What if Critical Race Theory Is Driving Teen Suicide Rates Higher?

Millions of Americans were shocked earlier this month when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released data showing teen suicides increased 62 percent between 2007 and 2021.

The CDC’s key findings were these:

Suicide rates for people aged 10–24 increased from 2007 through 2021, while homicide rates increased from 2014 through 2021.
For people aged 10–14, suicide rates increased from 2007 through 2018, while homicide rates increased from 2016 through 2020.
Suicide rates for people aged 15–19 increased from 2009 through 2017, while homicide rates increased from 2014 through 2021.
Suicide rates for people aged 20–24 increased from 2001 through 2021, while homicide rates increased from 2014 through 2021.

Note that rising homicide rates also follow along behind the suicide rates at steadily increasing rates among youngsters and young adults alike. Are these two trends connected?

When viewing statistical data, it’s always necessary to remember that correlation is not causation. But correlation is nevertheless a relationship among sets of data, so changes in one set are associated at some level with changes in other sets.

What is the cause or causes of spiraling suicide and homicide rates among the young? According to U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, there are multiple environmental factors involved:

We know that mental health is shaped by many factors, from our genes and brain chemistry to our relationships with family and friends, neighborhood conditions, and larger social forces and policies. We also know that, too often, young people are bombarded with messages through the media and popular culture that erode their sense of self-worth—telling them they are not good looking enough, popular enough, smart enough, or rich enough. That comes as progress on legitimate, and distressing, issues like climate change, income inequality, racial injustice, the opioid epidemic, and gun violence feels too slow.

Murthy further explains that:

Scientists have proposed various hypotheses to explain these trends. While some believe that the trends in reporting of mental health challenges are partly due to young people becoming more willing to openly discuss mental health concerns, other researchers point to the growing use of digital media, increasing academic pressure, limited access to mental health care, health risk behaviors such as alcohol and drug use, and broader stressors such as the 2008 financial crisis, rising income inequality, racism, gun violence, and climate change.

And let’s not forget the lost years among young people who endured month after month of social isolation that resulted from the social distancing and shuttered schools at the heart of the federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

But do you notice what is not included by Murthy or any other prominent national public health official as factors to account for rising despondency and suicide among America’s young?

The period of rising suicide rates corresponds to the period during which most K-12 public school curriculums were comprehensively rewritten to reflect the key dogma of the critical race theory (CRT) ideology of the radical Left.

As the Heritage Foundation’s Jonathan Butcher and Mike Gonzalez stated in a comprehensive 2020 analysis of the roots and growth of CRT:

The dissemination of curricular content and instruction based on CRT in K–12 schools is second only in scope to the presence of CRT in post-secondary instruction, where CRT originated. The spread within college- and university-level syllabi and journal articles took place over the course of many decades throughout the 20th century, while the effects on K–12 schools in such areas as social studies, history, and civics have, by comparison, become visible more recently.

The material distracts educators and students away from rigorous learning content, while also teaching ideas that undermine the value of individual liberty and America’s founding ideals and further embedding the concept of systemic racism in the public conscious.

The fundamental point of CRT is that American society includes only two groups: the white oppressors and oppressed people of color. Everything about American political, economic, social and cultural institutions is designed to enforce the racist will of the oppressors upon the oppressed.

Nothing will change this reality short of a total revolutionary transformation of America into a totalitarian Leftist hellhole like those of China, Venezuela, Cuba and elsewhere.

Thus, millions of American public school students have been taught for going on two decades now that white oppressors will always be racist and cannot change, while the oppressed people of color will always be trapped in racist systems unless there is a revolution.

Now, combine that putrescent CRT perspective with the constantly reiterated shriek of Greta Thunberg and the fanatical climate change dirge that we are all going die very soon if we don’t immediately revert back to Stone Age energy and agricultural systems.

Let’s also not forget the rise of the “Nones” — young people who profess no religious affiliation (even though, happily, there is evidence this trend may actually be slowing down a bit).

Why is anybody surprised then that the young conclude they have no future because they cannot escape the entrenched system of white privilege and, even if they could somehow manage to do so, it won’t matter because climate change will get them, and so many of them have no hope of an afterlife?

Maybe what should surprise us is that more of them haven’t given up.