Critical Race Theory Infecting America

Educators try to identify and eliminate 15 characteristics of “white supremacy”.

By Mark Anderson

Did you know there is such a thing as the “15 characteristics of white supremacy” and that those “abhorrent” features include “perfectionism,” a “sense of urgency,” “individualism,” and even “objectivity”? Well, children at Belvedere Elementary School in Virginia are being taught that very thing via online lessons derived from the “Dismantling Racism Workbook” by authors Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones.

Sadly—and ironically—when Belvedere and any other schools using this material cavalierly associate such commonplace and generally positive concepts with alleged “white supremacy,” the teachers actually reduce the chances of non-white children advancing in school. And when individualism and objectivity are placed under the Marxist guillotine, you know that big trouble lies ahead as the current Marxist assault moves from toppling statues of key historical figures and torching cities to dismantling language and overturning time-honored concepts.

What’s being pushed across many venues of society is a variant of Critical Race Theory (CRT)—which is still being taught in many U.S. schools despite President Donald Trump having taken strong measures against the propagation of CRT. On Sept. 23, he signed an executive order expanding an existing ban on government agencies receiving sensitivity training involving CRT.

“A few weeks ago, I banned efforts to indoctrinate government employees with divisive and harmful sex and race-based ideologies,” the president announced on Twitter at the time. “Today [Sept. 23] I’ve expanded that ban to people and companies that do business with our country. . . . Americans should be taught to take pride in our great country, and if you don’t, there’s nothing in it for you,” as he said in a second post. Thus, a key goal of Trump’s is to end diversity training programs that teach about so-called “white privilege” as a component of CRT.

AFP located a Minnesota study that draws heavily from the Okun and Jones workbook in question. Although reading it is a bumpy ride, it provides insight into the often surreal thinking that comprises such educational initiatives. The study, from the Minnesota Historical Society’s Department of Inclusion and Community Engagement, states at its beginning:

The [15] characteristics listed below are damaging because they are used as norms and standards without being pro-actively named or chosen by the group. They are damaging because they promote white supremacy thinking. They are damaging to both people of color and to white people. Organizations that are people of color led or a majority people of color can also demonstrate many damaging characteristics of white supremacy culture.

Where to begin in taking apart such utter nonsense? While the statement is a prelude to an analysis of the 15 “deplorable” characteristics that are supposedly so harmful to society, notice that the statement itself takes it as a given that something as critically important to society as objective thinking is inherently a “white” thing and therefore, by definition, it must be a “bad” thing. What the illustrious authors of the workbook and of this Minnesota study don’t seem to realize is that their assertions suggest that people of color either should avoid objective thinking because it’s too “white,” or perhaps that they’re incapable of exercising it because it’s the sole talent or domain of whites—the height of racist thinking.

Either way, this warped thinking likely will malign people of color in the name of helping them and tarnish the crucial role of objectivity in forming logical thoughts and acquiring mental discipline—key components for doing math, becoming an engineer to build bridges and other projects, piloting planes, becoming a surgeon, and on and on. Thus, “people of color” could end up being under-represented in scores of fields of employment with ample opportunities for career advancement.

Moreover, to claim that objectivity and the other characteristics damage both “people of color” and “white people” doesn’t even dignify a response. As if things weren’t already strange enough, the “dishonor roll” of characteristics that are so menacing to society also includes “worship of the written word,” when the written word and the need for precise definitions is what makes understanding and cooperation possible.

Meanwhile, other odd ideas and concepts abound. For example, the San Diego Unified School District is dumping previously used grading standards because, somehow, they promote “racism.” Business publications such as Forbes and Bloomberg Businessweek are pumping the political correctness culture nonstop. A recent edition of the latter called for corporate hiring quotas because companies “are still too white.”

The Atlantic magazine, a prime purveyor of internationalist-Marxist-PC blarney, is pushing the idea that the word “guys” should be highly discouraged or banned, because its widespread use—which even includes groups of girlfriends casually saying “hey, guys” when greeting one another—is supposedly indicative of a hopelessly “masculine” culture that needs to be forced to change its ways by an educational and corporate culture that has a clear disdain for freedom and a lust for controlling our thoughts, words, and actions, from cradle, to school, to workplace, to grave.

Only one response makes sense: absolute resistance to such mind-controlling, mind-altering pablum.

Mark Anderson is AFP’s roving editor. Email him at [email protected].