By John Klar
The race-based assault against Vermonters began in earnest well before the spark of George Floyd. The toxic ideology of “critical race theory” (CRT) has been embraced for years by Vermont progressives, joined enthusiastically by RINO Gov. Phil Scott. Race is weaponized to promote every conceivable progressive policy. America must inoculate itself from this CRT virus. Vermont’s unfolding experimentation is the Petri dish that proves why.
Vermont’s mostly deaf Legislature has embraced a panoply of race-based bills in 2021:
- H.268 seeks to legalize prostitution, claiming that its prohibition was “historically … used to prosecute men of color for having relationships with women.” (In fact, Vermont banned prostitution in response to national feminist fervor.)
- H.273 would create a “BIPOC Land Bank” for “Black and Indigenous People of Color” to be granted money to purchase farmland. The Bill alleges (among other bald slanders) that Vermont excluded blacks from farmland using Jim Crow and sharecropping laws.
- H.210 alleges that racial health and other disparities in Vermont are caused by “systemic racism” without regard to the influx of refugees and other low-income people “of color.”
- S.25 allows black residents (“social equity applicants”) to receive loans, or fee reduction, to grow or sell cannabis.
- Vermont House Devotionals have been used to vilify Vermont and its residents.
Concurrently, Vermont’s academic and executive circles have fueled the race focus:
- Vermont’s newly minted (and recently arrived from NYC) “executive director of racial equity” has claimed that Vermont’s land-use laws (and CO2 deadlines) are racist and has scorned Vermont’s dairy farms.
- Vermont’s police have been maligned as racists based on arrest disparities without consideration of the state-of-origin of suspects — in the midst of a heroin and fentanyl scourge.
- Governor Scott has been quick to condemn Vermonters as racists.
- COVID relief funds for sole proprietorships were distributed to minority but not white applicants.
Most disturbingly, the indoctrination of Vermont’s public-school children with CRT is in full swing. Segregating citizens by race in safe spaces has become commonplace in Vermont. Now public schools will allow “students of color” to move to separate rooms during race discussions, and violent, white-hating poetry is being endorsed in school curricula. (“Discrimination” is necessary, per the “theory” of CRT, to redress and cure discrimination.)
CRT seeks to eliminate First Amendment and other constitutional protections, in order to craft a novel society based on race and other identity attributes. It posits no foreseeable end to this cycle of recrimination, offering not even the pretense of a world in which the MLK standard of “judge by character, not skin color” might be achievable. This was exhibited in Vermont when a high school student who criticized CRT at a school board meeting was fired from his lifeguard position as punishment for his speech.
Vermont has offered the perfect “climate” to implement this nonsensical push toward “white wokeness.” Vermont’s ultra-progressives are able to systematically substitute ideological conclusions in place of good policy. Fabricating a race narrative cobbled together with manipulated facts and anecdotal arguments, these cultish zealots attract well-heeled but naïve white liberals who have no hesitation fomenting racial hatred by telling black people the “system” is rigged and that all white people (except them) subconsciously have it in for dark-skinned humans and must be brought to heel.
Thomas Sowell warns that no society in human history has achieved “equity” in the form of universally equal outcome — it is impossible. But this does not dampen the allure of what Sowell dubs the “seemingly invincible fallacy” of CRT — that all racial disparities are necessarily the product of discrimination by white people.
Vermont is the ideal petri dish to prove the fallacy of critical race theory. It is inequitable in distribution of resources, contemptuous of Vermont’s rural culture and abolitionist history, and divisive. CRT is offensive to both moderate (MLK) Democrats and traditional conservatives.
Once dragged into the light of discussion and analysis, CRT will fail in Vermont, as it is failing across America. It is racist opportunism dressed up as enlightened Utopia. Vermont’s poor, white, rural inhabitants have witnessed equally pernicious liberal elite efforts previously — in the eugenics and lobotomy movements.
They won’t get fooled again!
John Klar is an attorney and farmer residing in Brookfield, and the former pastor of the First Congregational Church of Westfield. This commentary originally appeared at American Thinker.
Not all black people are so easily duped by the propaganda being pumped out by black lives matter or forcing CRT down our children’s throats.
This is a great video of people who are paying attention to what is really going on and the actual effect of BLM and CRT on everyone in America.
https://fb.watch/6uAucL833Z/
Amazing how the socialists have made Vermont residents forget that this state was a key component of the underground railroad.
CRT is intolerance writ large.
