Principled Perspectives: The Antidote to ‘McCarthyism’ in NJ Schools is Soviet-Style Indoctrination, Says a CRT Advocate

Alan J. Steinberg served as regional administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as executive director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission. In a guest column for the New Jersey Star-Ledger, Steinberg claims that A new form of McCarthyism is taking cancerous root in the New Jersey body politic.

“McCarthyism” refers to the U.S. Senate hearings of Senator Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s, which sought to root out Communist infiltrators in American culture and politics. The Communist fear was real, but the tactics ended up destroying the careers of many innocent people. Those tactics came to be called McCarthyism.

The McCarthyism Steinberg refers to is a piece of legislation introduced into the New Jersey legislature by two Republicans that would ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory in NJ public schools.* As Steinberg explains, the press release introducing this legislation, S4166

begins with the advocacy of a prohibition against public school teachers engaging in political, ideological or religious advocacy in their classrooms. This prohibition is the quintessence of McCarthyism.

Note the term “advocacy,” rather than balanced discussions of historically or culturally influential political, ideological or religious ideas. Steinberg explicitly calls for NJ’s public schools to engage in political, ideological or religious advocacy in their classrooms. That is not education. This is Soviet-style indoctrination, and it makes McCarthyism seem mild by comparison. Steinberg goes on:

I[The press release] then continues with a blatant racist defamation of Critical Race Theory, insinuating that it includes the following two concepts: 1) one race or sex (Black) is inherently superior to another race or sex; and 2) an individual, by virtue of his or her race (White) or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously.

That denial is shocking in light of the definition Steinberg advance for CRT:

CRT is most accurately defined by educators as the theory that racism is not just a product of bigoted individuals, but instead is systemic in the nation’s institutions, which function to maintain the dominance of white people in society. This definition of racism embedded in our societal and governmental system [sic], rather than a product of inherently evil white individuals per se is a total refutation of the mendacious claims of Testa and Pennacchio that CRT involves assertions of 1) Black superiority and privilege; and 2) inherent evils of white men and women.

I read the press release. I did not see “assertions of 1) Black superiority and privilege.” It doesn’t promote any kind of racial supremacy; in fact, the release explicitly opposes it. The assertion that racism is systemic and perpetuates “white dominance” is racist at its core and implies precisely that white men and women are, if not evil, then at least inherently racist. Steinberg, who doesn’t define “dominance,” let alone white dominance, offers, as proof of “systemic racism,” the following:

In order to understand a classic example of how a cultural bigoted influence morphs into a systemic racial barrier and distorted history, one need go no further than the case of William Archibald Dunning, a Columbia University professor whose false, fraudulent, and white supremacist “Dunning School,” was the dominant theory of Reconstruction taught in American universities during the first half of the 20th century. The essence of the Dunning School was the notion that the freedman, the African-American slave liberated immediately after the Civil War, was biologically inferior to the white person, incapable of self-government, undeserving of the right to vote, and thereby warranting segregation from whites.

The “race science” (or Scientific Racism) claim of African-American biological inferiority predated the Civil War, and was indeed borrowed from the old Confederate defense of slavery.** It was, most certainly, used to justify legalized segregation.*** But did all white people subscribe to that pseudo-scientific theory a century ago? No. That’s why it is no longer taught as fact (although it may be included in studies of the history of racism). How many white people today ascribe to that theory? Yet, Steinberg digs up that corrupt, long-debunked theory from the past not to argue against it, but to peddle it as proof of “white dominance.” This, even though believers of inherent black biological inferiority only exist on the nutty fringe of today’s America, if at all.

And this gets to the crux of the issue. A person’s ideas aren’t determined by skin color, as CRT asserts. Yet that is the implication in Steinberg’s definition of CRT. But this is the evil genius of collectivism. A person can level charges of racism against an entire group, while simultaneously claiming he is not calling any particular individual racist. So he can tar me as racist by association, but if I object, he asserts “It’s not about you.” Well, a group is made up of individuals. If it’s not about me, then it’s not about anybody, which nullifies the systemic racism premise. Such is the circular logic of CRT and related Critical Theories.

And what is meant by “dominance.” By white dominance, CRT does not mean positions of oppressive legal power, which disappeared with the victories of the mid 20th century Civil Rights Movement. Steinberg’s concept of “dominance” means simply statistical disparities in white people’s representation in institutions. But, so what? Skin color doesn’t determine a person's qualification or moral standing. But according to CRT, skin color is everything, or at least primary. A white person can be judged “dominant” by virtue of his statistical place in society. And since white dominance equates to “systemic racism,” that hapless white person who believes he is simply doing his job mystically transmutes into a racist by implication, even if he neither holds bigotted views or takes bigoted actions. That is racism. That is CRT. Justice has no place in that worldview.

I, too, grew up in the 1950s (and 60s; I was born in 1949), when racism was culturally acceptable (though beginning to recede). I do not now, and have never, subscribed to the Dunning school theory. Yet, I’m lumped in with “white dominance,” another word for White Supremacy, and have been found guilty, by insinuation, of perpetuating systemic racism. Why? Because of my “white” skin color. My beliefs aren’t relevant to CRT activists. This kind of racial determinism leaves no room for reason and free will, both attributes of the individual.

