The Pernicious Racism of ‘Anti-Racism’
The Pernicious Racism of ‘Anti-Racism’
The 10 worst instances of Critical Race Theory in our universities.
By Sara Dogan
The Top Ten
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
University of Kentucky
University of Minnesota
Stanford University
Virginia Tech University
University of Tennessee-Knoxville
Texas Tech University
Arizona State University
University of Florida
University of California-Los Angeles
(Universities are not ranked within the top ten.)
Introduction
Over the last year, Critical Race Theory has become a household term, promoted by the left as essential to racial progress and denounced by the right as a racist throwback to the Jim Crow era of racial segregation.
Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a radical revision of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream that each American be judged “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” While Dr. King and the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s promoted “colorblindness,” CRT insists on the exact opposite view, teaching that our character, our beliefs, and our place in society is predetermined by our skin color. By this reckoning, Whites are deemed to be inherently racist, born into a framework of “white supremacy” which infiltrates all American institutions. By contrast, racial minorities, and especially Blacks are regarded as perpetual victims of the “white supremacist” society into which they were born.
Taking its cues from Marxism, Critical Race Theory divides society into oppressors and the oppressed—categories which all-to-neatly correspond to whites and racial minorities. And just as with Marxism, CRT holds that the only way to truly eliminate racism is to destroy our institutions and rebuild them on the foundation of “racial equity.”
The penetrance of CRT into our schools and universities has had devastating consequences for education and academic freedom. Instead of being taught the merits of colorblindness and feeling comfortable in your own skin, students in America’s public schools and universities are now taught that “whiteness” is akin to a deal with the devil, a monstrous pox on American history and society that must be eradicated through revolutionary measures. Instead of lauding American democracy as a pivotal achievement, university historians fall over themselves to condemn the Founding Fathers as hypocrites and to claim, in the words of The New York Times’ ahistorical and widely debunked “1619 Project,” that “Out of slavery — and the anti-black racism it required — grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional.”
As Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo explained in an interview with The Atlantic, “Critical race theorists believe that American institutions, such as the Constitution and legal system, preach freedom and equality, but are mere ‘camouflages’ for naked racial domination. They believe that racism is a constant, universal condition: it simply becomes more subtle, sophisticated, and insidious over the course of history.”
Guided by this ahistorical revolutionary subtext, America’s colleges and universities have increasingly promoted racially-segregated classes and housing and graduation ceremonies as “safe” spaces liberated from the racist shenanigans of whites. Students and faculty alike are required to attend “anti-racist” training programs which instead endorse racist tropes and promote racial conflict. Instructors are pressured to ease grading standards in the interest of racial equity. Resistance to these demands is cause for public condemnation and disciplinary consequences.
“Universities with racist programs like the ones documented in our report should be defunded,” commented David Horowitz, author of I Can’t Breathe: How a Racial Hoax is Killing America. “Congress should pass a law that no university featuring racist courses and programs should be eligible to receive any government funds until such programs are entirely discontinued and any university faculty, administrators, or clerical workers associated with them are fired.”
So prevalent is the malignant spread of Critical Race Theory that hundreds of instances have been chronicled at colleges and universities—to say nothing of primary and secondary schools—in recent years. The following report documents ten of the most egregious uses of CRT in our institutions of higher education in hopes of holding the administrators and faculty who allowed them to happen accountable.
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
If you are looking for a job at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), you’d better be prepared to champion Critical Race Theory.
Recent job postings at the publicly-funded university mandate that candidates for various academic positions including an “Assistant Professor of Cybersecurity” must be active proponents of the CRT ideology of “anti-racism.”
The term “anti-racism” was coined by Boston University professor Ibram X. Kendi. As journalist Christopher Rufo explains, “Kendi’s thesis—that if the races are equal, then racial disparities can owe only to racism and must be rectified through “antiracist discrimination”—is a simplistic reiteration of critical race theory’s core concepts.”
One full paragraph of the four-paragraph job description describes the woke credentials that applicants are expected to possess. “IUPUI condemns racism in all its forms and has taken an anti‐racist stance that moves beyond mere statements to interrogating its policies, procedures, and practices,” states the job posting. “We hope to identify individuals who will assist in our mission to dismantle racism so that everyone has the opportunity to succeed at IUPUI.”
