Did I say “scare tactic”? I meant survey. I have in my mailbox yet another “survey” from Hillsdale College. I signed up for their stuff years ago when I wanted to understand the conservative mindset from more than the mockery of Jon Stewart, John Oliver, and Peter Sagal. They have traced me through two moves and I’m afraid to try to remove myself from their mailing lists because I already get enough of their dreck. Frankly, Stewart, Oliver, and Sagal aren’t really mocking this type of conservative, they are reporting on them accurately and this style of conservatism is simply laughable.
The survey is about the “National Threat of Critical Race Theory in our American Education”. This style of conservatism, being an oral culture, doesn’t do something I consider vital: Define the terms they use. They use words and terms, but the meaning of them is mercurial and situational and more often than not an application of the ad hominem fallacy: Thus Josh Hawley losing a book deal is Cancel Culture, but Colin Kaepernick losing a football career is something else, a correction in the “free market of ideas” or something.
To be fair, they come close to defining Critical Race Theory and get it completely wrong:
CRT is an in ideology aimed at replacing the American idea of equal individual rights with the dangerous idea of unequal rights based on identity.
This is, of course, hogwash. CRT is a way of examining the role race and racism has played throughout history, maybe only specifically US history. CRT was a legal term coined in the 1970s to describe the idea that laws, even those that don’t talk about race, can lead to racially discriminatory outcomes. Later in the scare tactic, they label CRT as “radical” but not in that 80’s way Gen-Xer’s know and love (and sadly no longer use).
The questions they ask are vague.
Do you think CRT has a divisive effect in our schools, increasing race consciousness and racial division in the name of “anti-racism?”
How many concepts are they packing in here? Is CRT divisive? Yes, bigots hate being called out on being bigots. I think Gen-X (and even more so the generations that followed) are aware of inequality and injustice and tend to consider it wrong on all levels. I suspect it’s hard to increase race-consciousness among the younger generations outside of the bigots, and anti-racism doesn’t need to be in quotes, because it’s a real movement and not a bugaboo. Of course, if you anti-anti-racism, doesn’t that make you pro-racism? Well, only if you think words have meaning as well as usage.
Do you think schools should teach young students about America’s founding principles and require students to study the Declaration of Independence and Constitution?
I know I studied both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in schools, and I suspect they are still being taught. The question implies this is not the case. Again, though, they don’t define the “founding principles” of America. They do include “limited government” which we know doesn’t always fly with them when states do things they don’t like. I consider the Declaration of Independence a sort of vision statement: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, which is a watered down version of Life, Liberty, and Property. They probably avoided that because they believed human beings could be property, and I’m sure a number of people reading this thing want to go back to that state of affairs. They claim early that CRT wants to install an idea of unequal rights based on identity, which is exactly what we had when the US was founded. Some people had rights, most didn’t, and most were considered property.
Once again, Hillsdale College has given me a joke, because they are a joke. They are the embodiment of Poe’s Law. We can’t satirize them enough to actually stray from their core beliefs. The scare tactic/appeal for money and validation even has a letter from Pat Sajak for crying out loud. Nothing tells me this isn’t serious more than Pat Sajak’s face on a letter.
Anyway, I have to get back to work.