It’s imposing a world-view upon the people and saying, ‘this is is, shut up and listen, no dissent is allowed.’
How do you destroy a country? You introduce an ideology that on the face of it has valid points but in a deeper reading advocates for intolerance and infallibility. You use this to undermine a document of tolerance and acknowledged fallibility that first and foremost sought to defend liberty: the Constitution.
Who gains? In a world of intolerance who gains, and which political system comes to the forefront? A land and people of liberty, or a nation of monitoring and managing to ensure right-thinking? Does CRT point to liberty, or does it point to totalitarianism? If it pointed to liberty, then it would necessarily be pointing to tolerance and to checks and balances on power. Instead it seems to be pointing toward destroying the current government and raising up CRT as part of a new, ‘built-back-better’ government whose tenets can’t be questioned.
Is CRT coming to the forefront right now by chance? After the chaos and disruption of Covid-19, is it just happenstance that CRT is here to show us all how to build back better? Or does this line up perfectly with the Great Reset ideology, which is keen on keeping us from going back to normal? Think of all the people connected to the WEF, which initiated the Great Reset, and all the movers and shakers who gather yearly at the WEF-sponsored Davos convocations. It’s a global vision they’re promulgating– a one-world government coordinated and necessary to save us from catastrophic CO2 warming. Only, it’s not happening: there is no catastrophic CO2 warming.
Is the destruction caused by CRT accidental? Or does one first have to destroy before one can ‘build back better’– the motto of so many politicians worldwide the past year or so? Coincidence? Or evidence of the reach of the WEF?
None of us are racist because we want to stop CRT. We want to stop CRT because we want to preserve liberty and ensure a society of tolerance for various political views and skin colors, not set up a society of intolerance and judging people by the color of their skin. But CRT twists this all around and says that these words are just another white man’s trick: everything everywhere is racist, the doctrine is infallible, and no questions will be tolerated.
Vermont’s Black population is about 1%. Vermont is not racist. It is Socialist Progressive. Read this quote and share it with your Liberal friends. Truth wins – over false innuendo, emotional, political purely… narratives:. Facts hurt, don’t they:
“The Democrats were the party of slavery, black codes, Jim Crow, and that miserable terrorist excrescence, the Ku Klux Klan. Republicans were the party of Lincoln, Reconstruction, anti-lynching laws, and the civil rights acts of 1875, 1957, 1960, and 1964….. all Republicans models of racial matters. Were they (Blacks) a heck of a lot better off with them, than the Democrats? Without question.
Democrats argue this is “ancient history.” Not true. Former Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd, dubbed by colleagues “the Conscience of the Senate,” was a former exalted cyclops of his local Ku Klux Klan. He tried, along with President Bill Clinton’s mentor J. William Fulbright and former Vice President Al Gore Jr.’s father, to filibuster the 1964 Civil Rights Act.”
Mr. Green,
Appreciate your historical perspective, but the striving for civil and voting rights for all Americans was and is a bit more complex with good and bad actors on both sides.
Yes, Republicans were founded with a platform against the expansion of slavery in to the Western territories and for many years in the South in particular were the more inclusive party. (Heather Cox Richardson’s book on the history of the Republican Party “To Set Men Free” is a good read. ) And yes Republicans, in particular Senator Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, played a key role in writing and passing the civil rights and voting laws, signed by President Johnson in the 1960’s. However the part of history you have left out is the last 55 years.
Richard Nixon ran in 1968 using a “southern strategy” to lure southern Democrats opposed to civil rights ( whose major sponsors were Democrats) to voting Republican. This was the start of the large scale switch of southern Democrats to being a base of the Republican party. Sadly to say this was at least in part and still is, due to Republican efforts in those states to limit either by voting laws or gerrymandering the so called “Black vote”.
My own view is that the Republican party, when true to its core beliefs of individual responsibility and providing opportunity for all Americans, provides the best way forward for our country. Attempts to create or highlight divisions based on color for political advantage whether by Democrats or Republicans is a far cry from the ideals articulated in the Declaration of Independence on which our nation is founded.
As one who has been on the receiving end of a good deal of criticism for challenging the first draft of an anti-racism policy in my Supervisory Union, and as one who subscribes to Article 18 of Vermont’s Declaration of Rights , “that a frim adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, industry, and frugality, are absolutely necessary to preserve the blessings of liberty, and keep government free, I find myself opposed to the extreme laws being proposed.
It is important at the same time to understand exactly what critical race theory (CRT) is and while not agreeing, at the same time acknowledging the impact of race and race biases that have occurred and still effect our nation.
