Video has surfaced from late August of prominent Critical Race Theory (CRT) activist and Columbia University law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, who said she fears the Left is losing the “language war” against anti-CRT parents and their advocates, and that the radical left-wing ideology will ultimately go the way of ACORN.
“I think that when we’re caught in a ‘Is it CRT or not CRT [debate],’ they win,” Crenshaw said as she headlined an event at Oak Bluffs Union Chapel in Martha’s Vineyard, American Wire News reported. “That’s the whole point of throwing this in.”
The event was titled, “What Is Critical Race Theory? And Why Is It Under Attack?”
Anti-CRT activist Christopher Rufo tweeted some of the clips from Crenshaw’s remarks.
Crenshaw fears that critical race theory will meet the same fate as the left-wing activist organization ACORN, which conservatives successfully destroyed in 2009.
"You can run from the name. That's not what they're after. They're after the substance." pic.twitter.com/wAgylVaeyj
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 7, 2022
Crenshaw said:
And I have to say, it took a lot of folks awhile to figure that out. When this first started, I talked to a lot of people – diversity, inclusion people – who were in K through 12, or who were teaching 1619 [Project], and to almost a person they all thought, “Well, it doesn’t really implicate me because I don’t really teach that.” And it’s only at this moment, where I think it’s clear, that it doesn’t matter what it is you call what you do. If you’re trying to center anti-racism in whatever you do, they’re coming for you. They’ve built this cage, and they’ve put us all in it.
“You can run from the name – that’s not what they’re after,” Crenshaw added. “They’re after the substance of what it is that is being taught.”
Former Indianapolis STEM educator who is now executive director at Chalkboard Review, Tony Kinnett was fired in December after leaking his school district’s CRT agenda and exposing the myth embraced by many school officials that CRT is not being taught:
As an admin for the largest school district in Indiana, here's what we mean when we tell you that we aren't "teaching" Critical Race Theory: pic.twitter.com/f6RLghcw2R
— Tony Kinnett (@TheTonus) November 4, 2021
Crenshaw then compared what she apparently views as the downfall of CRT to the fate of the taxpayer-funded Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which was outed a dozen years ago, after having been represented by a young Barack Obama, as a radical left-wing group involved in cases of voter fraud tied to its voter registration efforts.
Crenshaw continued her comparison of CRT with ACORN, and clearly faulted the “mainstream media” for not coming to ACORN’s aid:
So, if we learn anything, from other moments like this, which the right has come after something and we thought we could continue doing it by calling it something else, then that should be enough of a cautionary tale. So, what else has happened like this? You guys remember ACORN? Okay, same thing! Buncha lies got told about ACORN from the far right. Mainstream media didn’t do anything about it til it became hugely controversial. Then, when the mainstream media came in, they didn’t come in to report the story as basically being a misinformation campaign against a social justice/racial justice organization. They reported it as “a controversy.” It’s a controversy most people didn’t get involved in. Have you heard of anything about ACORN since? It destroyed ACORN.
As Breitbart News noted, Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe and activist Hannah Giles filmed undercover video of O’Keefe, posing as a pimp, and Giles as a prostitute, seeking advice from ACORN staff regarding smuggling underage prostitutes into the country, tax evasion, and other schemes.
O’Keefe ultimately joined with Andrew Breitbart, who helped him publish the videos one at a time, ultimately paving the way for the launch of his news outlet.
“In the media frenzy that followed, Democrats rushed to contain the damage to their party,” Breitbart News reported. “Though they controlled both houses of Congress, Democrats voted to prohibit ACORN from receiving any further federal funding.”
– – –
Susan Berry, PhD, is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Kimberle Crenshaw” by Christopher Rufo.
