Charlie, critical race theory is utterly devoid of value

 Yesterday, I came across a Twitter dustup between two people each of whom I'm inclined to agree with well over 90 percent of the time. It involved a discussion about yet another figure with whom, for the sake of efficiently setting the table, let's say I agree with 80 percent of the time. Following it pointed up to me the reality that lingering points of disagreement within the respectable Right sometimes can't, and shouldn't be, glossed over.

One of the tanglers is Charlie Sykes, founder and editor-at-large of The Bulwark. I've written before about how The Bulwark's premise when it was founded a few years ago (opposition to Trump coexistent with a desire to explore the possibilities of a big-tent center right) left it open to drift in a concerning direction, and there's been some of that. I began to get concerned when, in early 2020, co-founder Bill Kristol tweeted something to the effect that, given the circumstances (the stakes involved in the presidential election), we were all Democrats now. (To his credit, Sykes promptly responded "not me.") The frequent appearance of pieces by Richard North Patterson, who cannot be considered conservative by any stretch of the imagination, further concerned me. There were some other such indicators of a sullied mission.

Still, Sykes has behaved throughout the site's evolution in a responsible manner. One can point to any given example of his output and be satisfied that it passes basic muster as a conservative perspective. Bonehead Trumpist goons who use him as an example of the aforementioned drift have their heads up their tailpipes.

So my curiosity was aroused by his assertion that Christoper Rufo, a Manhattan Institute and Discovery Institute fellow who is legitimately alarmed by identity-politics militancy, was way out to lunch with regard to critical race theory:

Maybe it was the fact that I was reading it as I was getting ready to turn in for the night and not fully equipped to explore that which might have been justifiable about Sykes's stance, but the next thing I read was a response from Washington Examiner columnist Quin Hilyer, whose take was what mine had been at first glance:

A recent post of my own here at LITD came to mind. In it, I took Atlantic writer Adam Harris to task for hanging his argument that the Right generally speaking misunderstands critical race theory and thereby disqualifies its charges of identity politics militancy on Rufo's role in CRT's prevalence. He treats his readers to a thorough history of how the term and concept gelled within the academy and then made its way into the larger culture, and how that, in turn, gave Donald Trump the opportunity to wage war against a perfectly legitimate scholarly viewpoint. 

I pointed out why I found that to be a disingenuous line of argument. Maybe CRT, technically defined, couldn't be fingered as the culprit in recent Biden administration moves, but its indirect role looms large indeed:

So, okay, passing legislation or signing executive orders so boneheaded they're destined to get struck down in court is not an effective way to keep race-preoccupation out of the operations of governmental institutions. Further, it may be inaccurate to use critical race theory in a direct manner to identify what drives  an identity politics-drenched CIA recruiting video, or the Biden administration's race-based loan-forgiveness program for farmers, but it's certainly the incubator in which such public-policy measures were hatched. To cast a wider net, it clearly figures into private-sector initiatives such as the Coca-Cola employee seminar on how to be less white or Cummins creating an Advocating for Racial Equity Management Review Group or Disney's Reimagine Tomorrow employee training program.  

Like the broader governmental-and-corporate-wokeness phenomenon, racial preoccupation is real and pervasive, and it does indeed have its roots in CRT. And like the Left's attempt to dismiss concern over ubiquitous overall wokeness as a right-wing obsession with a triviality, Harris's piece is a smokescreen intended to distract from legitimate examination of preoccupation with race. 

And a bit later in the Sykes-Hilyer exchange, Examiner managing editor Jay Caruso chimed in with a link to a recent City Journal piece by Rufo that does indeed demonstrate that, fundamentally, Rufo is on point with his alarm about the role of CRT in cultural - specifically, educational - rot afoot as our dark days unfold:

Here's the link to Rufo's City Journal article about the California Department of Education's plans to put an ethnic-studies curriculum to which Caruso links in the tweet above.

Sykes's position in this bothers me because it creates room, whether wittingly or not, for CRT to be regarded as an academic phenomenon with some kind of merit. As Hilyer asserts above, it has none, and that's important to say.

The only real problem I might see with Rufo's preoccupation with CRT is one of tone. Because it has become such a central cause among the drivers of his work of late, it exudes a zeal that Trumpists, excitable as they are by nature, tend to pick up on and use to attempt to legitimize their usurping of very real culture-war concerns for their own cultish purposes. 

Therein lies the real branding issue, not what Sykes is talking about. 

I'm gratified to see that Sykes came in for some upbraiding over this. The desirable outcome is that it gives him pause to reconsider where he ought to be directing his outrage. He hasn't done anything unforgivably stupid here, but this was a necessary corrective to a moment of faulty judgement.