A SERIES OF DANGEROUS THREATS
As Abraham Lincoln Warned, America Is “Dying By Suicide”
David Barnhizer
“Historian and documentary filmmaker Ken Burns said that the present day is one of the worst times in American history. … “It’s really serious. There are three great crises before this: the Civil War, the Depression, and World War II. This is equal to it,” he said … when asked about the direction the United States was headed. The documentarian went on to quote comments made by Abraham Lincoln during a January 1838 speech to a group in Springfield, Illinois:
“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. … No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.” “We’re looking right down the muzzle of that gun,” Burns added.” “Ken Burns Says Current Times ‘Equal’ to Civil War, Depression and World War II: ‘It’s Really Serious’”, Leia Idliby, 9/20/21.
As to the close connection between education and its impact on governmental systems, Lincoln also warned: “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”
They Are “Deadening the Minds” of Our Children
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a speech given at Morehouse College in 1948.
“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason but no morals. ... We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.”
American civil rights leader Malcolm X described the purpose of education as follows. “Education is our passport to the future, tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” The incredibly courageous South African civil rights and anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela offered another powerful insight into the vital importance of teaching critical thinking, wide-ranging knowledge, personal empowerment, and vital skills. Mandela states:
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. Education is the first step for people to gain the knowledge, critical thinking, empowerment and skills they need to make this world a better place.”
Compare the insights of MLK, Malcolm X, and Nelson Mandela with what is taking place in many of America’s schools. What is occurring is not education as we have long understood it to be, but a carefully planned system of “deadening the mind” by feeding students a one-sided and dishonest diet of emotional angst, victimization, guilt, and hate. This is being done by the combination of sloganeering, “Whiteness” attacks, intense peer pressure, SEL and CRT curricula, and much more. As any propagandist or “brainwasher” understands, first you must tear down an individual’s core values, and then fill the resulting “empty space” with your own beliefs and agendas.
King, Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela would be aghast at what is going on today in America’s K-12 schools and its universities. America has a serious educational problem rendering many of its graduates non-competitive; and urban minority students are being hurt the worst. How bad is the state of America’s education, and what are the social and economic implications of its deterioration? Clear and honest thinking, detailed analysis, manipulation of numbers and their underlying implications, are essential conceptual skills. They are definitely “systems” and “methods” that help us be more productive and capable, but they are most definitely not some oppressive form of “systemic racism”—regardless of the efforts of America’s Woke teachers and activists to label them as such.
Why is it important that America’s students are provided the ability to think clearly and deeply, to problem solve and innovate, and to recognize the vital need to function as a true social and political community rather than a collection of angry “tribes” at war with each other? The fact is that the absence of the critical skills of analysis and problem solving, understanding reality, honoring real diversity, and the refusal to engage in interactive discourse, threatens the health and quality of America’s social and political culture. Lacking such fundamental skills sabotages the nation.
America's health, security, and ability to provide the resources required to care for its complex and burgeoning population is dependent on having a population of insightful people contributing to the creation and sustaining of a true and dynamic community. The failure to develop such skills and values in our educational systems, and the resulting inability to compete in a world where other nations possess such capabilities, is not a “good” thing for America globally or domestically. This is what a true teacher understands about the functions of education.
Authoritarians and “The Woke” Hate Open-minded, Thoughtful, and Critical True Liberalism Because It Undermines Their Power-Base
Mao Zedong wrote in a 1937 tract that open-minded, thoughtful and critical Liberalism was a threat to his “Revolution”. He condemned Liberalism because he understood such orientations empowered people to question authority. Mao knew this would cause them to deviate from the dictates of his leadership. This means that schools’ functions were to create people who accepted the principles and strategies of “The Revolution”. This demanded people who followed orders, and anyone who deviated was condemned as a “Counter-revolutionary”.
One of the most frightening aspects of what is occurring is that we are experiencing a fundamental disconnect between the K-12 curriculum as conceived by many parents and the manipulative reality of what is occurring. Parents are concerned about what their children are being exposed to as students. This is of particular concern in relation to the extent the “traditional” curriculum of the “3Rs” has been supplanted by a curriculum that abandons those more traditional perspectives and converted to an instrumentality of propaganda. This alternative curriculum claims “White” values, “White” supremacy and methods, clarity of thought, individualism, reason and similar educational virtues on which we have long depended along with numerous other cultures, are techniques of “racism”. The educational ideologues instead seek to infuse students with a focus on “oppression”, racism, privilege, victimization, gender identity, and other deeply divisive, polarizing, and politicized concepts.
