Gregory Thayer: Critical race theory will cripple America

Editor’s note: This commentary is by Gregory Thayer, of Rutland. He is the founder of the Vermonters for Vermont Initiative.

We send our children to school to learn the three-Rs, understand our history, and interact and socialize with others. They attend school with many people of different backgrounds — different looks, color, religion, family situations — and at home we teach them how to be respectful to all, and to be a good person.

Furthermore, we teach our children how to be good listeners and to treat people how they want to be treated. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Black supremacy is as dangerous as white supremacy, and God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men, God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race and in the creation of a society where all men can live together as brothers.”

Now we are learning that the left is responsible for pushing a Marxist agenda called critical race theory, including the adoption of equity policies in our government schools. The proponents of this teaching will negatively teach our children and grandchildren to hate, be racist, and to judge all people by the color of their skin. With CRT, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and everything Martin Luther King, Jr taught, is destroyed. Equity is not equality; it teaches the lowest level of survival.

I’m tired of hearing people say that “schools aren’t teaching CRT.” What do you think “proficiency grading” is? Why do many school districts around the state have equity directors and equity study groups? School administrators who say no CRT policies are being taught in our schools are being very disingenuous to parents, taxpayers and citizens. There are many equity policies happening all around us. They are creating division and confusing children in our schools and institutions.

Here are six questions being asked to students in elementary schools across Vermont and America:

  1. When did you become aware of your race?
  2. Did the adults in your life have to address the topic of race?
  3. Beyond self-education, what is the most important action you can take?
  4. Talk about the parallels between lynchings and police brutalities today.
  5. If you are White, how has your race affected you?
  6. What relationship do you have with the police, and how does your race play into that?

Think about those questions being asked by educators. They are toxic and completely out of line.

Introducing CRT to our children is not the right of government schools — it is a parent and guardian responsibility. I’m not sure when government schools were charged with taking over of our children. The thinking that “it takes a village” is so anti-family and anti-love that it makes people sick. CRT is racism — it’s teaching white children that if you are a white person, you are inherently racist. Now the NEA is force-feeding this “1619 Project,” which says that America was founded that year, and that everything was founded on the backs of slavery. Why haven’t the unions been teaching the truth until now? We have some excellent educators in our public schools, but some are “going along to get along” just to reach retirement.” I have some close friends that have described it that way.

On April 7, 2021, the Vermont House Committee on Education conducted an hearing, during which a UVM professor said that he was looking at his son recently and said “my son is a racist and he doesn’t even know it.” That is horrible thinking by this highly educated man and father.

The CRT/equity teachings tell our children to align with their race or group and disrespect other groups. It teaches our children that all white people are oppressors and every black person is a victim. Any person with basic common-sense knows that is not true. It teaches people to judge, to segregate others, and to erase our rich history. Our own Declaration of Independence is considered racist.

CRT is nothing more than a radical ideology of hate and division that is being taught to our students at the expense of history, civics and the Constitution. It is in direct opposition to the last 60 years of American liberalism. It is in serious contrast of every liberal policy in America. It is in direct violation of the the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the 14th Amendment, our Constitution, and I’m certain of every state’s constitution. It is in direct conflict with the teachings of Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and others.

Additionally, it violates the tenets of freedom, free markets and capitalism. In 1953, the U.S. Supreme Court ended segregation in our government schools in the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. The left wants to tear every one of our great institutions, down from the time of our founding in 1776 to today. Segregation may have come to an end via the courts, yet CRT brings it back; it is modern segregation. Any movement that alienates a race is no better than a movement of the past that did the same.

Contrary to the teachings found in critical race theory, the Declaration of Independence says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Critical race theory was founded in Frankfurt, Germany in the 1920s, and is based on the teaching of Karl Marx. It gained prominence in the 1980s at Columbia University, and now is rampant in most law schools.

For the good and future of our nation, America’s teaching principles must be about learning the three Rs in our classrooms. School age students need to be learning about the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and various laws and case law. Kids should study the writings in the Federalist Papers, Booker T Washington, and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as capitalism and our free-market systems.

