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CRT founder fears critics are winning the language war, frets movement will go the way of ACORN

March 8, 2022 | | Print Article

A prominent CRT activist said the quiet part out loud about progressive language games when discussing the scrutiny her movement has faced before harkening back to defunct projects like ACORN.

Video of Columbia University law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw has surfaced from August 2021 when the activist was headlining a discussion at Oak Bluffs Union Chapel in Martha’s Vineyard. Sponsored by her progressive publisher, “The New Press,” the event was entitled “What is Critical Race Theory? And why is it under attack?”

At the time when politicians like Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe were still claiming that CRT was not being taught in schools, Crenshaw was outright admitting that opponents of the Marxist philosophies had her and her supporters cornered.

“When we’re caught in a ‘is it CRT or not CRT,’ they win,” Crenshaw said. “That’s the whole point.”

Crenshaw goes on to say how instructors who push the 1619 project along with diversity and inclusion within the K-12 educational system argued to her that CRT wasn’t what they taught. It was then that Crenshaw admitted to the linguistic game that progressives play.

“It doesn’t matter what it is you call what you do,” Crenshaw said. “If you’re trying to center ‘anti-racism’ in whatever you do, they’re coming for you.”

Crenshaw went on to add, “You can run from the name. That’s not what they’re after. They’re after the substance of what it is that is being taught.” That is precisely what Christopher Rufo, the scholar and CRT opponent who posted these videos, revealed about the curriculum in Virginia schools and elsewhere.

In October 2021, Rufo pointed out that McAuliffe was “playing a linguistic shell game to obfuscate about critical race theory.” He demonstrated the Virginian Department of Education was promoting “‘systemic racism,’ ‘white supremacy,’ ‘white privilege,’ ‘white fragility,’ etc,” and that they were all “concepts” of CRT.

“If we learn anything from other moments like this, in which the right has come after something and we thought we could continue doing it by calling it something else,” Crenshaw mused, “then that should be enough of a cautionary tale.”

She then asked the audience if they remembered ACORN. For those who don’t remember, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was a 500,000 member taxpayer-subsidized group utilized in registering voters, conducting the Census and signing up applicants for government programs.

Project Veritas exposed ACORN’s corruption in a number of undercover videos where founder James O’Keefe and reporter Hannah Giles posed as a “pimp and prostitute” and learned about illegal tax evasion schemes among other activities.

Referring to the downfall of ACORN as a “misinformation campaign against a social justice, racial justice organization” Crenshaw blamed conservatives for telling lies about the activist group. She then blamed the media for not reporting on those “lies” implicating them as a partner in pushing progressive agendas.

“Have you heard anything about ACORN since?” Crenshaw asked. “It destroyed ACORN.”

Rufo claimed the victory on this stating, “Crenshaw is right: we are winning the language war, we are going after the substance, and, with any luck, we will abolish critical race theory from America’s public institutions.”

Kevin Haggerty
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