This is being done at the K-12 levels, with particular focus on the youngest students because, like Mao, authoritarian propagandists of the kind represented by the Woke, Critical Race activists, and Radical Progressives, understand that the best time to take control of children’s minds is when they are young and at their most vulnerable. People who never develop the ability to engage in free and critical thought, and lack respect for objectivity and the full range of fact and evidence, are highly susceptible to emotionally crafted propaganda. They aren’t being taught “how” to think, but “what” to think. This is why the slogans, claims, and narratives with which we are currently being surrounded are designed to bypass our rational minds and penetrate us at the emotional level rather than that of fact, evidence, and reason.
A Nation Committing “Suicide from Within”
What is happening throughout America is tragic. Like many others in the nation, I have spent my life in civil rights, and engaged in activities and causes seeking to advance social justice for economically, politically, and racially disadvantaged people. For me, the machinations of the Woke and Critical Race activists are an obscene and warped misuse of the concepts of anti-racism and social justice. The rhetoric, the cynicism, the hypocrisy, lies, warped narratives, and misrepresentations that now afflict so many of our interactions are disintegrating our core social fabric and, as Abe Lincoln warned, committing a form of national suicide. We are killing the most vital essence of ourselves and our community from within. Wounds are being inflicted that are unlikely to heal. Nonetheless, we need to try, and that requires an understanding of what is going on; one that exposes the one-sided dishonesty of the Woke, the “Crits”, and the Radical Progressives.
Bob Woodson, whose work I have come to admire immensely for its clarity, maturity, and “soul”, captures my beliefs. In describing the 1776 Unites Project he leads, Woodson states:
“The goal of [the 1776 Unites Project] is to provide the means for this nation to heal and build on 50 years of successfully fighting against racism and discrimination, [to] build on what we’ve accomplished,” Woodson said. It is “not go back retroactively and condemn America for what it did.” Those who are marginalized as a consequence of their condition, not their race, such as low-income blacks, whites, Hispanics, and others, have more in common than they do differences, Woodson explained. Carol Swain, a project participant and a former tenured professor at Vanderbilt and Princeton universities wrote: “Our mission is to unite Americans rather than divide them around issues of race and ethnicity: ‘We do this in the spirit of 1776, the date of America’s true founding.” “Using Racial Justice to Destroy the Nation Will Not Raise Black Communities From Poverty: Bob Woodson: Empowering low-income grassroots leaders helps their communities ‘achieve against the odds’”, Ella Kietlinska and Jan Jelielek, 4/7/21.
Shawntel Cooper and Other Black Activists and Parents Explain that Teaching Critical Race Theory Fails to Teach Black History Honestly
A diverse group of experts and activists state that "Critical race theory should play no part in teaching Black history, American history or ethnic studies in schools.” This in no way is an argument that the true and full history of what occurred in America should not be taught and the nations “sins” revealed. We can’t run from our past—both good and bad—and we must understand what took place in order to ensure it will never be repeated. But while we can’t fail to understand how the nation evolved and has striven over the past century to overcome the tragic aspects of its history, we can and must focus on how we create our “future history” in terms of what we want to become, who we want to be, and how we get there. This is at the heart of what individuals such as Bob Woodson, Shawntel Cooper, Nelson Mandela, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. have said. Cooper sums up the situation with clarity.
“We never said don’t teach history – we are fighting to ban CRT," she said. She brought up an August incident in which a preschool class reportedly hung up a poster with students' portraits divided on a table by skin color. "My ancestors did not fight for segregation to be played out again or to indoctrinate little children to alter their natural growth to love without seeing color," she said. … "Claims that bans on critical race theory prohibit ‘teaching about racism in schools’ are factually inaccurate - and that's not, in fact, what parents or legislators oppose at all," she said. "People object to the rampant discrimination taking place in America's schools that treat children differently on the basis of immutable characteristics such as race and gender – which is something that all Americans should oppose, because to do so is both immoral and unconstitutional.” “Teaching race doesn't mean teaching critical race theory, activists say: Progressive pundits dismissed critical race theory as an esoteric topic for advanced graduate courses even as parents around the country grilled their school boards over CRT-inspired content”, Michael Ruiz, 9/3/21.
