Thread by @criener

The bad faith and strawman discourse around critical race theory obscures that the "anti-CRT" crowd is connected to a coherent historical pattern, running same play. Rising calls for civil rights, justice and equality always have met an anti-equality side.

But the anti-equality has often recognized that "anti-equality" isn't persuasive, so they have to exagerrate and create an absurd version of the equality side. They act as if somehow in addressing equality, the activists will "go overboard" and flip the order of domination.

This is absurd, and falsified by all the evidence of history. Formerly enslaved people started newspapers, opened schools, created and joined institutions of civil society, did not organize violent revenge, the violence was white reaction to black civil empowerment.

At each moment, as Carol Anderson aptly shows in White Rage (and countless others) white backlash is not in response to overreach, but to organizing towards reckoning and equality. Organizing has always always included education&journalism and seeking truth.

From schools set up by the Freedman's Bureau, to Ida B Wells-Barnette ("the way to right wrongs is to shine the light of truth upon them") to Brown v Board, to 80s&90s Canon wars, to today. The equality side has fought for truth justice & reconciliation, and opposing side...

.. has known it cannot be "anti-truth" or "anti-equality" so it invents fictional overreach, seeking domination, not equality, using whatever words for political monsters are available whether radical, communist, socialist, etc. Key is stretching those words to include anything

But also! arguing over words and limits of concepts obscures the distraction that the conservative side of movement has goals that are anti-democracy, anti-equality, anti-truth. So arguing about CRT bothers me because it sets up pro-CRT vs anti-CRT, only looking at what CRT is.

But anti-CRT are part of a clear historical throughline, from redeemers to white citizen councils to Closing of American Mind, saying how worried they are about overreach while organizing against equality. Fin.