Other job postings, including one for an assistant or associate professor of occupational therapy, include the same requirements to champion CRT.
IUPUI does not even offer potential faculty the pretense of academic freedom, instead making it clear that nonconformists will be barred from opportunities to teach at the university. Anyone who rejects Critical Race Theory as the Marxist, ahistoric, infantilizing, and racist doctrine that it is, will not be welcomed at this public institution of higher education.
Nor does the mandatory adherence to official propaganda stop there. Despite its self-abnegating claim to wish to combat its own essential racism, IUPUI already funds a “Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” which hosts numerous programs dedicated to forcing Critical Race Theory on students and faculty.
Among these are the “White Racial Literacy Project” which promises to provide “an educational environment and reflective opportunity for White people in the IUPUI community to unpack misconceptions and misinformation about structural racism.”
In a similar vein, the “Racial Healing Project” seeks to “seriously engage IUPUI in efforts to recognize the trauma visited upon populations of color both historically and contemporarily within the US, and to position our campus to become a leader in facilitating opportunities for racial healing, collaboration, growth, and support.” Specific elements of this project include classic elements of CRT including “Educating the community on variant manifestations of racism that are covert and overt,” “Introducing concepts that account for the emotional experiences attached to racist practices,” and “Providing tools to account for and address racism at the individual and institutional level.”
The university also sports an anti-racism “Action Committee” which asserts—literally—that racism is worse than the novel coronavirus.
The official university website features a quote from radical author and professor Roxane Gay, which states, “Eventually, doctors will find a coronavirus vaccine, but [B]lack people will continue to wait, despite the futility of hope, for a cure for racism. We will live with the knowledge that a hashtag is not a vaccine for white supremacy.”
This quote is the epitome of critical race theory—the idea that despite centuries of racial progress, and laws and institutions which vehemently forbid racial discrimination, America is still somehow a land controlled by “white supremacy,” to which all black citizens are victims. Yet it is featured at the very top of IUPUI’s website devoted to racial equity and diversity.
IUPUI’s blatant promotion of false racist narratives and frontal assault on academic freedom make it home to one of the most egregious uses of critical race theory.
University of Kentucky
Imagine a publicly funded university paying an outside company to instruct their white employees in their “racial inferiority.” This is no hypothetical, but the current situation at one of America’s leading state universities.
At the University of Kentucky, no one is exempt from Critical Race Theory propaganda. The publicly funded institution recently paid $5,000 to the Center for Healing Racial Trauma to hold a workshop on “Cultivating an Anti-Racist Mindset for Academic Administrators,” which was attended by approximately 50 top faculty members and administrators at the university.
In keeping with the principles of Critical Race Theory, which seeks to condemn all whites as oppressors and label all blacks as victims, the curriculum at this workshop was blatantly racist. Attendees were told that they must alter their personal psychology to “replace white supremacy with the more accurate white inferiority complex.”
Participants in the workshop were required to fill out forms divulging their “chosen metric for anti-racism,” as well as the people they have chosen to be accountable to for following through on anti-racist practices, and the steps they have taken to enact anti-racist reforms.
Mary Davis, Dean of the UK J. David Rosenberg College of Law, responded to these queries by stating that she has begun to “force myself to accept white inferiority,” and that it has been “really hard” to accept.
Another attendee, Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Eric N. Monday, promised to “increase # of BIPOC M/F staff” that are paid $50,000 or more per year as his gesture to anti-racism. He noted that he had already “created a BIPOC recruitment fund of $250,000 per year for [the] next two years.”
Information about the event was initially kept confidential and was only made public after Young America’s Foundation (YAF) filed public records requests to obtain workshop materials and published their findings.
The University of Kentucky’s deplorably racist workshop and attempts to promote the doctrine of “white inferiority” are among the most egregious instances of CRT propaganda in academia.
University of Minnesota
In the new woke, hyper-aware racial climate at American universities, no nook or corner is exempt from the wrath of CRT proponents, who insist that white supremacy is flourishing in even the most unlikely institutions. So it is at the University of Minnesota, where the Department of Forest Resources has recently come under fire for alleged racism and failure to sufficiently kowtow to leftist groupthink.
