Members of a national network of black leaders applauded President Donald Trump’s executive order to defund “critical race theory” training at the federal level.
In a press release Wednesday, members of Project 21, an endeavor of the National Center for Public Policy Research, said critical race theory is a “radical philosophy promoting a false notion of systemic American racism and pitting races against each other.”
“The truth is that critical race theory is just rebranded identity politics designed to keep the liberal hierarchy in place,” said Donna Jackson, one of Project 21’s leaders, in a statement. “But it is much more damaging because it perpetuates the bias they claim to end.”
Jackson added:
Dwelling on whiteness and white supremacy now has the same physiological impact that the n-word did during slavery and segregation. It creates a superiority-inferiority relationship that implies that white people have to give minorities permission to succeed – which is not true. As a black American, I’ve always believed that what I think about myself is more important than what others think of me and that my success depends on me.
In a memorandum dated September 4, Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), said Trump directed him to “ensure that Federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions.”
The memorandum continued:
[A]ll agencies are directed to begin to identify all contracts or other agency spending related to any training on “critical race theory,” “white privilege,” or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil. In addition, all agencies should begin to identify all available avenues within the law to cancel any such contracts and/or to divert Federal dollars away from these un-American propaganda training sessions.
“Critical race theory is bigotry, pure and simple,” said Project 21 Co-Chairman Horace Cooper. “Its advocates should apologize to Jim Crow and South African apartheid supporters for ever offering a critical word. Claiming that people have characteristics and behaviors due solely to their race is a tired, old and evil idea that has no business being supported by taxpayer dollars.”
Derryck Green, another of Project 21’s leaders added that “indoctrinating people with the idea that whites have racial privilege and that America is an irredeemably racist country is what has propelled the Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots seen in various cities across the country.”
“The president should be congratulated for canceling these so-called training sessions,” he said. “Too bad the order can’t be extended to colleges and universities where critical race theory is even more heavily reinforced.”
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