Washington Post Op-Ed: ‘Democrats Are Lying About Critical Race Theory’

The Washington Post published an opinion article on Tuesday titled “Democrats Are Lying About Critical Race Theory,” an arguably unexpected headline from the far-left publication.

Writer Marc Thiessen criticized Democrats for “gaslighting American parents” about Critical Race Theory following Republican Glenn Youngkin’s win in the Virginia governor election. Thiessen writes a “twice-weekly column for The Post on foreign and domestic policy,” is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and worked as a chief speechwriter for former President George W. Bush.

“It has become a refrain on the left and its media echo-chamber following Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the Virginia governor’s race: Critical race theory is not being taught in schools,” Thiessen wrote, before noting several instances of corporate media falsely denying that the theory is being taught in schools. “…This is demonstrably false.”

Youngkin positioned himself as an enemy to the woke indoctrination of K-12 students, whereas Democrat Terry McAuliffe teamed up with far-leftists in the Democrat Party and even said parents should not tell schools what to teach their children.

Critical Race Theory being taught in schools was a top issue among Virginia voters, with 25 percent of 2,500 voters viewing the CRT debate as the single most important factor when deciding who to support for governor, a Fox News Voter Analysis survey found. During election and post-election coverage, corporate media personalities largely waffled between pretending CRT is not “real” and swinging in the opposite direction, conflating it with “America’s history” and advocating for its widespread teaching in schools.

Thiessan compiled a short list of leftist media lies following the election:

PBS White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor recently accused Republicans of winning by “lying about critical race theory.” Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) declared “there is not a school in Virginia that teaches critical race theory.” Those who say otherwise, we are told, are “dishonest,” hyping a “fake CRT threat,” promoting an “imaginary” issue to “manipulate low information people,” engaging in “race-baiting lies” and blowing a “racist dog whistle.”

Thiessen then proceeded to link several examples of schools either teaching or training teachers to use the tenets of Critical Race Theory, several of which Breitbart News has extensively covered. He specifically detailed how Virginia’s Loudoun County Public Schools paid $314,000 for its teachers to be trained in Critical Race Theory by the Equity Collaborative. Thiessen wrote:

One Loudoun country parent filed the public record request to find out what took place in these sessions and obtained a set of talking points used by the Equity Collaborative to train Virginia teachers. They were encouraged not to “profess color blindness,” but rather to admit their own “racist, sexist, heterosexist, or other detrimental attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and feelings” and acknowledge that “addressing one’s Whiteness (e.g., white privilege) is crucial for effective teaching.”

He went on to report how the Virginia state superintendent of public instruction sent a memo to all school districts promoting Critical Race Theory training materials, and asserting:

CRT has proven an important analytic tool in the field of education, offering critical perspectives on race, and the causes, consequences and manifestations of race, racism, inequity, and the dynamics of power and privilege in schooling.

This is true in other states as well. In New York City, school administrators were required to undergo training sessions where they learned that “objectivity” and “individualism” were elements of “white-supremacy culture.” In California, students as young as six are being taught CRT-inspired lessons in white privilege and structural racism.

Thiessen concluded by calling the left’s CRT denial “intellectually dishonest,” and said “Democrats are gaslighting American parents” by telling them “not to believe what they can see with their own eyes.”

He wrote:

Just because grade-school students are not studying academic treatises on critical race theory does not mean it is not being taught in schools. Most of these students are also not reading Karl Marx, but if they were being instructed by teachers trained in Marxist thought to see everything through the prism of class struggle, they would be learning Marxism. Well, today children are being instructed by teachers trained in CRT to see everything through the prism of race; to believe that the United States is a systemically racist country; and to believe that society is divided into two classes — oppressors and oppressed — and that which you are is determined by the color of your skin. That is critical race theory.

Thiessen argued that millions of parents were offered a closer look at what their children were learning when schools and moved instruction online during the pandemic, making Democrats’ attempts to deflect particularly ineffective.

“Many did not like what they saw. Nor did they like being told that the promotion of CRT is a figment of their imaginations, when in Virginia, it is right on the Department of Education’s website for all to see. So, they rose up to demand change,” he said.

Despite the overwhelming response from parents in various demographics, Thiessen said Democrats are “doubling down on the strategy of denigrating parents for raising legitimate concerns about their children’s education”

“Sorry, parents know that critical race theory is a real problem — and if Democrats continue telling parents their concerns are imaginary, they will continue to pay a price at the polls,” he concluded.