Campus activists published an open letter last fall, attacking the department for upholding “systems of white supremacy and violence … across the 110-year history of forestry at the University of Minnesota” and perpetuating a “colonial culture and structure” that “continues to persist over a century later through the department’s silence and inaction.”
Addressed to the “Leadership, Faculty, and Staff of the University of Minnesota Department of Forest Resources” the letter includes a lengthy disclaimer mourning the fact that “the University of Minnesota has profited from the sale and use of land stolen from Indigenous peoples and continues to reap the benefits of controlling these lands.” It goes on to denounce the Forestry Department for numerous offenses against the cult of “anti-racism” including its failure to condemn with sufficient vigor “the murder of George Floyd in our own neighborhood and the countless unfilmed lives lost to anti-Black racism” and for upholding “the predominantly white, male power structure since the department was founded in 1910.” That it might not be the place of a university department to speak out in support of Black Lives Matter—especially one so divorced from the issues involved in urban policing as the Department of Forest Resources—does not seem to have occurred to the letter’s signatories.
The open letter continues to make no less than 22 demands to assist the department in “dismantl[ing] systemic racism.” These proscriptions for racial justice include restructuring the department to reorganize “the existing power structure,” requiring “annual anti-racist trainings provided by external experts for all faculty, staff, and students,” modifying “faculty hiring descriptions to require previous work in environmental justice or diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and “includ[ing] a minimum of two lectures relating to environmental justice or multicultural perspectives in all FNRM courses and in a minimum of two departmental seminars per academic year.”
A separate demand insists that the department must “Demonstrate Allyship for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) Communities Through a Commitment to Action” including by “address[ing] anti-Black racism in a public statement from departmental leadership” and updating the department’s Diversity and Inclusion plan “to center BIPOC voices, commit to anti-racist actions, and develop a plan for equity among all members of the FR community.”
Over 300 students and community members at the University of Minnesota signed on to support the demands of the open letter which—if enacted—would severely limit the academic freedom of Forest Resources faculty members who would be forced to promote “environmental justice” and “anti-racism” in their courses and submit to CRT-indoctrination trainings, regardless of their own considered views on these topics. If even the Department of Forest Resources is subject to the fascist demands of woke academic leftism, no one is out of reach.
Stanford University
Proponents of Critical Race Theory (CRT) see the entire world through a lens of race, claiming that no law or institution can be accurately evaluated without understanding that America is a nation built on White Supremacy and the oppression of racial minorities by Whites. Political Science Professor Hakeem Jefferson of Stanford University has taken this edict to heart, promoting his view in a series of social media posts that “Whiteness” is largely responsible for opposition to school mask mandates.
“Make no mistake,” Jefferson wrote, “this crazy opposition to mask wearing that is leading folks (read white ppl) to act violently at school board meetings & council meetings & everywhere else—yeah, you can’t disconnect it from whiteness. And discussions that don’t acknowledge this are incomplete.”
According to Jefferson’s bizarre theory, which is clearly derived from Critical Race Theory, “whiteness” confers on white individuals a sense of total entitlement that vindicates their belief that they can resist government edicts allegedly aimed at the common good.
“Ain’t like masks are comfortable for non-white people,” the professor explained. “But you don’t see a bunch of Black folks storming meetings. And it’s not just cause these white folks are GOP. It’s cause they’re white, & believe whiteness confers upon them a kind of power that places them above gov action.”
In case that universal stereotyping of an entire race of people was insufficient, Jefferson went on to claim that the “whiteness” also drove the January 6 protests at the U.S. Capitol. “It’s like my reaction to jan6.,” he tweeted. “You don’t have to be an expert in identity to know that whiteness is driving the behavior. The crowds are overwhelming white. You think this just randomly happened? Nah, whiteness be working overtime. Like we say in the south, the devil is busy!”
Jefferson also retweeted a response to his posts which unironically claimed, “Whiteness is the most pressing threat to the nation that isn’t climate change.”
When a student at Stanford objected to the Jefferson’s claims that “whiteness” was a root cause of the January 6th demonstrations “given there were Vietnamese flags and other ‘non-white’ groups represented,” the professor did not let the facts influence his opinion, instead defining whiteness as not merely a skin color but an “ideology” that can be embodied even by racial minorities.
