Merit-based success and personal excellence have disappeared from our cultural vocabulary.
Critical race theory (CRT) claims that academic merit, excellence, and hard work are “myths” to preserve “white supremacy” regarding the racial achievement gaps. CRT focuses on “oppression” and “institutional racism” to show why racial achievement gaps exist.
Institutional racism isn’t a suitable explanation for why these racial achievement gaps endure. Institutional racism–segregation–ended with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Some people still hold racially discriminatory views, but individual racists are not the same as segregation, which was the paramount example of institutional racism in America.
CRT never explains how ‘oppression’ and ‘institutional’ racism exist. CRT states both as facts without explicit examples to prove the claims, and the explanations for these ideas don’t justify these declarations. It is up to those who promote CRT to express, specifically, where this racism exists, why, and how–since they suggest that “systemic racism” and “institutional racism” persist.
History demonstrates that racial discrimination made our culture worse. Ibram X. Kendi claims, in his book How to Be an Antiracist, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
Schools nationwide are implementing critical race theory to the detriment of all students.
Virginia’s Albemarle School District has implemented critical race theory through teacher training and curriculum. CRT is a racialized anthropology that degrades minority students, saying they will not achieve the same success as their peers due to continual victimization by white people.
CRT diminishes the expectation and agency of black and Latino students; it encourages them to adopt victimization. Parents in school districts nationwide want schools to teach children what they can accomplish–and who they can be–rather than what they can’t do or can’t be.
CRT focuses on victimization rather than success.
It’s bigoted to say that blacks and Latinos lack academic success because they’re “victimized” by white society. Suggesting that black and Latino children can’t achieve excellence is discrimination. This idea robs individual initiative from blacks and Latinos. If internalized, it will force both groups to expect leniency from mainstream America.
Claiming racial groups are “victimized” transfers self-agency from blacks and Latinos to American culture based on equity, leveraged by white guilt and redemptive liberalism. Shelby Steele suggested that redemptive liberalism is an activism that initially appropriated a redeeming profile by focusing on social engineering for blacks–rather than allowing blacks, and eventually, others, the individual freedom to achieve excellence. This kind of liberalism eventually became a moral authority because it wanted a more ambitious goal of an equal society, concerning itself with the wounded souls of racial victims and the self-righteous moral intentions of those who embraced this liberalism.
Marriage is the key to student excellence. Affirming excellence, academic merit, and diligence is easier when married mothers and fathers provide home stability and are actively involved in their children’s education. Low marriage rates and disinterested parents are two reasons for the racial achievement gaps regarding education.
Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill–Senior Fellows at The Brookings Institution 2003– published a policy paper identifying four realities that increased economic opportunity for poor people. These realities are to finish high school, get a full-time job, and wait until age 21 to get married and have no more than two children. This research shows that of those who follow this plan, almost 75 percent have joined the middle class, while only 2 percent are in poverty. The American Enterprise Institute found that of Millennials who followed this plan, 97 percent were not poor in adulthood.
In 2020, the marriage rate for black immigrants was 61 percent, the Asian marriage rate was 58 percent, the white marriage rate was 52 percent, and the black marriage rate was 30 percent compared to the national marriage rate of 48 percent.
Fifty-two percent of black men and 48 percent of black women have never been married. The number of black children that lived in single-parent households in 2021 was 64 percent, compared to 42 percent for Latinos, 24 percent for whites, and 16 percent for Asians.
Married parents can build the foundation of academic excellence. Learning leads to higher test scores. Without a father at home, children will watch television and social media more than they study and excel in their academic subjects. Without a father instilling within the children confidence and the need to set and achieve goals, people will think they cannot achieve greatness without racialized equity, which sabotages achievement.
Data confirm this. Children raised by active, present fathers are less likely to drop out of school, wind up in jail, and will avoid high-risk behaviors. Fathers that attend events with their children are more likely to impact them confidently than absent fathers.
Married parents involved in their children’s lives set the foundation for morality, excellence, and merit-based achievement, which are superior to racial victimization and equity. Racial equity sees “the victimized” as helpless and needing special treatment to excel.
Nothing could be further from the truth.