Divert To Race

I went to the YouTube website, entered into the search engine "Christopher Rufo school choice," and up popped twelve videos pertaining to Christopher Rufo and critical race theory. And that's when I realized we, other than one person, were getting it all wrong.

I did so after finding this thread from Rufo on Critical Race Theory, which he criticized as being anti-white and unpopular (even?) among Latino and Asian parents. Then came the tell:

I'm optimistic about the fight against critical race theory. We can win by exposing the ideology and crafting policy to restrict it in public institutions, eliminate taxpayer funding for activists, and provide maximum school choice for parents. Not easy, but eminently possible.

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) November 30, 2021

(The video below, with bad closed captioning, is from 2012 but still generally relevant.)

Provide maximum school choice for parents. Not easy, but eminently possible. If you're wondering what charter schools, vouchers, and subsidized home schooling have to do with Critical Race Theory, you're catching on. While Rufo implies that "nonstop racialist ideology, race essentialism, and collective guilt" exists, and can exist, only in public schools, he is being deceptive, inasmuch as

A website that features a database of information on critical race theory (CRT) curricula and training in higher education unveiled a new study Monday focusing on the controversial ideology infiltrating the top 25 most elite K-12 private schools in America.

The project indicated that some schools openly admit to teaching CRT, while others are more subtle. Of the top 25 private schools, the database found that seven had some form of mandatory anti-racism training for students and a staggering 20 of 25 schools had some sort of curricular requirement change based off of anti-racism, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), or critical race theory.

William Jacobson, the Cornell Law School professor who founded the conservative-leaning site Legal Insurrection, created CriticalRace.org earlier this year to track how the widely debated concept is permeating U.S. institutions. His new initiative covers the same information as the higher education database, with a focus on K-12 learning.

Rufo either is unaware of this or dishonest about his ulterior motive.  After she recently spoke to Rufo, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg noted

“We are right now preparing a strategy of laying siege to the institutions,” he said. In practice, this means promoting the traditional Republican school choice agenda: private school vouchers, charter schools and home-schooling. “The public schools are waging war against American children and American families,” he said. Families, in turn, should have “a fundamental right to exit.”

Christopher Rufo, like most people, doesn't like CRT. We now know, with help from Goldberg and Rufo himself, that the campaign against it is about far more than how American history is taught. Obviously, most Democrats don't understand, or won't acknowledge, this and continue to focus on possible racial motivations for the crusade Christopher Rufo launched.  That is either a reflection on the party's current obsession or of an approval of the growing privatization of education and ruination of the public school system. The first is bad, the latter worse.

 

 

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