Editor, The Smithfield Times:

Over the past couple of years, parents have become aware that states have been infusing ideology into their children’s schools. This ideology has been brought into the schools under a variety of names, which all lead to the same pernicious place: a place where people (and in the case of schools, young children) are separated into groups where they are treated not as individuals but as members of their protected class.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is not (typically) a class taught in grade school, but it is representative of a collectivist ideology that is becoming infused throughout our institutions and schools. The ideology is fundamentally neo-Marxist in nature. I refer to it as Identity Marxism because it is an accurate and easily understood way to describe it.

The legal theory began in law schools in the 1970s and in the writings of people like Derrick Bell and Kimberle Crenshaw. An example of it in legal practice is something called “disparate impact.” Disparate impact is the theory that an organization’s facially neutral policies disproportionally discriminate against a certain protected group such that the facially

neutral policy is a pretext for discrimination.

For example, in 2007, the U.S. Department of Justice brought suit against the New York City fire department alleging that two civil service examinations the department used resulted in a disparate impact on African Americans and Hispanics. There is obviously not a class on that legal theory in Isle of Wight County Schools.

However, during the pandemic, parents nationwide witnessed via Zoom CRT’s Identity Marxism in the classroom. This is because, in addition to being a legal theory, CRT is the neo-Marxist belief system that people of European descent make society racist for their own benefit. Racism is baked into the system and inescapable. In fact, racism is present — even when no one is racist. Any disparity in group outcome is because of the racist system.

This belief system grew out of the neo-Marxist critical theory teachings of Herbert Marcuse at the Frankfurt School. Another neo-Marxist, Paulo Friere, was first to apply it as a pedagogy to education. This pedagogy is fundamentally at odds with the principles of individual merit and responsibility and it has nothing to do with teaching “accurate history.”

 

Jennifer Rawls

Windsor