Christopher F. Rufo, James R. Copland, and John Ketcham have written what they call A Model for Transparency in School Training and Curriculum. The governing body of a public school, including public charter schools, shall ensure that the following information is displayed on the school website in an easily accessible location:
Rufo admits that the only real answer is to defund public schools and give people no strings attached ESAs, but then only like 5% or less of his lobbying goes into that. Exposing CRT, transparency bills, and red state bans are nice, but it's precisely because they are easier that they are less effective. That these people are monsters is already transparent, the problem is nobody can do anything about it.
Taking on local county funding of public schools, especially in blue and purple areas, is both the most impactful and most difficult option. Probably Rufo sized up in his mind the odds of passing ballot initiatives to seriously threaten public school funding and decided that it would be a costly and low probability venture for him.
Lastly, I think the focus on CRT is probably the least objectionable thing about public schools right now. COVID is #1 and gender nonsense is #2. CRT is unpopular but is a distant third. I know Rufo doesn't like that other stuff either but CRT isn't going to dive enough outrage to defeat the teachers union on its own.
The best path forward would be to try to develop a very robust pro-reform teachers movement. In the past the union has had a lot of solidarity because it was really just focused on getting more money. All this new nonsense, CFT, gender, COVID, is as abusive to the teachers as the students in most cases. You've basically got to run on "you hate working for these people too and ESAs will fund the competitors that will allow you to tell people putting you in a mask all day to take their job and shove it." You make the great enemy the bureaucrats rather than the teachers.
I don't think Tracinski's argument is a very good one. What's even more depressing is that I worry it's culturally ingrained into both libertarianism and, if there is one, the American way of doing things.
To be clear, Tracinski's argument is basically the Peltzman effect. But if you step back, the Peltzman effect is incredibly overused. Because 1) Much of the time, the compensating behavior doesn't completely offset the primary behavior and 2) Peltzman always seems to define his costs and benefits arbitrarily narrowly (e.g. even if it's the case that on-net, more people die by using seatbelts than without, the benefits to society of EVERYONE and EVERYTHING being able to travel 70mph is much, much higher and should also be part of the equation.
Nonetheless, this kind of stilted, "aren't I cute" argument has become the de-facto rationale for the US bureaucracy (remember CDC testing?) and for pundits of inaction everywhere.
You can see this by returning to Tracinski. We can't persecute these guys (who are persecuting us), persecuting them will only make them stronger! What? I suggest he, and everyone else, actually look at the history of persecution. Unfortunately, it turns out to be quite effective. If you really want to put the lie to this argument, think about how much stronger a position conservatives in media and academia are now than in times past when they were weak and persecution free.
It's nonsensical rhetorical leechcraft. And it's endemic in thought. So much more thought is given to secondary consequences and hypotheticals, that we've become paralyzed by inaction.
The problem with wokeness is that its zealots capture key positions of institutions which, on a functionalist definition, have nothing to do with wokeness and then use this institutional power to promote woke ends, to the detriment of the original function of the institution. It is no answer to this problem to say we need open debate, since the problem with wokeness is anterior to the conditions that make open debate possible. The woke will profess to be all about open debate right until the point when they have the critical mass to enshrine their favored substantive views by rule. It's happened again and again, and has been the plain pattern at least since Lenin.
Q: Others have laid out different strategies in fighting CRT. Some have suggested confronting Corporate HR Trainers either overtly or subtly so that fellow employees would 'see through' its illogic and inherent awfulness. Why are these approaches either useless or even counterproductive?
A: You can’t persuade zealots with logic, facts, and clever argumentation; they only understand the language of power. That’s why the campaign to prove that you’re “the real liberal” or “more antiracist than the antiracists” is doomed to failure. Like it or not, Critical Race Theory is the driving force of the modern intellectual Left; they’re not going back to the philosophy of FDR, LBJ, or MLK. And they scrupulously follow the old dictum of “no enemies to the left”—they will dispatch the centrist liberals with even more vitriol and brutality than they dispatch the conservatives. This is also the core dilemma of the IDW crowd: many of them cannot imagine aligning with political conservatives; they operate under the delusion that they can “recapture the centre” and convince the planet of the virtue of Enlightenment values. That’s not how politics works. We live in a polarized political system—one winner, one loser. You’ll remember that the Girondins went to the guillotine. If, metaphorically speaking, the centrist liberals want to avoid the same fate, they will have to make an alliance with Trump-loving, truck-driving, gun-toting Middle Americans. That’s reality. We’ll see if they heed it.
What if Rufo is correct? And let's do a thought experiment. Say that Nazism was very popular among teachers and was being taught to our children. How should we respond?
It seems Rufo has moved from CRT is evil we should be able to ban evil shit to parents (through law makers) should be able to determine what their kids are taught. I think this is a mistake, at least on principle. CRT is an ideology and I don't think we should be teaching ideology. Furthermore it is a racist ideology, which I am further opposed to teaching. Again, what if parents and lawmakers wanted to teach Nazism? Should we stand by in accordance with federalism and states rights to teach what they want? Rufo has in the past posed this question to David French, clearly stumping him. Perhaps Rufo thinks CRT is so unpopular that by focusing on parents being able to determine what their kids should and shouldn't learn, it will best be defeated. This casts a bigger more liberal tent which includes people who haven't yet come around to CRT being awful.
Sullivan engages in the tendency of educated people to worry more about second order effects than first order effects. It's a strange phenomena. Obviously its good to consider possible reactions, but very educated people have a tendency to overweight second order possibilities and underweight first order actualities. Perhaps this is just the intellectual's bias: First order actualities require action, second order possibilities pondering and inaction.
The social sciences and education at the university level are fully corrupted by critical theory. Any policy approaches will just be playing whack-a-mole unless fundamental reform of university system can happen.