Disecting Steinberg’s “correct” definition of CRT next to S4166’s definition makes clear that, far from refuting the Republicans’ definition, Steinberg pretty much confirms it.

Steinberg concludes:

The teaching of Critical Race Theory in our public schools is an essential antidote to the racial poison of the Dunning School, which still has a lingering racist impact on American society. In my view, the teaching of Critical Race Theory in our public schools should not only be permitted — it should be MANDATED in order to extirpate the Dunning malignancy from the American societal and governmental context, once and for all.

So, as an antidote to the McCarthyism of banning CRT, Steinberg wants to mandate it. Call it what you like. But a CRT mandate is just the flip side of the same CRT ban coin. The state should neither ban or mandate CRT—or, more precisely, the ideas behind the theory. History should be taught accurately and objectively. And the only way to do that is to frame American history around the individualist principles of the Founding. Individualism is the only antidote to racism, or to any other manifestation of collectivism, such as “diversity”, “equity”, or “inclusion”—all of which require grouping people by skin color or some other irrelevant attribute, to the exclusion of individual character. CRT is the repudiation of the Declaration of Independence, along with fighters against genuine oppression who explicitly linked their fights to that Declaration’s principles, such as Abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Emancipationist President Abraham Lincoln, Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, and Gay Rights leader Harvey Milk

Is the Dunning school a very bad idea? Absolutely. Are there other bad ideas floating around today, hiding in American institutions? If Steinberg thinks so, let’s examine them critically. But rather than tar all “white” people with guilt by racial association, Dunning-like ideas (or practices), if Steinberg can identify any “systemic” to American institutions today, should be refuted logically and morally and ended, the only way bad ideas can be refuted—by application of individualism. It’s interesting that Steinberg highlights a long-abandoned racist theory, Race Science, to “prove” systemic racism today. Where’s the proof of existing systemic racism?

CRT doesn’t refute racism. It can’t. Crt prioritizes race. At its core, CRT is rooted in the same premise as Dunning—collectivism and determinism. It is the re-mainstreaming of racism for crass political purposes. CRT frames everything around skin color. CRT leaves no room for reason, for free will, or for independent thinking individuals—or for individualism, the only genuine anti-racism.

But, of course, critical thinking is not Steinberg’s goal. Will the principles of individual sovereignty over tribalism advanced from The Enlightenment and embodied in the Declaration of Independence, the antidote to racism, be taught alongside CRT? Or does Steinberg envision using public schools to “advocate” for his CRT position? By his own acknowledgement, his goal is to indoctrinate NJ K-12 students with his conception of the “correct” political, ideological, and religious ideas. Steinberg shows that the Republicans are essentially correct in their interpretation of CRT, even if they are wrong to want to ban it from public schools. You can’t kill bad ideas by banning them. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali shows, bad ideas can be smuggled in under any label. Bad ideas can only be countered with better ideas, not by burying them.

CRT, DEI, and the whole postmodern Woke project is a collectivist assault on American Individualism and a reactionary repudiation of The Enlightenment. CRT, for its part, is nothing short of racist training of innocent children, who will be brainwashed into focussing on pygment, not character. CRT rejects the great moral revolution of the Enlightenment that prioritizes the individual over the group or the rulers. CRT, like collectivism more broadly, is an ideology by and for savages, not civilized human beings.

A better approach than banning CRT—the only way to settle the current fight over CRT in schools and more broadly the never-ending battles over what is taught in the tax-funded government schools, and how—is to defund the public schools, and separate education and state. I don’t mean “defund” in the same way as the defund the police movement, which mindlessly calls for stripping police departments of the funds they need to do their jobs. Defunding the public schools should be a grassroots choice, focussed on parents and children, who could be empowered individually to choose to divert their education tax dollars to educational alternatives. A good start to defending the public schools would be universal school choice through tax credits or Education Savings Accounts.

Kudos to Senators Michael Testa and Joe Pennacchio for confronting and rejecting Critical Race Theory and its related primitive ideas of collectivism. Let’s build on their initiative by recommitting to the individualist Enlightenment ideals of the American Revolution.

* [Critical Race Theory, or CRT, is also known as DEI, for ““diversity, equity and inclusion”. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali explains, the collectivist, egalitarian, racist ideas of DEI are the same as under the CRT label.]

** [Race Science holds that the human race is actually a number of distinct races, some of which are genetically inferior or superior in intelligence. This is strictly a collectivist theory, focussed on racial averages. Even if it is true, which it is not, it’s irrelevant. A proper individualist orientation focuses on individual characteristics. A group average tells you nothing of any particular individual’s intelligence, and is thus useless in judging any particular individual. This is why individualism is the only antipode of any collectivist theory, including CRT.]

*** [The related “science” of eugenics was also an ideological progenitor and driver of German Nazism.]

Principled Perspectives

Saturday, January 8, 2022

The Antidote to ‘McCarthyism’ in NJ Schools is Soviet-Style Indoctrination, Says a CRT Advocate

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