Christopher F. Rufo  ⚔️

2/ Fact is, both practitioners & observers claim that CRT is, or should be, at the core of contemporary teaching abt race in K-12. Recent piece in Education Post (funded by Walton Family Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative), makes clear:

3/ “CRT...provides educators tools they need to transform current practices in teaching & learning. [...] CRT allows for creation of new curricula that help students think critically about institutions that shape their lives & develop their own affirmative racial identities.”

5/ The name "CRT" guards this pedagogy as a "no-trespassing" sign. If you haven't read all of Crenshaw, Delgado, etc., you must defer to the "experts" on your kids' education. "Real" CRT is a will-o'-the-wisp. When you try to call it out, its defenders claim it's something else.

6/ If it were merely a branch of critical legal theory that looks at racial inequity encoded in institutions, there'd be no controversy. But “CRT” has become, in common usage, a synecdoche for a mélange of pedagogical practices, such as in this 24-Twt :https://twitter.com/docgotham/status/1391790361589161988 …

7/ Concerned parents & citizens are grasping for what to call this mix of Marcuse, Laclau & Mouffe, CRT, & Kendi/DiAngelo-style “antiracism.” Call it "White Privilege Studies"? “Post-Marxist, class-free, race-reductionist identitarianism?” Take your pick.

8/ After we agree on a term, we can discuss whether having children create "identity maps" of their "power and privilege," and teaching that POC cannot, by definition, be "racist," or do not, in principle, have any power, belongs in an elementary school curriculum.