On August 28, 1963, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. led the March on Washington for Civil Rights, which for centuries had been shamefully denied to Black Americans. His keynote speech included this prophetic call: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Within a year President Lyndon Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, making Rev. King’s prophetic vision the law of the land. Thus did America finally fulfill the promise enshrined in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . . .”
Now, six decades later, our national creed of racial equality faces a new challenge. Unlike the more familiar racism associated with the far right, this new challenge comes from the far left – and sadly, it has gained support in the political mainstream, especially among leaders in K-12 and college education.
This new racial separatism draws from an academic construct known as “critical race theory,” which borrows from the doctrines of Karl Marx, author of the Communist Manifesto. Marx’s theory holds that humanity has always been divided into two economic classes: a small group of powerful oppressors (the “capitalists”), and a large group of oppressed workers (“the proletariat.”)
CRT invokes the same oppressor/oppressed model, but along divides of race rather than economic class. White people are the greedy oppressors, people of color the powerless oppressed. Leading CRT promoters like Prof. Ibram Kendi argue that this alleged oppression makes necessary several coercive countermeasures, e.g.: forced reparations to redistribute illegitimate wealth away from whites; racial quotas in school admissions and hiring; and a federal bureaucracy to impose several “anti-racist” programs on the country.
Kendi makes clear that this program of race-based rewards and punishments must replace Rev. King’s call for equal treatment, declaring: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” This call for unequal treatment by race is widely promoted by the Diversity-Equity-Inclusion (DEI) industry, which now governs race relations policies across America’s K-12 schools and colleges.
DEI expands the oppressor-oppressed matrix beyond Black and white to include all kinds of racial and gender-related identity groups. But DEI still divides the population into a simplistic oppressors vs. oppressed framework. In schools and colleges this is often taught through a DEI exercise called the “Privilege Walk.” School kids are forced to stand in an open space while a teacher reads out various unfair “Privileges” – like being white, male, wealthy, heterosexual, or “cis-gender.” Students having such privileges are ordered to take a step forward for each one; those lacking them must take steps backward.
The shame and blame message could not be clearer. It discourages the so-called “oppressed” kids with the message that the system remains rigged against them – hence if the fix is in, why even try? And it shames the “oppressor” kids as being underserving winners in a rigged system – hence again, why even try? Even worse, extensive survey data shows that DEI trainings do nothing to improve race relations, and in fact often worsens them.
Yet despite both the historical inaccuracy and poor results of CRT/DEI programs, they have been embraced by teachers unions and schools across the country – including here in Connecticut. By forcing students and teachers to embrace as fact the questionable premises of CRT/DEI theory, this teaching also constitutes compelled speech in violation of the First Amendment.
For these reasons, parents/citizens groups across Connecticut are joining forces behind proposed state legislation that would keep this unconstitutional and counterproductive CRT/DEI teaching model out of the public schools. As the legislation specifies, this would in no way preclude teaching and discussion of slavery, Jim Crow, continued racial disparities, and how to overcome those deep wrongs. But it would prohibit the indoctrination of our kids in CRT/DEI ideology.
If enacted into law, such legislation would restore Rev. King’s prophetic call for racial equality to the center of our children’s civic education – as it should. After all, isn’t it “self-evident that all men [and women] are created equal?”
Henry Kopel is an author and former federal prosecutor, and helps coordinate the Amity Schools Region 5 parents group known as “Amity Advocates.”