Sun Tzu’s Art of War
As a leading Critical Race activist from Harvard told me in 1992 during a “Justice Mission” conference I had organized, what is going on is a “War of Attrition” unfolding over time rather than an immediate assault. That is precisely what has been occurring for the past three-plus decades. Denial, deception, moral accusation to seize the “high ground”, and diversion are primary tactics.
What is occurring in the well-organized attack strategy in this ongoing “War of Attrition” is the capturing of America’s fundamental educational, political, and corporate institutions. This strategy is being implemented by a wide range of groups and institutions, but the purpose of the analysis presented here is to concentrate on the expanding assault on K-12 education. The “attackers” include teachers’ unions, school boards and administrators, “Woke” teachers who see themselves on a sacred mission to inculcate children with their own personal vision, “Diversity” consultants, school staff, university faculty and administrators, and a significant number of people in the media.
Anyone who has studied the strategic wisdom contained in Sun Tzu’s Art of War, something I wrote about in a book on legal strategy titled The Warrior Lawyer, understands that the excellent and ultimately victorious general does not allow opponents to “see” his strategy until the moral “high ground” has been obtained, forces situated to maximum advantage, and the highest probability of a victorious outcome achieved. Maintaining secrecy of intention, tactics, and strategy is vital to prevent opponents from recognizing and countering your “moves”. Key elements in winning the ultimate battle are occupying critical positions, placing your forces in pivotal locations prior to full engagement, and, at the same time, using deception to keep your enemies off balance and uncertain.
Once everything is in place, Sun Tzu explains, the excellent “General” then strikes to achieve victory. That is what has been going on in America’s K-12 educational processes, as well as the nation’s universities that are a driving force behind the ongoing movements to transform American society through propaganda and institutional control. Except for the “unfortunate” emergence of the COVID 19 Pandemic, it would have been too late to stop what is occurring. The dynamics of the Pandemic created an event that exposed the activities of school systems and activists seeking to embed school administrators’ and teachers’ ideological preferences aimed at “dismantling” and “transforming” our nation to fit their extremist belief systems.
For its “true believers”, being “Woke” is not just politics. It is a holy mission. This mission includes deconstruction of the American ethos and the transformation of thought and society into an image of their choosing. In many instances that “image” is one almost exclusively designed to validate their own behaviors and worldview in ways that, for many, buffers them against their own insecurity. Many of the most aggressive and virulent Woke and Critical Race Theory activists are subconsciously seeking to compensate for their deep feelings of inadequacy which, after all, is why they create “identity” and “affinity” groups as refuges and validating mechanisms.
They see themselves as “crusaders”, missionaries, and Social Justice Warriors. Other educators, students, teachers, parents, administrators, or anyone else who disagrees with or interferes with their mission—are defined as terrible and bigoted persons. Similarly, in Mao’s China and Lenin’s USSR, those who resisted the revolutionary narrative would be labeled as “Counter-Revolutionaries” and sent to re-education camps, prisons, or simply executed. The “Anti-Woke”, “Anti-Critical Race Theory”, and “Anti-Radical Progressives” in America are this nation’s “counter-revolutionaries” and unless they “get their act together” America is in trouble.
Capturing America’s Universities, Its Media, and Teacher’s Unions
Is at the Heart of the Woke Strategy
This stealth “guerrilla war” has infected America’s institutions deeply. Although many share the guilt, the attacks on our institutions and social integrity are being led by media outlets such as CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and other visual and print media sources that, by warping and twisting truth for political purposes, are betraying the fundamental reason for their own existence. They have abdicated their duty to provide honest and comprehensive factual reporting and interpretation. In the same way, many of America’s universities have been a powerful one-sided driving force behind the assault on society.
In an analysis that surprisingly deviated from its regular ongoing drumbeat of one-sided “woke” posturing, the Editorial Board of the Washington Post recently published an analysis of efforts at the University of Virginia aimed at canceling a speech by former Vice President Mike Pence due to the assertion that his appearance could somehow threaten the safety of students. The WaPo Board wrote that such actions were “unwarranted” and undermined the essential idea and function of a university. They were correct, but that negative mindset is an oppressive attitude that has increasingly permeated the minds of students, faculty, and administrators in many American universities.
