https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-10-23-progressive-craziness-of-the-day-critical-race-theory-in-k-12-schools-and-corporations
Yesterday I attended an in-person program at the Manhattan Institute with the title “Deconstructing Wokeness in K-12 and Corporate America.” There were two panels and a speech totaling close to three hours. Presenters included something of a who’s who of the movement opposing the spreading cancer of Critical Race Theory in schools and corporations: Christopher Rufo and Jim Copland of the Manhattan Institute, Vivek Ramaswamy (author of the new book Woke, Inc.), Paul Rossi (the guy who blew the whistle on CRT at Grace Church School, who is currently affiliated with the Educational Liberty Alliance), and Asra Nomani (Vice President of Parents Defending Education).
Finally, after more than a year and a half in virtual purgatory, we have resumed in-person events to discuss issues of public policy. The huge difference between in-person and virtual events is that at in-person events you get to meet the people who take important roles in contesting these issues. In addition to the presenters, several other notable participants in recent events showed up at yesterday’s event, for example Andrew Gutmann (the parent who blew the whistle on CRT at the super-snooty all-girls Brearley School on Manhattan’s Upper East Side) and Maud Maron (mother of four kids in New York City public schools, who spoke out against CRT and for her trouble has been ostracized at her job defending indigent criminal defendants at the Legal Aid Society).
But for today I’d like to highlight the work of Rufo. Here’s a picture of me with Rufo at yesterday’s event:
Over the past couple of years, Rufo has rapidly gained a reputation as the most important “investigative reporter” in the CRT arena. But in my discussion with him prior to the beginning of the formal event, he admitted that his “investigative reporting” substantially consists of just sitting at his desk and receiving a flood of submissions from around the country from outraged parents and corporate employees. He has a couple of junior staffers who work with him to review the submissions and rate them on a scale of how incendiary they are. Then he writes up articles consisting mostly of direct quotes of the submitted material.
Here is a sample of Rufo’s work from 2021. All of the pieces originally appeared in City Journal.
Cupertino, California. In a January 13, 2021 piece titled “Woke Elementary” Rufo quoted extensively from whistleblower documents provided by parents in this very-upscale Silicon Valley community that is home to the headquarters of Apple. What follows comes from a third-grade class at R.I. Meyerholz Elementary School. Excerpt:
[R]eading from This Book Is Antiracist, the students learned that “those with privilege have power over others” and that “folx who do not benefit from their social identities, who are in the subordinate culture, have little to no privilege and power.” As an example, the reading states that “a white, cisgender man, who is able-bodied, heterosexual, considered handsome and speaks English has more privilege than a Black transgender woman.” . . . Following this discussion, the teacher had the students deconstruct their own intersectional identities and “circle the identities that hold power and privilege” on their identity maps, ranking their traits according to the hierarchy.
It goes on and on from there. Rufo notes that the Cupertino community is 94% non-white (majority Asian) with a median household income of $172,000.
