The Black Lives Matter movement and critical race theory have not just made inroads in American culture and U.S. schools. Educators in Britain have also pushed to “decolonize” education through these Marxist movements. Yet Kemi Badenoch, a member of Parliament and parliamentary under-secretary of state for equalities, firmly condemned the BLM/CRT infiltration of British schools, arguing that it is illegal for schools to teach these politically-charged ideas as if they were neutral fact.
“What we are against is the teaching of contested political ideas as if they are accepted fact. We don’t do this with communism, we don’t do this with socialism, we don’t do it with capitalism,” Badenoch said in a fiery speech to Parliament on Tuesday.
“I want to speak about a dangerous trend in race relations … the promotion of critical race theory, an ideology that sees my blackness as victimhood and their whiteness as oppression. I want to be absolutely clear, this government stands unequivocally against critical race theory,” Badenoch declared.
“Some schools have decided to openly support the anti-capitalist Black Lives Matter group, often fully aware that they have a statutory duty to be politically impartial,” the member noted.
“Black lives do matter, of course, they do,” Badenoch, who is herself black, admitted. “But we know that the Black Lives Matter movement, capital BLM, is political.”
She vocally condemned an event during “the height of the protests” when “white black lives matter protesters” reportedly called “a black armed police officer guarding Downing Street a pet n***er.”
“We do not endorse that movement on this side of the House,” Badenoch declared. “And what would be nice would be for members on the opposite side to condemn many of the actions that we see… instead of pretending that [Black Lives Matter] is a completely wholesome antiracist organization. There is a lot of pernicious stuff that is being pushed.”
“We do not want to see teachers teaching their white pupils about white privilege and inherited racial guilt,” the member of Parliament added. “And let me be clear: Any school which teaches these elements of critical race theory as fact or which promotes partisan political views such as defunding the police without offering a balanced treatment of opposing views is breaking the law.”
Badenoch was responding to Labour MP Dawn Butler, who had argued that black children are made to feel inferior by what they are taught in school, The Guardian reported. Butler claimed that “history needs to be decolonised.”
“At the moment history is taught to make one group of people feel inferior and another group of people feel superior, and this has to stop,” Butler argued. “History needs to be decolonised. You can go through [the] whole of the [General Certificate of Secondary Education] and not have reference to any black authors at all. You could go through history and not understand the richness of Africa and the Caribbean, you can go through history and not understand all the leaders in the black community.”
The Equalities Minister could not have been clearer:
Black Lives Matter and Critical Race Theory are political and do not belong in schools.
Teaching ideas such as 'white privilege' as a factual reality is breaking the law! 🚫👨🏫 pic.twitter.com/6VoIDVJxLi
— Calvin Robinson (@calvinrobinson) October 20, 2020
David Dorn’s Widow Eviscerates the Black Lives Matter Narrative at the RNC
Why is critical race theory dangerous?
It is one thing to require or suggest that students study black history and something completely different to push Black Lives Matter or critical race theory, which is based in a Marxist power analysis.
Marxist critical race theory encourages people to deconstruct various aspects of society — such as capitalism, science the nuclear family, the Judeo-Christian tradition, even expectations of politeness (as the Smithsonian briefly taught) — as examples of white oppression. This inspires an aimless and destructive revolution.
Portland activist Lilith Sinclair revealed the danger of CRT connected to various other leftist agendas. “There’s still a lot of work to undo the harm of colonized thought that has been pushed onto Black and indigenous communities,” Sinclair said. As examples of “colonized thought,” she mentioned Christianity and the “gender binary.” She said she organizes for “the abolition of … the “United States as we know it.”
The New York Times‘ “1619 Project” pushes a form of CRT, and schools across America are considering curriculum loosely based on the project. The 1619 Project twists American history to claim that the true founding did not come on July 4, 1776, but with the arrival of the first black slaves in Virginia in 1619 (even the date is a historically inaccurate claim). Using Marxist critical race theory, the project demonizes America and key aspects of American culture such as capitalism and the Constitution, arguably inspiring an unguided and destructive revolution.
When vandals toppled a statue of George Washington in Portland, they spray-painted “1619” on the statue. When Claremont’s Charles Kesler wrote in The New York Post “Call them the 1619 riots,” the project’s founder, Nikole Hannah-Jones, responded (in a since-deleted tweet) that “it would be an honor” to claim responsibility for the destructive riots and the defamation of American Founding Fathers like George Washington.
In a November 9, 1995 op-ed, Hannah-Jones condemned Christopher Columbus as “no different” from Adolf Hitler and demonized the “white race” as the true “savages” and “bloodsuckers.” She went on to describe “white America’s dream” as “colored America’s nightmare.” Scholars have demanded the Pulitzer Prize board revoke Hannah-Jones’ Pulitzer Prize.
The “1619 riots” have arguably oppressed black people far more than the U.S. supposedly does. The riots disproportionately damaged black communities in Kenosha, Wisc., Minneapolis, and Chicago. The riots have destroyed black lives, black livelihoods, and black monuments. At least 26 Americans have died in the riots, most of them black.
For these and other reasons, many black leaders have denounced the official Black Lives Matter movement, the founders of which have described themselves as “trained Marxists.” Over 100 black pastors recently condemned the Black Lives Matter movement and urged Nike to distance itself from it.
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Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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