EDUCATION/POLITICS

CRT Hoax Critical in Handing Election to Another Liar

Throwing the Commonwealth back to the ’50s with a race-baiting platform

Critical Race Theory really isn’t a thing.

At least not in the Commonwealth of Virginia’s public schools. CRT, as it’s known, is not part of any public school curriculum in the state.

There’s a huge difference, after all, between analyzing racially-based actions designed to tear this country and its citizens down (American history) and a movement that purportedly seeks to define the white race as the perennial bad guy (CRT, popular in some higher academic circles).

But you’d never know any of that, if you followed the Virginia governor’s race.

CRT, in the upper reaches of academia, takes a look at “racism and disparate racial outcomes [that] are the result of complex, changing, and often subtle social and institutional dynamics, rather than explicit and intentional prejudices of individuals”.

That’s certainly a scary mouthful, and also the online definition of CRT, as outlined by Wikipedia. And nothing anyone has ever tried to impart to a Virginia public school student.

There’s a huge leap to be made between an academic construct such as CRT and teaching high school students the basics of American History.

Glenn Youngkin, who pulled off a close win Tuesday to become the 74th governor of the Commonwealth, is the Republican who wants you to think that Virginia’s public schools are engaged in culture wars. That we educators — and I was one in Virginia for 23 years — want to ram PC culture down our little children’s throats.

In the CRT hoax, Youngkin successfully used a dog whistle to white parents in order to relitigate our state’s racial divisions of the past. And he conveniently — and falsely — labeled all of his lies “CRT”. Easy to remember; easy to say; completely convoluted to craft a fake narrative in order to win.

Those of you who watched the election coverage of the Virginia governor’s race could see the blue/red split on MSNBC prognosticator Steve Kornacki’s computerized map. A massive swath of the state glowed bright red, punctuated in parts by blue bastions in cities like Richmond and Roanoke, and the D.C. suburbs, where I lived and taught for years.

The poison Republican Youngkin pushed during the campaign was an attempt to reconstitute the race-based battles of the past.

In the closing days of the campaign, he posted a campaign ad on Twitter that featured a Virginia mom complaining that her son was subjected to depictions of (spoiler alert) bestiality, gang rape, and the murder of an infant in assigned high school reading back in 2013 in his high school literature class.

Um, that was eight years ago, and the dispute was decided in the school district’s favor.

Here’s the deal: The young man elected to, as a 17-year-old, take an Advanced Placement English class. That would be why a class like that is called an “elective”. The kid told The Washington Post that — as part of the class curriculum — he attempted to read Beloved, Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison’s epic novel about the atrocities of slavery. He labeled the novel “disgusting and gross” and “hard for me to handle” and “I gave up on it.”

Morrison’s accounting of slavery’s abominations is designed to make the reader uncomfortable. That’s the point, Junior.

This senior, BTW, went on to intern in the Trump White House and then to work for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

I can also tell you that while Beloved is known to brutally describe the abhorrent conditions of slavery, that characterization, apparently, is something gubernatorial candidate Youngkin believes a 17-year-old shouldn’t have to learn in his public school.

Beloved, of course, has nothing to do with CRT. But Glenn Youngkin wanted voters to think it did. And this simple-minded formula for triggering white grievance apparently helped him win Tuesday night.

Basically, the reasoning goes, if you’re trying to teach my child about the blots on the ledger of the American Experience, you need to back off.

No more Toni Morrison. Skip over any talk in the classroom of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, and his liaison with slave Sally Hemings, who the “master” raped and had six children. Oh, and also ignore the Civil War, Jim Crow, the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, civil rights, voting rights, and human rights.

So, everything we’ve taught our children in the past — knowledge that makes them stronger, more capable Americans — needs to go, if it falls under the convenient and false flag of the Youngkin-constructed CRT.

Never mind that Virginia was the home of the “Massive Resistance” movement of the 1950s, designed to block any semblance of desegregation in the wake of the Brown v. Board decision. And that’s a can of worms that most reasonable Virginians learn in school as part of today’s public school curriculum.

We don’t want to go back there ever again. That’s why it’s so important to learn our history.

But Governor-Elect Youngkin disagrees. He maintains history is in the past, and it just plain offends some folks.

Yes, Youngkin portrayed himself for the most part as a reasonable, nice guy.

He pretended to stay away from the Orange Oaf and all his MAGA mania represented. But a lot of us know the truth: Glenn Youngkin is merely “MAGA Lite”. That means he adheres to Rumpy’s creed; he embraces Mango Mussolini’s prodigious lies; he’s an acolyte who will pledge his allegiance to the Lord of Mar-a-Swamp-O before turning any attention to Virginians and what’s best for us.

It started looking grim early in the evening Tuesday for Democrat Terry McAuliffe, who served as Virginia’s 72nd governor from 2014 to 2018 and was looking for another term in a state where governors aren’t allowed to serve consecutively. And the press confirmed the Youngkin win about six hours after the polls closed.

I can’t wait ‘til the new Guv tries to ram his lies down the throats of Virginia’s schoolchildren. The state’s public schools are well-known for ascribing to excellence in the curriculum. Hate to say it, but even the troglodytes supporting Youngkin’s agenda could cringe when they find out he’s trying to change the subject in the classroom.

We’re rolling back Daylight Savings Time this coming weekend, and I have a couple choice words for my fellow Virginians.

We’ve come a long way in Virginia — tearing down confederate statues which used to be more than common, and renaming dozens of boulevards like Jefferson Davis Highway, which runs from the Potomac River all the way to the capital city of Richmond. But now the entire State of Virginia is this close to rolling back all of our forward progress.

A Twitter user named Mike Ashley, who bills himself as a sportswriter based in NoVa—aka Northern Virginia, the D.C.-area enclave where I lived for so many years and that went for the Dem in this election — had it right as the returns rolled in Tuesday night.

Considering present circumstances, this says it all: “Don’t forget to set your clocks back to 1950 Virginia this weekend.” Thanks for the Twitter warning, Mike.