“Denying the former vice president a platform, the [Post’s] authors argued, "is to sanctify intolerance of a different stripe, equally toxic, and dress it up as existential concern. Mr. Pence should be heard.” … ”It’s a constitutionally protected act to protest a politician whose views or record offend. It’s another thing to deny him a forum. … "A university that dishonors those principles isn’t fully a university; it’s a tribal talking shop of the like-minded, in service to censorship," they continued.” “WaPo editorial board: Efforts to silence and cancel Mike Pence campus visits are ‘unwarranted’: 'It’s another thing to deny him a forum,' the authors wrote”, Hanna Panreck, 3/31/22.
The problem with the Washington Post’s analysis is that it is several decades too late. Over the past three-plus decades, universities (and the media) have become political institutions rather than dynamic and balanced intellectual actors. Numerous speakers are being denied speaking engagements at universities because their interpretations and perspectives don’t fit the political agendas of the Woke, Critical Race theorists, or Radical Progressives. Many speakers have been shouted down, threatened, or canceled by students who should be exposed to the widest possible intellectual ideas but are enraged at the very thought there could be legitimate points of view other than their own?
Although the intellectually bigoted and intolerant ways many university students have treated speakers drawn from outside their institutions is contemptible, even worse is the deadening cloud that has descended on faculty, administrators, and students in America’s universities. It is one in which students and other faculty members and administrators have created a poisonous political miasma where faculty members know they are under close and unforgiving scrutiny over course content and classroom discourse. Mark Bauerlein, author and professor-emeritus at Emory University, has written that the university has been ruined by a politicized and cowardly culture.
Jon Zubieta, Distinguished Professor at Syracuse University, was temporarily suspended by the Syracuse Provost who possesses close ties to China. Zubieta’s violation? He described the COVID virus as the “Wuhan Virus” in his course syllabus, and was immediately attacked for being biased against all Chinese people wherever found in the universe. To the university’s absolute discredit, a petition signed by 300 Syracuse faculty condemned him for that “sin”. This experience is not uncommon in the academic world. Numerous reports indicate students around the nation are monitoring and recording classes to identify any “politically incorrect” deviancy. The result has been a climate of fear, and a contraction in what faculty are willing to talk or write about. Examples are detailed in my 2021 book, “Un-Canceling” America.
It is vital to keep in mind that the student activists, and Woke teachers for that matter, who are leading the cancelation of speakers that deviate from the students’ mindsets were “educated” in K-12 systems controlled by the “Woke”. Such students offer a clear picture of the severe disintegration and suppression of honest discourse in America. As that has occurred, research and teaching have become infused with a powerful social orientation aimed at advancing a specific view and censoring all alternative analyses. The legitimate and expanding critique of society that had developed as part of the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements has been converted into a one-sided Identity and multicultural crusade. Traditional principles are scorned as “racist”, “white”, and biased, while “progressive” activities and desires of the Woke and Crits are elevated to almost sacred levels.
The numbers of “diverse” university faculty grew rapidly in the 1970s-1980s period due to the supportive recruiting efforts of a generation of civil rights activists, of which I was and am one. This brought into the university significant numbers of people whose research and teaching agendas were comprised of ideological commitments, many of which represented a core agenda that advanced the preferences and belief systems of those newer academics.
One irony is that, while the term “diversity” has been a driving force for the effort to alter the composition of the university and other core institutions, what has happened increasingly is not intellectual, political, and cultural diversity. Instead we have experienced the creation of a largely monolithic power bloc. Race, gender, human sexuality, family, educational control, the centralizing function of government, and distributional “equity” are major themes of the movement.
One-sidedness and intolerance for any who do not fully agree with the proclamations of the approved ideological group are fundamental to the efforts to take control and stifle opposition. As is made obvious by the comments offered in this chapter by Voddie Bauchamp, Winsome Sears, and Derrick Wilburn, according to the Woke and Critical Race advocates, a person may “look” Black and therefore “seem” diverse, but unless they “think Black” in full accord with the activists’ value systems and agenda, they are really nothing more than “White” and “race traitors”. This concept of “one way to think”, “one way to act”, and one preset series of “progressive” values to adopt, is an absolute denial of “real diversity”. It is “tribalism” pure and simple and it pits one group against another.
The Betrayal of True Diversity
What began in the 1960s and 1970s as a wonderful effort to expand true diversity within universities and education, became a one-sided tool for political recruitment and power. Many new faculty members came to their academic positions possessed by a vision of a deeply flawed nation, one that needed to be called to account. The terms of the “accounting”, however, came to be defined solely according to the pre-conceived agendas of people who considered themselves as representing an elite class. They “knew” what needed to be changed, and were committed to “fixing” American society and its flawed institutions. The problem is that, like European “Deconstructionists”, America’s new intellectuals possessed the skills to dissect the system in ways that demonstrate what was “wrong” and “sinful”, but almost without exception lack the skills, experience, willingness, and wisdom to know what was “right” and “virtuous”. In such situations the Deconstructive critique always ends up one-sided and passionately overstated.