“This is, I would argue, the power of whiteness,” Jefferson declared. “Whiteness as a construct is not merely about skin color, although those who think of themselves as white are the most susceptible to its attractions. When I invoke the language of whiteness, I am interested in whiteness as an ideological force (connected to skin color for sure!), but an ideology that is powerful, in part, because of buy-in from those on the peripheries of whiteness.” He went on to describe whiteness as a “helluva drug” that is so “f’ing powerful” that “it is attractive to those it so often oppresses.”
In Professor Jefferson’s illogical view, “whiteness” is a selfish, entitled, bratty attitude, which can mostly, but not entirely, be equated with the actual Caucasian race. Imagine the uproar if a faculty member attributed similar negative characteristics to “blackness.” Jefferson’s absurd use of damaging racial stereotypes to stigmatize all white people deserves to be recognized as one of the most egregious uses of Critical Race Theory in our universities.
Virginia Tech
So entrenched is the dogma of Critical Race Theory at Virginia Tech University that an instructor in the Department of Human Development and Family Science took it upon herself to insert a CRT-laced mea culpa for being white and middle class in her class syllabus.
Under a section titled “Who I Am,” course instructor Crystal Duncan Lane included a lengthy apologia to her minority students for being “a Caucasian cisgender female” who is married to “a cisgender male” compounded the additional sin of being “middle class.”
“While I did not ‘ask’ for the many privileges in my life: I have benefited from them and will continue to benefit from them whether I like it or not. This is injustice,” Lane declared. “I am and will continue to work on a daily basis to be antiracist and to confront the innate racism within myself that is the reality and history of white people.” (emphasis in original)
The instructor continued her self-aggrandizing diatribe, writing, “I want to be better. Every day. I will transform. Every day. This work terrifies me: Every day. I invite my white students to join me on this journey. And to my students of color: I apologize for the inexcusable horrors within our shared history.”
Students in Lane’s class were puzzled and dismayed by her racist invective whereby she took it upon herself to apologize for the “inexcusable horrors” perpetrated by the white race, as well as her strong suggestion that her “white students” should “join me on this journey.”
Virginia Tech student Natalie Rhodes told the conservative watchdog outlet Campus Reform that she thought Lane’s sentiments were inappropriate. “It is a class about disabilities, not political opinion, affiliation, nor judgment in any sort,” she said. “If you are discussing disabilities, stick to your course.”
Another student noted that Lane’s racist diatribe was damaging to white students in the class. “It hurts that someone says I was born with ‘innate racism’ because of my skin color,” the anonymous student said. “[It] makes me feel like I should hide and worry about everything I say.”
Virginia Tech instructor Lane perfectly encapsulates the absurdity and racism of Critical Race Theory whereby a university professor is more comfortable apologizing for the “innate racism within myself that is the reality and history of white people,” thereby condemning all white students in her class as racists, than simply teaching her course.
University of Tennessee-Knoxville
One might expect that students studying to become social workers would be encouraged to disregard the race of the individuals they encounter, in the interests of engaging with the whole person. Not so at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where the creeping tentacles of Critical Race Theory have infested the curriculum to such an extent that students are now encouraged to miss class to attend racially-segregated “anti-racism” trainings.
Students enrolled in a Masters of Social Work program at the university were told that they should attend one of two training sessions: either a “White Accountability Group (WAG)” or a separate meeting for those identifying as “Black, Indigenous, Multiracial People of Color (BIMPoC).”
In a parallel to the racial division, the intended purposes of these two groups also diverged. The “White Accountability Group” was intended for those with “white skin privilege” to “critically engage in whiteness, white privilege, and hold each other accountable.” Participants in the group were expected to “explore how to recognize whiteness and white privilege, identify and interrupt internalized dominance, and collectively develop strategies for liberation and change.”
By contrast, students enrolling in the “Black, Indigenous, Multiracial People of Color” session were advised that “Affinity groups for black, indigenous, people of color can be magical places in a predominantly white institution.” This group promised to provide “a safe and supportive place” for “naming the problem and defining or reframing the problem.”
According to the email sent to students, the goal of this “anti-racism” training was to promote students’ “understanding about how implicit bias, racism, and white supremacy impact the CSW’s culture and climate.” Apparently at the University of Tennessee, white supremacy and racism can best be thwarted through racial separatism.
