To Trumpers, "critical race theory" is as bad as the Taliban -- and they're not kidding

[marmar]

To Trumpers, "critical race theory" is as bad as the Taliban — and they're not kidding
A Trump fundraising email compares American teachers to the Taliban. It's an explicit invitation to violence

By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
PUBLISHED AUGUST 20, 2021 6:00AM


(Salon) The Trump-controlled Republican Party, other American neofascists and the white right more generally are continuing their attack on the bogeyman and moral panic known as "critical race theory."

As I explained in an earlier essay for Salon the white right's fictive version of critical race theory has little if any substantive relationship to the specialized academic approach to the study of social inequality described with the same term. As I wrote, the right's version of critical race theory is "a type of racial bogeyman or psychological projection, a function of white racial paranoia about the 'browning of America' and the threat of 'white genocide'":

As the truism holds, history is written by the victors. To that end, in dozens of states across the country, the white right is engaging in an Orwellian campaign of rewriting school curricula to prevent the teaching of "critical race theory" -- which in practice means stopping any serious engagement with America's real and often uncomfortable history of racism and white supremacy.

The white right's campaign against the teaching of real American history involves actual thoughtcrimes."

The mainstream news media has largely moved on from this white supremacist attack on the country's educational institutions — and by implication, an assault on truth and reality itself. This is another example of a much larger problem with the mainstream news media in America: As an institution it is less interested in the truth and doing the work of pro-democracy journalism than in chasing the next shiny, horrible object and controversy. In turn, the American people en masse take their cues about what is "important" from the news media and other "opinion leaders" and agenda-setters.

Consequently, many Americans now view the white right's attacks on "critical race theory" as just another controversy among the country's political elites, rather than as part of a larger anti-democratic and white supremacist movement that poses an existential threat to society. ................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2021/08/20/to-trumpers-critical-race-theory-is-as-bad-as-the-taliban--and-theyre-not-kidding/