Watch what we do, not what we say
Amid liberal denials that it is taught in Minnesota’s classrooms, the U is looking for a professor with a ‘knowledge of and commitment to’ Critical Race Theory.
Anybody who accepts claims that the tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) are not taught in Minnesota’s classrooms should look at a recent job posting in which the University of Minnesota is looking to hire an assistant professor of elementary literacy education who has “knowledge of and commitment to” CRT.
“The successful candidate will bring a focus on and commitments to environmental and/or racial justice in their work,” according to the job description.
In addition to CRT, the ideal candidate’s minimum qualifications must also include knowledge of and commitment to “eco- and climate literacy,” “indigenous and decolonizing pedagogies and methodologies,” “racial literacy” and “anti-racist and anti-oppressive approaches.”
This posting establishes in black and white that the professional formation of teachers is being guided by an ideology that explicitly rejects rationality and objectivity. In classrooms, the theory’s real-world application has manifested itself through race essentialism, collective guilt, and neo-segregation — all which violate the basic principles of equality.
This is where the left wants to take education. The once obscure legal concept embraced by university academics now includes practices that reject the methods, aims, and goals of the Civil Rights Movement.
To understand CRT, look at how the theory defines itself.
“[C]ritical Race Theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law,” wrote Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, two founders of the theory.
CRT’s intellectual foundations receive scant attention in news headlines. Instead, the theory’s supporters have either claimed it is “just” teaching slavery and Jim Crow — which makes any opposition to CRT appear racist — or that it is a benign, philosophical academic concept only taught in higher education.
Either way, the real test for CRT’s supporters lies outside of defending the theory as an esoteric academic exercise but in whether supporters can defend its real-world application and how it is being put into practice.
Do they support eight-year-olds being divided into “oppressed” and “oppressor” groups and forced to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities?
Do they support kindergartners being forced to watch a video of dead black children warning them about “racist police and state-sanctioned violence” who might kill them at any time?
Do they support an ethnic studies curriculum that has students chant to the Aztec god of human sacrifice?
These are real stories about Critical Race Theory in practice. And they have real-life consequences.
The National Education Association (the national teachers’ union) passed a resolution prioritizing CRT promotion in public schools. Higher education institutions want those tasked with teaching educators — who then teach our children — to commit to CRT’s groundwork for wide-scale resistance.
Parents all across Minnesota are starting to force the debate over how Critical Race Theory is transforming our classrooms into something they were never intended to be, and how its rejection of the fundamental ideas on which our constitutional republic is based is taking us in the wrong direction.