Thread by @normative

Just skip to page 9 where they give away the game: “[T]hey are trying to socially replace you.”

https://twitter.com/ShawnaCoppola/status/1402764305955803136

This document makes fairly explicit the strategy I posited in a thread yesteday.

Step 1: Take the sprawling body of academic work that can be labeled “Critical Race Theory,” give it a cartoonishly evil definition, and set it up as the new bogeyman coming for your children.

Step 2: But the CRT overlords are tricksy, and won’t CALL their indoctrination schemes “CRT”. So you have to look out for “buzzwords.” Like “structural bias.” Or “white supremacy.” Or “institutional bias.” Or “normativity.” Or… “equity.”

americarenewing.com/issues/list-cr…

I mean, this is some brilliant Alice in Wonderland level logic-judo. “CRT is essentialist and racist. ‘Institutional racism’ is a CRT buzzword. Therefore anyone talking about institutional racism in a classroom IS THEMSELVES PEDDLING RACISM.”

I should add that this blunderbuss approach seems counterproductive in terms of pushing back on *actually* misguided or harmful (or occasionally even unconstitutional) stuff that really does get incorporated in teacher trainings or curricula sometimes.

It seems likely to be that much harder to get schoolboards & other parents to take legitimate objections seriously if you’ve got people screaming bloody murder whenever the phrase “systemic racism” is uttered.

I wrote yesterday about how hard it was to find specifics in reporting on the backlash against supposed CRT infiltration of Loudon County schools. A little further digging did indeed turn up some specific “equity” draft proposals that were dubious or even potentially unlawful.

But it’s hard to see how you have a productive converation about specific problems when you’ve split parents & faculty into warring camps over an abstraction like “Critical Race Theory.”