I came to the keyboard thinking about the horrifying events in Memphis, young Tyre Nichols murdered at the hands of five Black cops. This was a few weeks ago. I thought I’d make some cogent comments relating it to the controversy over Florida’s rejection of the draft AP African American Studies course. But the more I read, the more articles, the more polemics, the comment threads and social media flares, the more disheartened I was by the hyperbolic outrage pummeling me from all sides. Wild-eyed partisans throwing big boulders of anger, screaming insults at the enemy and cheering their heroes. How can you see anything clearly through all that rubble and dust and debris? How can you hear what anyone is saying above all that hysterical braying? Am I supposed to be more terrified of the wokeist revolutionaries coming to groom my kids and destroy the American Way of Life or more horrified by the Fascist politicians erasing Black history from schools and libraries? It's hard to keep up.
The steamrolling of CRT into a culture war talking point, let alone the insistence that it is an uncontested theoretical framework that is necessary to entertain in primary education regardless of its standing in postsecondary institutions, is nothing short of exhausting.
The steamrolling of CRT into a culture war talking point, let alone the insistence that it is an uncontested theoretical framework that is necessary to entertain in primary education regardless of its standing in postsecondary institutions, is nothing short of exhausting.