Week in Review: CRT’s Despair vs. Juneteenth’s Promise

The spirit of Juneteenth, the holiday where we commemorate the end of slavery in the U.S., celebrates Americans’ willingness to devote their lives, fortunes, and honor to vindicating the principles of freedom, Goldwater Vice President for Litigation Timothy Sandefur writes at In Defense of Liberty.

It’s the spirit of the abolition societies of the late 1700s, of the Civil War soldiers who risked their lives to preserve the American Constitution, of the former slaves who advocated for women’s suffrage, and of the Jews who marched with Martin Luther King. As Sandefur writes, “There have always been people who bravely demanded their own liberty—and, knowing that freedom is for everyone, who have also worked to ensure that others can live freer, happier lives.”

Case in point: the black soldiers who took up arms to end slavery during the Civil War. “They fought to save a country whose people had deprived them of their freedom, because they knew that the vindication of the American Dream was a matter of their own personal concern,” Sandefur says. “Those soldiers knew America was not a ‘white supremacist’ country, but a beacon of hope for all,” he adds. “Today, their great-grandchildren, alongside Americans of all races and backgrounds, continue to do their part to make the American Dream a reality.”

Read more about the spirit of Juneteenth at In Defense of Liberty. 

Media Warns Nation Not to ‘Whitewash’ History by Rejecting Racism

Take note, USA Today: Stopping public schools from teaching children to discriminate based on skin color does not constitute an “attack against teaching the history of enslaved Africans and their descendants.” And parents who just want to know what their kids are learning are not trying to “whitewash” history.

In an article published against the backdrop of Juneteenth, USA Today tried framing the national movement to reject Critical Race Theory’s (CRT) race-based radicalism and restore parental rights as an effort to ban schools from teaching history. Indeed, the newspaper seems incapable of distinguishing between the significance of Juneteenth and the toxicity of CRT, suggesting that anyone opposed to the latter is little more than a bigot seeking to undermine the former.

USA Today is running interference for an ideology whose base beliefs contradict the constitutional principles of liberty for all and equal protection under the law that we celebrate on Juneteenth. The holiday symbolizes our constant progress toward the realization of this nation’s promise. CRT, on the other hand, instills a sense of failure and despair by telling certain individuals that the American Dream is not open to them.

Read more about this blatant media bias at In Defense of Liberty. 

Here’s How Civics Can Prevail Over CRT

Will Critical Race Theory (CRT) drag Arizona—and the nation as a whole—back into the days of state-sanctioned racial discrimination?

As a new report from the National Association of Scholars notes: “Arizona’s public universities teach diversity, equity, and inclusion and pretend it is civics.” But there are concrete reforms state lawmakers could consider, Goldwater’s Matt Beienburg writes for Townhall. These include “1) requiring the universities to implement general education requirements focused on American institutions, 2) eliminating social justice and diversity general education requirements, and 3) prohibiting these institutions from requiring job candidates to submit ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion statements,’” adds Beienburg, Director of the Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy and Director of Education Policy.

“Too many of our public schools at both the K-12 and postsecondary level now fail to equip their students with civic literacy and appreciation for the constitutional framework of our nation,” Beienburg says. But these reforms can lay the groundwork for a revival of civic education and constitutional principles—and the rejection of race-based radicalism.

Read the rest of Beienburg’s op-ed at Townhall.