He questions
whether there can be any wisdom in, or whether good can come of, a doctrine
that sanctions “pretending to a 5-year-old that ‘whiteness’ is an element as
real as oxygen, and that it is a gift awarded to select persons who signed a
contract with the devil.”

Bromwich notes that there are some anti-racist parents who

would like to raise their children as the Spartans did, parents who see their children as soldiers first of all—a front line of defense for a radical cause that is in need of perpetual vigilance. These parents have a great deal in common with evangelical Christians, but another resemblance ought to trouble us. “The central proposition of Fascism,” wrote Karl Polanyi in 1935, “is that society is not a relationship of persons.”

Bromwich suggests this proposition is present in “antiracism” as
well.

No doubt David Bromwich and we have profound political and
philosophical points of disagreement, but there’s virtually nothing in his
piece that we wouldn’t have written.

Another heartening piece, from the New York Magazine’sIntelligencerassociate editor Eric Levitz,
touches upon the left’s unwillingness to concede that — whatever one might want
to label it — some very bad lessons are being taught in our schools. Levitz warns readers of
the dangers of embracing — or at least not refuting — the “malarkey” that comes
under the umbrella of racial justice. He says:

[S]ome of the practices that [Christopher] Rufo & Co. have dubbed ‘CRT’ do warrant the left’s disavowal. . . . Positing fundamental cultural distinctions between people with different pigmentations — not different class, regional, national, or religious backgrounds, but merely different concentrations of melanin — is a task better left to white supremacists than equity coaches.

We’re not convinced, unfortunately, that these articles represent anything like a turning point in conventional liberal wisdom. Indeed, a recent article in Business Insider suggests that Democratic Party strategists are planning on leaning into political debate about CRT as an electoral strategy. We doubt it will pay them many dividends.

But for any conservative who’s a bit bewildered by the rancorous debate over Critical Race Theory, these two articles are worth reading in full and reflecting on. When you read highly intelligent and incisive writers who possess a fundamentally different philosophical foundation yet reach virtually the same conclusions as you, it’s a good sign that you’re onto something.

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