Our history is not perfect, nor are we as individuals. We learn from our mistakes, and in the end we do the right thing. If people violate others we have laws to protect all people.

We all must stop the adoption of CRT/equity in our schools and society. Critical race theory holds these ideas as truth:

  • There is no absolute truth, only competing narratives. It sees “lived experiences” as mattering more than facts.
  • Individuals are either an oppressor or victim. You are predetermined by immutable characteristics such as race. Culture is defined by groups exercising power over each other.
  • America is systemically racist and must be dismantled. It sees America as having been founded on the system of capitalism, which is racist and therefore must be disrupted.

We are a God-loving country with respect for each other and people of differences and other nations. We believe in “live and let live!”

Will you step up, stand up and stand firm, and join millions of Americans in taking a stand against critical race theory/equity?

Image courtesy of Public domain

8 thoughts on “Gregory Thayer: Critical race theory will cripple America

  1. Isn’t it interesting that the Democrat party hasn’t become the party of racism but that it has always been the party of racism.

    The Democrat party was the party of Slavery.

    The Democrat party was the party of Jim Crow.

    The Democrat party was the party of the Klu Klux Clan.

    The Democrat party is the party of Critical Race Theory.

    The Democrat party is the party of Racism.

  2. Will cripple America? Look around “Critical Race Theory” has been in the educational system since the late sixties, ( ” A rose by any other name….” ). It won’t cripple America, it has destroyed America!

  3. That a pervasive misrepresentation is being foisted publicly by some of Vermont’s elected representatives as fact must be addressed. Consider a missive published on the Front Porch Forum, July 6, 2021, by Representatives Leslie Goldman (D) and Carolyn W. Partridge (D) of Vermont’s Windham-3 district.

    “History has shown what a remarkable document this (the Declaration of Independence) was for its time, but now 245 years later, we realize and acknowledge our country’s racist and exclusionary origins.”

    It’s one thing to believe this perspective personally. After all, Ms. Goldman and Ms. Partridge are as entitled to their opinion as anyone else. But to assume to speak on behalf of all Vermonters demonstrates a hubris unbecoming of any politician, regardless of their personal philosophies. As a Windham 3 voter, I’m compelled to speak out for my own sensibilities – that I am not to be included in Goldman’s or Partridge’s royal ‘we’.

    I, for one, understood the context in which America was founded decades ago. I also understood that the country’s origins exemplified the beginning of the end of exclusionary racism, and that the Declaration of Independence, and the U. S. Constitution, remain humanity’s remarkable social constructs in that regard. And I, for one, have been exercising my responsibility to address inequities and challenges to democracy for as long as I can remember, despite the implication by these two politicians, that I’ve made the realization only ‘now 245 years later’.

    To be fair, it is possible that Ms. Goldman and Ms. Partridge are expressing their own retrospective misgivings. And to that I say, better late than never.

  4. A beautiful, but frightening Essay. Thank You!

    Race Theory seems to be about “Original Sin” a kind of ” New religion of the Farthest Left !!”

    You white second graders are TOTALLY GUILTY from birth to death, and there is
    NOTHING THAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. YOU ARE GUILTY FROM BIRTH !!

    AND, Dont bother to tell me your great great grandfather fought and died to end slavery,
    and your Father died to defeat thIs Nazi source of this Critical Race Theory –
    The Nazi Aryans slaughtering the Jewish people!!

  5. One thing I wonder is, do the people pushing this crapoleum actually believe it, or are they just brain-dead? Some are definitely useful idiots, with degrees.
    I think the people who created it know it is poison, and pushed it on us deliberately. Like commune ism.
    They know what they are doing, and know they can wait until our nation and society implodes, then pick up the pieces. Patience means playing the long game, which they know, and it is working. Also it’s less messy than nukular war, and leaves valuable property behind, after we destroy ourselves and each other.
    I think it would be fair to say that CRT is communism.

    • “I think it would be fair to say that CRT is communism.”

      Well Gordon at the very least it could be called Progressive Marxism but mostly it’s to keep the racism trade in business..

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