“Even if you have to miss class time, we strongly urge you to find a way to make this work,” UT Dean of Equity and Inclusion J. Camille Hall expressed to the students.
According to Young America’s Foundation, which exposed the segregated meetings, that same Dean Hall led an orientation session during which “students were divided into random groups to role-play a scenario in which a ‘student on campus was a Trump voter and whether it was okay or not to call them racist.’”
“This is just another instance of the pervasive Critical Race Theory craze that has taken academia by storm,” YAF commented in a report. “The goal of segregating their events is to convince people that race is their defining attribute and they are either inherently good or bad as a result.”
For the ironic and absurd use of racial segregation to promote “anti-racism,” UT-Knoxville’s social work orientation should be recognized as one of the most egregious instances of Critical Race Theory put into practice on campus.
Texas Tech University
The advent of critical race theory has created a resurgence of principles that should have died in the Jim Crow era. Students and faculty at Texas Tech University recently experienced this regression firsthand when they were forcibly segregated along racial lines during “anti-racism” training.
A video recording of one of the training sessions show a former university employee, Mica Curtis-Wilson, declaring that students would be sent to separate “breakout rooms” based on the race they listed on their registration—one for students of color called a “BIPOC affinity space” and another for whites called an “Ally affinity space.”
“We are breaking up into two separate rooms just to facilitate conversation…and also to allow those who identify with each other to be able to communicate ways in which we can be better allies in different spaces,” Curtis-Wilson explains in the video following the “Allyship and Co-Conspirator” section of the event. “The point of this is to be able to identify how we experience these concepts and ideas and deeply listen to others and how they understand these ideas.”
Research and Freedom of Information Act requests submitted by Young America’s Foundation uncovered that students were also segregated during training sessions on “Understanding Whiteness and White Allyship” and the “Racial Battle Fatigue.”
Information collected through the FOIA request revealed that the racial segregation of students during the training was planned in advance by Texas Tech administrator Jade Silva Tovar, Senior Director of the division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Internal notes taken during the planning process noted that Tovar “thinks it may be useful to have two breakout sessions (BIPOC and non-BIPOC) because the conversation between the two groups will be very different. To offer a comfortable and safe environment for groups to discuss racial traumas undisturbed, these two groups would be useful.”
The internal notes also state that these racially segregated sessions will provide a good opportunity to “Segway into white fragility.” “White fragility” is a racist term popularized by author Robin DiAngelo that is used to belittle whites who claim (always falsely, according to the CRT narrative) that they are not in fact racists.
Other aspects of the Texas Tech training also promoted Critical Race Theory. A graphic featuring an image of Klan members lists “law enforcement” and “immigration laws” as examples of “white supremacy.” Students and faculty participating in the sessions were asked to reflect on questions premised on the CRT-belief that all whites are racist and benefit from white privilege: “When have my racist ideas and actions affected others?” and “How have I benefitted from my privilege…?”
When confronted with evidence of the racially segregated trainings, TTU Spokesman Matt Dewey initially defended the anti-racism sessions as “optional educational opportunity conversations,” and refused to comment on the question of whether they violated federal civil rights laws. Within days, however, the university changed its tune.
“Upon reviewing materials from the ‘Deeply Rooted Conversations’ discussion series, we learned that some of the content does not align with our university values, and we have discontinued this program,” spokesman Dewey asserted.
As is sadly common, Texas Tech was happy to promote racially segregated instruction as long as it wasn’t caught. Texas Tech’s racially segregated “anti-racism” training is a disturbing example of the egregious infiltration of Critical Race Theory into our universities.
Arizona State University
The limits of “multiculturalism” and the racist precepts of Critical Race Theory were on full display this September at Arizona State University when two black female students harassed a pair of white male students who were attempting to do schoolwork in the campus multicultural center—and then applauded themselves for successfully reclaiming their safe space.
The white students were sitting calmly at a table when they were approached by the women who demanded that they leave. “What did I do wrong?” one student asked. “You’re offensive,” the woman replied, noting the “Police Lives Matter” sticker on his laptop. “We’re just trying to do school,” responded the other white student who was wearing a t-shirt reading “Didn’t Vote for Joe Biden.”