Inevitably, a significant part of the problem is that the changes in the demographics of academia reflected characteristics of a kind with which the newer academics personally and deeply identified. Although there were brilliant thinkers such as Derrick Bell, Duncan Kennedy, Roberto Unger and others, many if not most of the new faculty and administrators who arrived in the next wave of hiring weren’t necessarily dispassionate intellectuals, teachers, researchers or scholars. They were academic activists on a mission and possessed of a specific agenda and worldview. They treated their subjective interpretations of their own experiences as undeniable “truths” even while paradoxically asserting like the European Deconstructionists and Marxists they were parroting, that “objective truths” did not exist.
Nor should the automatic denials that Critical Race Theory and Wokeism aren’t manifestations of important elements of Marxist and Socialist beliefs be accepted. When I began my career as a law professor after receiving a Master of Law degree from Harvard, I was contacted by people with whom I had interacted while there, and asked to join the nascent movement. This included description of the goals of social justice and equality for which I have always worked. But then, as the discussion progressed, an individual described that it was dedicated to Socialism and to European Marxist political philosophy. At that point I stated, “I’m sorry, but I don’t do “Ism’s and can’t be part of this.”” That was the end of my recruitment and it cost me several friends. My experience with many “Crits” through the years validated that decision. What we are dealing with is a new generation of “deconstructionists” committed to attacking the core principles of America but not having anything positive with which to replace them.
Such subjective perspectives have now been taught for several decades to college students. Those students were being prepared to serve as K-12 teachers and administrators, and increasingly filled the ranks of the K-12 teaching profession. At this point the lines of our fundamental dispute over the preferable nature and function of society have solidified. The result is that we are possessed by radically distinct and competing visions of society. We are experiencing a battle over speech, communication, social norms, the dynamics of social and political communities, and numerous other critical issues. In that struggle, many within our universities, K-12 power-brokers, media, governmental actors, and even our businesses, have become intolerant activists. They are implementing a strategy aimed at gaining power and shutting down and punishing all opposition.
For the Woke, Critical Race, and Radical Progressive “tribes”, this strategy involves massive amounts of psychological projection as a tactic to deflect accountability for what they are doing. This includes shaming and condemning critics, suppressing opposition, and continually trumpeting their “moral narrative” while attacking and censoring competing approaches. Achieving this has been empowered by the rise of social media along with its impact on traditional mainstream media. Over the past five to ten years, the corruption and desperation of the traditional media seeking to create a new business model in order to survive, has been made worse by the emergence of social media outlets. Rather than contributing to the qualitative expansion and depth of our political system’s democratic discourse, as was intended by Tim Berners-Lee and others who created the Internet’s critical algorithms, social media has devolved into a rancorous system of hate, invasions of privacy, propaganda, factual distortions, lies, and censorship. Race and racism has become a weapon rather than a problem to be solved.
The Abuses of “Anti-Racism”:
Pitting “Black against White and Asian against Latino.”
Winsome Sears, the first Black woman elected to statewide office in Virginia, is among the growing number of people condemning what they see as a divisive, dangerous, and bad faith “Woke” and Critical Race Theory movement, proclaiming her profound disagreement with a movement that is pitting “Black against White and the Asian against Latino.” She is not alone in her condemnation.
"Winsome Sears … attributed her victory to voters being sick of seeing Black and White people pitted against each other. "They’re tired of the Black against White and the Asian against Latino," Winsome said. "They’re tired of it, and they’re tired of politicians who won’t let the wounds of the past heal." "I’ve just always assumed whatever room I’m in, I belong. Whatever I want to pursue, it’s mine for the taking," Winsome told host Chris Wallace. "Nobody is denying that we don’t want to hear all the history, least of all me. I certainly don’t want the sins of the past to be repeated. [But] We don’t have to tear one person down in order to build another up. That’s no way to be. That’s not America." "Everything I’ve had, I’ve had to work for. No one gave me anything," Winsome said. "Sometimes, what happens to you isn’t because you’re Black or because you’re a woman. It’s simply life." “Virginia's Winsome Sears says voters are 'tired of the Black against White’: Winsome Sears is the first Black woman to hold statewide office in Virginia”, Danielle Wallace, 11/14/21.