CRT is a theoretical framework or set of perspectives by which structural and institutional racism may be examined. CRT emphasizes how racism and disparate racial outcomes can be the result of complex, changing and often subtle social and institutional dynamics, rather than explicit and intentional prejudices . It also views race as a socially constructed identity which serves to oppress people.
Academic critics of CRT argue that it relies on social constructionism, elevates storytelling over evidence, rejects concepts of truth and opposes liberalism. On the other side, those opposing CRT are accused of misrepresenting its tenets and trying to silence broader discussions of race, equality, social justice, and the history of racism.
I tend to side with Mr. Klar in the way forward to work for a society that is based on the Rev. Martin Luther King standard of judging by the “content of character not the color of skin”. At the same time we need to understand historical context. It is a tricky balance. Injustices and grievances are potent forces which can be played upon by those with their own agendas and a close eye needs to be kept on overreach particularly when attempting to be codified in law or policy. .
Mr. Klar cites the wave of race based bills introduced in the 2021 legislative session alleging various harms done to people of color. Testimony on these bills charged systemic racism as the factor causing the problems. The legislature spent the session looking into these charges and struggled to uncover any concrete evidence of systemic racism in Vermont. When witnesses were asked to cite concrete examples of systemic racism, none were offered. So what was the motivation behind the people proposing these race based bills?
Could the motivation behind these bills have been revealed by Burlington YMCA President and respected community leader Kyle Dobson who was hired to look into the transformation of the Burlington Police Department due to charges of departmental racial issues?
While explaining his work effort, Dobson, a Black Man, made a very upsetting statement saying “The community didn’t want transformation. Blacks and activists want revenge,”…….“That’s understandable, but it’s deeply problematic.”……..A very troubling allegation from a Black man that no one wanted to hear.
Dodson’s statement was not well received in Burlington and he was attacked for making it…….Despite the seriousness of Dobson’s troubling statement and its impact on the entire effort to properly address claims of harm to people of color as reflected in the various bills, nothing has been done to investigate Dobson’s charges of “Blacks and activists want revenge”.
In the interest in understanding the motivation behind the avalanche of race based bills that swamped the 2021 legislature, should Kyle Dobson’s claim of “revenge” as a motivating factor be fully investigated?
See Kyle Dobson’s actual words on “revenge” in:
https://www.sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage/archives/2021/03/26/dodson-plagiarized-portions-of-report-on-burlington-police-transformation
Re: “In the interest in understanding the motivation behind the avalanche of race based bills that swamped the 2021 legislature, should Kyle Dobson’s claim of “revenge” as a motivating factor be fully investigated?”
No. Human motivations are as varied as snowflakes and grains of sand. I, for one, found the 7 Days article to be a stretch.
For one thing, we all use language in a way that is learned, and when it comes to specific language (e.g. plagiarism), there is nothing new under the sun. Typically, someone has expressed a thought or a premise previously in a way that is more articulate than the next person does. I constantly use quotes and metaphors to express a point of view. And, sometimes, when I attribute the source, the source, itself, is questionable. Who was it, for example, who first said ‘democracy is like two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch’? Was it Benjamin Franklin? Or was it two foxes and a chicken?
The Germans have a word that expresses this phenomenon ‘more accurately’, in my opinion, than does ‘revenge’. ‘Schadenfreude’. Look it up.
We shouldn’t concentrate on emotion, because we are all victims of it. We all have ‘cognitive bias’. Focus on substance. CRT is tantamount to religious dogma. It can’t be proven. Nonetheless, we are all entitled to our opinions.
The elegance and enlightenment expressed in the U.S. Constitution is emphasized by this circumstance. At no time in history has a social contract been constructed in such a way as to allow for the diversity of opinion and emotion of the human species. It is truly a wonder to behold. Try not to lose sight of it.
As I’ve opined previously: CRT is best described by Bertrand Russel’s Teapot analogy, illustrating that the burden of proof that systemic racism exists lies upon the person making the claim.
“If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.”
CRT, like many organized religious dogmas, is a clever method used throughout history to control a community. This is not to say that God doesn’t exist. I, for one certainly, cannot prove that one way or the other. But our Founders were wise indeed to add the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantying my right to self-determination in that regard.
Thus, if anyone believes that teapots are orbiting the sun and CRT theory predetermines racism, have at it. All I ask is that those ‘believers’ don’t waste their time postulating and pontificating at my expense. I have enough nonsense in my life as it is.