From there the encounter deteriorated into a vitriolic diatribe from the two women who insisted that the two white males were “making this space uncomfortable” by their mere presence.
“You’re white! Do you understand what a multicultural space– it means you’re not being centered!” one of the women yelled at the males.
“White isn’t a culture?” asked the man in the anti-Biden t-shirt.
“No, it’s not a culture! White is not a culture!” the female screamed at him. “This is the violence that ASU does and this is the type of people that they protect! This white man thinks he can take up our space … they think they can get away with this s**t!” The encounter continued for approximately seven minutes until the men finally packed up their belongings and appeared to leave.
Astoundingly, instead of condemning the women for ousting the two peaceful white males from studying in a campus building, many students and faculty on campus took the side of the black women who initiated the hostile encounter.
The ASU Multicultural Solidarity Coalition, a student organization, proudly posted the video on Instagram with the heading “Defending the space” and also put out a statement claiming that the incident was a result of “ASU not taking seriously our safety concerns, especially in regards to the multicultural center.”
“We believe that inclusion means making spaces safer for the most marginalized students,” the Multicultural Solidarity Coalition statement reads. “We understand ‘blue lives matter’ to be an explicit rejection of the Black Lives Matter movement and therefore an overt threat to Black lives. In the new multicultural centers, we will not tolerate people entering with racist slogans to intimidate and antagonize historically and currently marginalized students. Inclusion does not mean we accommodate white supremacists, their slogans, and behaviors at the cost of endangering all other community members.”
Another campus group, Students for Socialism, concurred, putting out a statement referring to the “recent attack on BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, People of Color] committed by two racist white men,” even though the men were sitting peacefully doing schoolwork when they were approached by the black females.
An ASU postdoctoral research scholar, Stephanie Koebele, chimed in with a twitter post accusing the men of deliberately antagonizing minority students by their mere presence in the multicultural center, claiming “their presence made the space unsafe & they knew it.”
The ASU administration, instead of clarifying that federal civil rights law actually makes it illegal to exclude individuals from a public space due to their race and defending the right of the white males to sit in the multicultural center, simply issued a statement saying it will be “be discussing [the incident] with all involved” and “expects respectful dialogue between students in all engagements.”
The deliberate ouster of white students from a campus multicultural center on the grounds that they were making minorities feel “unsafe” is an egregious example of Critical Race Theory put into practice.
University of Florida
A doctoral student and professor at the University of Florida have teamed up to promote Critical Race Theory on a planetary scale, launching a new racially-divisive and discriminatory online training program called “Academics for Black Survival and Wellness.”
Created by UF doctoral student Pearis Bellamy with her mentor, UF psychology professor Dr. Della Mosley, the program deliberately segregates white and minority participants into two “tracks,” one for blacks and one for non-black “allies.”
The program’s segregated goals are proudly stated on the website as “Healing for Black folx, Accountability for Non-Black folx,” as though it is absurd to consider that black and white “folx” could possibly enter the training with the same ends in mind.
A public “call to action” released in an open letter by the program’s founders invites white faculty members to “give up some of your privilege (e.g. research productivity) during this week” to instead “begin or continue the lifelong journey toward critical consciousness of anti-black racism.” Black faculty, meanwhile, are encouraged to use that same week for “rest” and to discover the “Black wellness and survival related resources” provided by the program.
Participants in the program will be taught to “honor the toll of racial trauma on Black people, resist anti-Blackness and white supremacy, and facilitate accountability and collective action.”
Goals for the week-long training are heavily laced with the assumptions of Critical Race Theory which holds that all whites are inherently oppressors seeking to promote white supremacy over black victims and that racism lies at the foundation of all American institutions.
“Deepen your understanding of the history and deep-rooted nature of anti-Black racism in the U.S.,” exhorts the program, which further claims that “Every current disparity and statistic you see about Black people has a historical root” which “extend[s] deep into our current systems, which maintain and perpetuate outcomes that act as barriers to Black wellness.”
Program participants are also expected to examine their “personal relationship to white supremacy and anti-Black racism.”
“All academics in the U.S. are socialized in white supremacy,” explains the program website. “Because of this socialization, it is imperative you can recognize and lean into the psychological resistance that comes up as it relates to understanding and engaging in work related to anti-Black racism and white supremacy.”
