By now, you’ve probably heard a lot about “Critical Race Theory” over the last few months. But why the controversy? Why are so many people of the sort to not usually be politically engaged now suddenly up in arms? The Democratic Party media have quickly adopted a narrative that the whole thing is no big deal — just teaching kids about the honest racial history of the country. See for example this piece from NBC News on July 1, headline “Teaching critical race theory isn't happening in classrooms, teachers say in survey.” Excerpt:

“We’re saying, ‘What is the fuss about?’” said Lynn Daniel, a ninth-grade English teacher in the Phoenix area. “We don’t get it. This objection is being pushed upon us, and it’s not even happening in our classes. I don’t understand it.”

Try to find out exactly what propaganda your kids are getting fed in school, and it’s not so easy. But a reader sends along a link to the website of something called the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Check this out. If your eyes haven’t been opened already, this will likely do it.

Have you heard of the NMAAHC? It is part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington — in other words, part of the official government-funded national museum megaplex in the nation’s capital. But it is a relatively recent addition to the Smithsonian empire. It was created by act of Congress in 2005, and opened in 2016, toward the end of the Obama presidency. The Obamaites had had plenty of time to put their stamp on this thing by the time it opened. Here is a picture of the building:

If you were still wondering if there is a relationship between hideous modern architecture and hideous modern progressive thinking, this will answer your curiosity. (As an aside, Manhattan Contrarian had occasion to comment on a previous work of the same architect, David Adjaye, back in 2014. The comment was “This [Adjaye building in Harlem] makes the old time "projects" that New York is famous for look positively pleasant. If you didn't know what it was, you would probably guess it's a prison.”)

Anyway, following the commenter’s link, I quickly came upon multiple pages from the NMAAHC that parrot and regurgitate all the latest platitudes and clichés of the trendy Kendi/Crenshaw/DiAngelo school of “anti-racism”/CRT. As a good sample for your reading pleasure, here are links to pages covering what they call “Race and Racial Identity,” “Social Identities and Systems of Oppression,” and, my personal favorite, “Whiteness.”

I’ll just give you some random quotes, and let you draw your own conclusions. From “Race and Racial Identity”:

• Societies use race to establish and justify systems of power, privilege, disenfranchisement, and oppression.

• American Anthropological Association states that "the 'racial' worldview was invented to assign some groups to perpetual low status, while others were permitted access to privilege, power, and wealth. The tragedy in the United States has been that the policies and practices stemming from this worldview succeeded all too well in constructing unequal populations among Europeans, Native Americans, and peoples of African descent."

• The concept of race is intimately connected to our lives and has serious implications. It operates in real and definitive ways that confer benefits and privileges to some and withholds them from others.

I love the constant use of the passive voice: “the racial worldview was invented”; “others were permitted access”; and so forth. No need to name any person who actually did this or committed any allegedly wrongful act. It’s some mysterious forces behind the curtain.

From “Social Identities and Systems of Oppression”:

• Whether we are aware of it or not, we are all assigned multiple social identities. Within each category, there is a hierarchy - a social status with dominant and non-dominant groups. As with race, dominant members can bestow benefits to members they deem "normal," or limit opportunities to members that fall into "other" categories.

• In the United States, systems of oppression (like systemic racism) are woven into the very foundation of American culture, society, and laws. Other examples of systems of oppression are sexism, heterosexism, ableism, classism, ageism, and anti-Semitism. Society's institutions, such as government, education, and culture, all contribute or reinforce the oppression of marginalized social groups while elevating dominant social groups.

• Oppression causes deep suffering, but trying to decide whether one oppression is worse than others is problematic. It diminishes lived experiences and divides communities that should be working together. Many people experience abuse based on multiple social identities.

Notice that all the “marginalized groups” are deemed to be “oppressed” and therefore in a state of “deep suffering” without anyone having actually done anything wrong that one can put one’s finger on.

Finally, from “Whiteness”:

• Whiteness and white racialized identity refer to the way that white people, their customs, culture, and beliefs operate as the standard by which all other groups of are compared. Whiteness is also at the core of understanding race in America. Whiteness and the normalization of white racial identity throughout America's history have created a culture where nonwhite persons are seen as inferior or abnormal.

• This white-dominant culture also operates as a social mechanism that grants advantages to white people, since they can navigate society both by feeling normal and being viewed as normal. Persons who identify as white rarely have to think about their racial identity because they live within a culture where whiteness has been normalized.

Now we’ve even gone the passive voice one better, and we have “whiteness” as the very protagonist that (who?) “created a culture where nonwhite persons are seen as inferior.”

Anyway, this is your federal tax dollars at work. You thought you were getting a museum of African American History and Culture. Instead you have gotten a factory that spews forth racist and racialized garbage that propagandizes a doctrine that people by the immutable fact of birth and skin color are either evil oppressors who ruin the lives of others no matter how impeccable their actual behavior may be; or alternatively are among the “oppressed,” and therefore “deeply suffering” and unable to succeed in life no matter what their talents or how hard they may work.

And what exactly does this have to do with African American History and Culture? Nothing that I can see.

If you think there may be something to the idea that in America anyone who is not “white” is inherently othered, de-privileged, disenfranchised and oppressed, I would recommend to you the Census Bureau list of “median household income” by ethnic group, as derived from the American Community Survey. Wikipedia here lists the results from the 2018 survey. The results are, to say the least, flatly inconsistent with the assertions made, without citation of any evidence, on the NMAAHC website. A few examples:

• Median household income for white Americans is $65,902.

• The ethnic group with the highest median household income is Indian Americans, at $135,705. Wait a minute — that’s well more than double the median for white Americans. Aren’t Indian Americans “people of color” and therefore marginalized and oppressed?

• That’s just the start. Several dozen other ethnic groups also rank well ahead of “white Americans,” including plenty of non-Caucasian groups like Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, etc., etc. And then there are the dark-skinned Caucasians (are they oppressors or oppressed?) like Indians, Pakistanis, Iranians, Egyptians — they’re all ahead of “white Americans” in median household income.

• And then of course we have the Ghanaians and the Nigerians. They are black. And their median household incomes ($69,021 and $68,658 respectively) are higher than those of “white Americans.” Doesn’t that fact alone completely refute the assertion that the fact of black skin makes one “oppressed” and doomed to a life of suffering?

Government-funded racist garbage. If they do it here, I have no doubt they are peddling the same propaganda everywhere they think they can get away with it.