Critical Race Theory’s “Narrative of Anti-Racism” has tremendous power. The problem is that the Anti-Racism advocated by false prophets such as Ibram Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, Nikole Hannah-Jones of The 1619 Project, the “Woke” generally, and many others who are aggressively advocating the ideology of Critical Race “Theory” throughout America’s key institutions, is an erroneous and destructive narrative. While vigorously condemning the “old racism”, it is itself the “New Racism”. The New York Times’ own Bret Stephens, one of the few reporters still demonstrating journalistic integrity, described the 1619 Project as a “thesis in search of evidence”! What is taking place is a naked quest to gain power through propaganda, intimidation and, ironically, the abuse and corruption of the vital moral and political concerns of racial and social justice.
As Winsome Sears explains, we want to teach an honest version of race in terms of its past, present, and future. But what is being offered by Critical Race Theory and 1619 Project advocates is a twisted, divisive, and destructive “story” where no other facts or conditions are allowed. The trap in which Critical Race Theory finds itself at this point is that—in constructing its litany of total systemic racism and terrible “White values” such as individualism, rational thought, hard work, belief in equality and opportunity, “victimhood”, the Rule of Law, “privilege”, Oppressor and Oppressed, and much, much more—they have constructed a cage from which they cannot escape.
One of the worst errors is that by dictating that all people who fall into the category of “Black” must think and speak according to the beliefs of the CRT Identity group or be branded a race traitor, their fanaticism prevents them from understanding or caring that many individuals who are “Black” do not share their views, and have not given them authority to speak for them. There is an illuminating wisdom to be found in the words of the many heroic Black leaders mentioned below. Their perspectives are captured throughout this text. The collective wisdom they represent transcends the one-sided assault on our nation being led by the Woke, the “Crits”, and the Radical Progressives.
Many Blacks Reject the Critical Race Theory Narratives,
So the “Crits” Know Those “Heretics” Must be “Erased” and “Replaced”
If you are seeking to capture the “high moral ground” to shame people and sell your argument, it must be incredibly irritating that people who have the experience, stature, moral resonance, and keen insights reject your sweeping proclamations. This is what the Critical Race Theorists face with a wide array of experienced and knowledgeable Black leaders who not only “lived” the experiences of American society, but lay out a picture of a system at dramatic odds with that sketched by the Critical and Woke activists.
In this context I think of Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Eli Steele, Bob Woodson, Carol Swain, Walter Williams, Candace Owens, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Jason Whitlock, Clarence Thomas, Larry Elder, John McWhorter, Ben Carson, Jason L. Riley, Shawntel Cooper, Wilfred Reilly, Tim Scott, Winsome Sears, Corey Brooks, Leroy Terrell, and numerous other Black leaders and intellectuals whose point of view differs from that of the Woke and “Crits”.
Voddie Bauchamp challenges what is being done to “erase and replace” the voices of those who disagree with the Woke and the Crits. He writes.
“I am a descendant of slaves and a child of the Great Migration, but antiracists will tell you that I’m not really black. I suffer from internalized racism, they insist; I’m trying to “curry favor with white people.” They dismiss me and other black nonconformists as sellouts, traitors, or Uncle Toms who are “skinfolk, but not kinfolk.” Consider the slurs that the voices of “tolerance” have flung at Sen. Tim Scott since he gave the Republican response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.
What does it tell us about our “conversation” about race that the very people who demand it would exclude unconventional black thinkers like Thomas Sowell, Carol Swain, Shelby Steele, John McWhorter and the late Walter Williams? There is no rational debate in the church of antiracism, for it demands a blind faith. And it is punitive, for it is a religion without grace. … Antiracism and the “woke” priesthood are targeting not merely the “wrong” black voices. They are coming for all of us. You might acquiesce to their demands today, but they will continue to demand more and more of you. Your official statements will not be remorseful enough. Your reparations packages will not be big enough. Your diversity initiatives will not be diverse enough. You cannot appease the god of antiracism.” “Why antiracism zealots are trying to silence black voices like mine”, Dr. Voddie Bauchamp, 5/15/21.