Of course, according to the program, understanding one’s white supremacy is only the first step. Faculty enrolled in the training are also expected to “Take action that includes time, energy, financial resources, and accountability until Black liberation is realized.” The precise conditions of achieving “black liberation” are not stated.
As a racially-segregated program which promotes harmful stereotypes and attempts to shame white academics into accepting radical policies, “Academics for Black Survival and Wellness” is an egregious example of Critical Race Theory put into practice.
University of California-Los Angeles
In the twisted world of Critical Race Theory, impartial grading is considered tantamount to a hate crime. UCLA Accounting Professor Gordon Klein found this out the hard way, when he refused a request to grade black students with more leniency in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
Shortly after Floyd’s death in May 2020, Prof. Klein, who teaches at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, received an email—from a non-black student—expressing concern that both COVID-19 and Floyd’s death had disproportionately impacted black students in his class.
“As we approach finals week, we recognize that these conditions will place Black students at an unfair academic disadvantage due to traumatic circumstances out of their control,” stated the student’s email. “We implore you to mandate that our final exam is structured as noharm, where they will only benefit students’ grades if taken,” the letter continues. “In addition, we urgently request shortened exams and extended deadlines for final assignments and projects.”
Professor Klein, who takes his academic responsibilities seriously, responded to the student’s request:
Thanks for your suggestion in your email below that I give black students special treatment, given the tragedy in Minnesota.
Do you know the names of the classmates that are black? How can I identify them since we’ve been having online classes only?
Are there any students of mixed parentage, such as half black-half Asian? What do you suggest I do with respect to them? A full concession or just half?
Also, do you have any idea if any students are from Minneapolis? I assume that they probably are especially devastated as well. I am thinking that a white student from there might possibly be even more devastated by this, especially because some might think that they’re racist even if they are not. My TA is from Minneapolis, so if you don’t know, I can probably ask her.
Can you guide me on how I should achieve a “no-harm” outcome since our sole course grade is from a final exam only?
One last thing strikes me: Remember that MLK famously said that people should not be evaluated based on the “color of their skin.” Do you think that your request would run afoul of MLK’s admonition?”
Displaying great maturity, the student who had emailed Klein to request the change in grading proceeded to apologize for her email, but the matter did not end there. A screenshot of Klein’s response was circulated on the campus and university officials were incensed at his lack of sensitivity for minority students.
Anderson School of Management Dean Antonio Bernardo issued an apology “for the very hurtful sentiments expressed in this message,” adding ironically that “respect and equality for all are core principles at Anderson.” Dean Bernardo also called Klein’s email “outrageous and simply inexcusable,” and said the university “rejects racism and violence” and was “investigating the situation and plan to address it.”
Only in the bizarro world of Critical Race Theory could Prof. Klein’s refusal to use racially-biased grading standards be viewed as a rejection of “equality” or an instance of “racism and violence.”
Mob rule initially prevailed at UCLA. Over 20,000 people signed a petition urging that Klein be fired and he was placed on mandatory leave by the university and suspended from teaching his classes. All because he refused to enact more lenient grading practices for minority students—a clear violation of federal civil rights law and, if allowed to occur, an egregious exercise of racism. UCLA absurdly claimed that it was the “tone” of Klein’s email that merited the investigation and suspension, not his suggestion that racially-biased grading would be unfair and ridiculous.
Ultimately, common sense and the law prevailed, and Klein was reinstated as a professor after UCLA’s Discrimination Prevention Office ruled that there was no basis for the complaint. But the suspension and the negative publicity surrounding it have had a lasting impact on Klein’s career. In September 2021, Klein filed a lawsuit against the Anderson School of Management alleging that he has suffered significant financial and reputational damage due to the university’s witch-hunt.
“UCLA is a public institution, legally bound to respect student and faculty First Amendment rights,” explained the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a non-profit organization that supported Klein in his battle to regain his position. “The First Amendment and UCLA policy protect Klein’s academic freedom rights, including the right to manage the content and direction of his course and comment on matters of public concern.”
UCLA’s horrendous treatment of Prof. Klein for his refusal to institute racially-biased grading standards is an egregious example of CRT at work.