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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMUST-READ: How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory
https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/how-a-conservative-activist-invented-the-conflict-over-critical-race-theory. . .
As Rufo eventually came to see it, conservatives engaged in the culture war had been fighting against the same progressive racial ideology since late in the Obama years, without ever being able to describe it effectively. Weve needed new language for these issues, Rufo told me, when I first wrote to him, late in May. Political correctness is a dated term and, more importantly, doesnt apply anymore. Its not that elites are enforcing a set of manners and cultural limits, theyre seeking to reengineer the foundation of human psychology and social institutions through the new politics of race, Its much more invasive than mere correctness, which is a mechanism of social control, but not the heart of whats happening. The other frames are wrong, too: cancel culture is a vacuous term and doesnt translate into a political program; woke is a good epithet, but its too broad, too terminal, too easily brushed aside. Critical race theory is the perfect villain, Rufo wrote.
He thought that the phrase was a better description of what conservatives were opposing, but it also seemed like a promising political weapon. Its connotations are all negative to most middle-class Americans, including racial minorities, who see the world as creative rather than critical, individual rather than racial, practical rather than theoretical. Strung together, the phrase critical race theory connotes hostile, academic, divisive, race-obsessed, poisonous, elitist, anti-American. Most perfect of all, Rufo continued, critical race theory is not an externally applied pejorative. Instead, its the label the critical race theorists chose themselves.
Last summer, Rufo published several more pieces for City Journal, and, on September 2nd, he appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight. Rufo had prepared a three-minute monologue, to be uploaded to a teleprompter at a Seattle studio, and he had practiced carefully enough that when a teleprompter wasnt available he still remembered what to say. On air, set against the deep-blue background of Fox News, he told Carlson, Its absolutely astonishing how critical race theoryhe said those three words slowly, for emphasishas pervaded every aspect of the federal government. Carlsons face retracted into a familiar pinched squint while Rufo recounted several of his articles. Then he said what hed come to say: Conservatives need to wake up. This is an existential threat to the United States. And the bureaucracy, even under Trump, is being weaponized against core American values. And Id like to make it explicit: The President and the White Houseits within their authority to immediately issue an executive order to abolish critical-race-theory training from the federal government. And I call on the President to immediately issue this executive orderto stamp out this destructive, divisive, pseudoscientific ideology.
The next morning, Rufo was home with his wife and two sons when he got a phone call from a 202 area code. The man on the other end, Rufo recalled, said, Chris, this is Mark Meadows, chief of staff, reaching out on behalf of the President. He saw your segment on Tucker last night, and hes instructed me to take action. Soon after, Rufo flew to Washington, D.C., to assist in drafting an executive order, issued by the White House in late September, that limited how contractors providing federal diversity seminars could talk about race. This entire movement came from nothing, Rufo wrote to me recently, as the conservative campaign against critical race theory consumed Twitter each morning and Fox News each night. But the truth is more specific than that. Really, it came from him.
As Rufo eventually came to see it, conservatives engaged in the culture war had been fighting against the same progressive racial ideology since late in the Obama years, without ever being able to describe it effectively. Weve needed new language for these issues, Rufo told me, when I first wrote to him, late in May. Political correctness is a dated term and, more importantly, doesnt apply anymore. Its not that elites are enforcing a set of manners and cultural limits, theyre seeking to reengineer the foundation of human psychology and social institutions through the new politics of race, Its much more invasive than mere correctness, which is a mechanism of social control, but not the heart of whats happening. The other frames are wrong, too: cancel culture is a vacuous term and doesnt translate into a political program; woke is a good epithet, but its too broad, too terminal, too easily brushed aside. Critical race theory is the perfect villain, Rufo wrote.
He thought that the phrase was a better description of what conservatives were opposing, but it also seemed like a promising political weapon. Its connotations are all negative to most middle-class Americans, including racial minorities, who see the world as creative rather than critical, individual rather than racial, practical rather than theoretical. Strung together, the phrase critical race theory connotes hostile, academic, divisive, race-obsessed, poisonous, elitist, anti-American. Most perfect of all, Rufo continued, critical race theory is not an externally applied pejorative. Instead, its the label the critical race theorists chose themselves.
Last summer, Rufo published several more pieces for City Journal, and, on September 2nd, he appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight. Rufo had prepared a three-minute monologue, to be uploaded to a teleprompter at a Seattle studio, and he had practiced carefully enough that when a teleprompter wasnt available he still remembered what to say. On air, set against the deep-blue background of Fox News, he told Carlson, Its absolutely astonishing how critical race theoryhe said those three words slowly, for emphasishas pervaded every aspect of the federal government. Carlsons face retracted into a familiar pinched squint while Rufo recounted several of his articles. Then he said what hed come to say: Conservatives need to wake up. This is an existential threat to the United States. And the bureaucracy, even under Trump, is being weaponized against core American values. And Id like to make it explicit: The President and the White Houseits within their authority to immediately issue an executive order to abolish critical-race-theory training from the federal government. And I call on the President to immediately issue this executive orderto stamp out this destructive, divisive, pseudoscientific ideology.
The next morning, Rufo was home with his wife and two sons when he got a phone call from a 202 area code. The man on the other end, Rufo recalled, said, Chris, this is Mark Meadows, chief of staff, reaching out on behalf of the President. He saw your segment on Tucker last night, and hes instructed me to take action. Soon after, Rufo flew to Washington, D.C., to assist in drafting an executive order, issued by the White House in late September, that limited how contractors providing federal diversity seminars could talk about race. This entire movement came from nothing, Rufo wrote to me recently, as the conservative campaign against critical race theory consumed Twitter each morning and Fox News each night. But the truth is more specific than that. Really, it came from him.
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