The irony in the “erase and replace” strategy is that, almost without exception, the people they seek to erase experienced direct, raw, contemptible, evil, and vicious racism. One of my absolute closest friends grew up with “Black” and “White” water fountains and rest rooms, segregated schools and restaurants, and all the trappings imposed by a society that for Blacks and other minorities failed to live up to its wonderful ideals. Its people somehow did not understand or ignored the immoral tragedy the hypocritical system in which they lived thrust upon those of a different ethnicity. My “Brother” (for that is how we think of each other) possessed the strength to transcend those experiences, and, unlike too many unfortunate people, never internalized a mindset of being “lesser”.
The people listed above know what real racism is. They personally lived it in its rawest and crudest sense on a regular basis. For them it was not a subjective “micro” experience in which someone else’s racial intent is subjectively inferred in nearly everything, but an unmistakable “macro-culture” with “macro-aggressions” where the irrational bias was overt, vicious, immoral, and inhumane. Without question, the emotional and psychological impacts and fundamental unfairness of being made the target of the emotional sickness of racism is something that should be taught to all our children. But the reason to do so is to create understanding that allows us to focus on a nobler future rather than create a new form of racism and divisive segregation under the heading of “Anti-Racism”.
Ibram Kendi’s AntiRacism is a form of “New Reverse Racism”. As a caring person who believes in each person’s fundamental humanity unless and until that person proves that assumption to be in error, my responsibility is that I must seek to fully understand the past. To Kendi, that belief almost certainly makes me a racist. But my moral responsibility is that I will never become complicit in the creation of another version of racism—or any other form of discrimination against an individual’s humanity in which one “Identity” group must bow to another. Understanding the sins of the past makes us better equipped to contribute to a better present and future.
The strategy by which the Critical activists are seeking to “erase” and “replace” such people as those experienced Black voices listed above is captured by Dr. Voddie Bauchamp in his comment about “skinfolk” not “kinfolk”. He warns tellingly that you “can never appease the “god” of Anti-racism”. These “Erase and Replace” activists are the same intolerant demagogues who pronounce there is “only one way for a Black American to think or behave”. This destructive and divisive attitude was seen in statements about Barack Obama “not being black enough” and that “Oreos” were people who were “Black on the outside and white on the inside.”
Those who engage in such contemptible racist conduct, such as playing the “skinfolk” not “kinfolk” game that Bauchamp condemns, or calling Winsome Sears a “black mouth” for “White supremacy”, offer a disgusting example of the language and strategies of intolerant bigots and ideologues. They are not representative of anyone who should ever be entrusted with power yet they are steadily working their way into positions of control. Filled with smug self-righteousness, they are bigots and racists who unwittingly offer proof of the one-sided and distorted nature of many who are supporters of the assertions contained in the slanted claims made by Critical Race Theory advocates.
Regardless of whatever name CRT might be labeled by educators and politicized “scholars” and “teachers” who claim they are advancing a fair and balanced version of the history of race and racial progress in America—the situation is as the Supreme Court once stated in the context of pornography—“You know it when you see it!”.
“I am not oppressed and I'm not a victim.”
Says a Black Father and Descendant of Slaves
“I am not oppressed and I'm not a victim.” These are the words of Derrick Wilburn. He added: “I am a direct descendant of the North American slave trade. Both my parents are black. All four of my grandparents are black, all eight of my great great grandparents, and all 16 of my great greats. On my mother's side, my ancestors were enslaved in Alabama. On my father's side, we were enslaved in Texas,” he said during a Colorado Springs School Board meeting at which the Board voted not to allow Critical Race Theory in the local schools. A report is offered below.
“A father in Colorado Springs who is the descendant of slaves slammed critical race theory during a public school district’s board meeting, saying racism in America would "by and large be dead" if not for institutions such as the education system "keeping it on life support.” The father of three went on to say that he "can think of nothing more damaging to a society than to tell a baby born today, that she has grievances against another baby born today, simply because of what their ancestors may have done two centuries ago.” "There's simply no point in doing that to our children, and putting critical race theory into our classrooms in part does that. Putting critical theory into our classrooms is not combating racism. It's fanning the flames of what little embers are left. I encourage you to support this resolution. Let racism die the death it deserves.” "I am not oppressed. I'm not oppressed and I'm not a victim.” … The father went on to say in the video that his three children "are not oppressed, either, though they are victims.” "I taught my children they were victims of three things: Their own ignorance, their own laziness and their own poor decision making. That is all," he said.” Derrick Wilburn went on to say that racism in America would "by and large be dead" if not for institutions such as the education system "keeping it on life support.”