First of all, he's so obliviously proud about using 'Hispanic', but all his criticisms of Latinx apply equally to Hispanic, which is just another Academia / US Government-invented term that no members of the group used to describe themselves prior to 1970. David Bernstein's upcoming book "Classified" goes into deep detail. Hispanic also faced inertial resistance on its road to replacing the former terms - I bet this is corroborated if one were to check out NYT word usage frequency stats - because elites just kept insisting that people do so, and then Tracinski, ahem, jumped on that bandwagon. And is so proud of it! While simultaneously criticizing bandwagons! Is this "representation without authorization"? Good grief!
Tracinsky is right about the climate change thing being out of place - lefty religion, sure, but not 'woke' - but he also knows full well why "drugs" belongs on Schellenberger's woke chart. Just because there is some overlap between progressives and libertarians on some policy preference doesn't mean the motivations and rationale are at all the same, and it always ends up being one of those "Libertarians as Progressive deluded mistress" situations. "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."
If you ask progressives why they are against drug prohibition, the answer is not because they believe in the fundamental principle of bodily autonomy against which the state has no right of interference (ha ha!) but because "disproportionately black and brown ... yadda yadda ... racist police and system ... yadda yadda" - i.e., because it is a system of racist oppression, the core "woke" tenet, which is the rationale for everything they do. They would be cool the drug war x100 and tell the libertarians to take a hike if only the people who tended to get arrested were white.
"But when someone like Christopher Rufo designates [woke] as a catchall for any idea on the left, he is confirming the left’s claim that the term is malleable and crudely partisan—because for him, it is."
"Someone like"? Nice. At any rate, that's just not a fair or accurate statement about what Rufo is doing. Rufo is all-in on "CRT", and indeed, the whole point of "intersectional critical theory" is precisely to weave all the isolated "system of oppression" fibers for all the identity groups into one big ideological tapestry as the foundation for political coalition. What should people call real-world manifestations of this concept if not "CRT" or Woke"? Does Tracinsky have a better term or brand?
"If the problem with wokeness is specifically that it quashes debate—that it delegitimizes all dissent—then the way to oppose it is to advocate for open debate, with many different viewpoints being heard."
Nice try, but no, that's not specifically "the problem" with wokeness. A means, not an end. Just one of several tools it uses to defend itself. The other problem with wokeness is that it is based on a premise which is a hateful, harmful falsehood of group libel. It is not just that the woke believe it is good and necessary to punish and heretics, but that they have the legal and social capacity to do so, and do it, all the time.
Sure, call for open debate! But then, also in the same breath please also call for non-discriminatory platforms and the total abolition of laws that allow someone to be sued, fired, or disciplined for offense. Otherwise, how are you going to get people to argue the other side of that debate? Tracinsky then goes on to say that the poor women swimmers had to complain anonymously, precisely because they didn't feel it would otherwise be safe to participate in open debate. Make it safe! Or would doing so be 'illiberal'?
"But if everything is “woke,” nothing is. ... But if wokeness is just a catchall for any ideas held by supporters of a rival party or faction, then the way to oppose it is to oppose any expression of your opponents’ ideas."
This is kind of nuts. *The* way to oppose it? *Any* expression? There are lots of ways besides that to oppose wokeness, but it's not "just a catchall". He recited Pluckrose's description, but let's face it, 95% of the woke don't have any clue about all that "knowledge is culturally constructed" academic jargon.
Here, I'll make it easy. My favorite economist has a great expression, "Price Discrimination Explains Everything." A lot of people don't realize it, but it's everywhere, if you learn about it you'll start to see how it explains so much, and so often when something seems to deviate from the nice, simple story about how things are supposed to work, it's usually to blame.
What does 'CRT' really mean?
It means, "White Racism Explains Everything."
What does 'Woke', i.e., "Intersectional Critical Theory" really mean?
It means "Bigoted Oppression Explains Everything."
In the alternative, just replace 'price' with 'unjust' = "Unjust Discrimination Explains Everything."
Again, I'd ask Tracinsky, "If we don't want public schools to teach kids the lie that 'white racism explains everything', then, according to you, do we just have to suck it up, or if not, then what's the text of the law that would effectively stop it and which you are cool with? Is your answer just, 'Abolish public schools'?"
Open debate of political correctness is already for the most part banned within universities. You'll get kicked out if you're a student, and you'll be fired if you work there. Some star faculty get exemptions, but then the administration finds some indirect way to shiv you (see Amy Chua for an example meant to encourager les autres). We are already suppressed by the existence of pervasive Test Acts within institutions designed to exclude anyone who does not tow the line with PC.
If we just call wokeness political correctness, it exposes the stasis in American culture and politics. The chart by Boghossian and Shellenberger that Tracinski links to is interesting, but I have the sense that this is really about, for them, shoring up the secular humanist project which has diminished nigh to the point of doom. Tracinski also at the close of his article makes a plea for a secular liberalism that he seems to believe is deeper-rooted than it really is. This is part of a category of moderation that I find both funny and pervasive: "the causes are good, but I am resolutely opposed to the effects of those causes!"
What would Carl Schmitt say about this attempt to declare political correctness to be a religious doctrine? He would of course say political doctrines are religious doctrines.
In Chapter 3 of Political Theology, Schmitt writes:
"All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development -- in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent God became the omnipotent lawgiver -- but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts."
He then goes on to say (my paraphrase) that the modern constitutional state is inseparable from a deistic conception which 'banished the miracle from the world.' It is futile to try to forever banish the religious sensibility from politics. A leftist politics of the Jim Jones variety is always going to clean the clock of schoolboy secular leftism. The constitutional liberalism of the founders was written around a Christian culture. Find-and-replacing Christianity with nothing creates a vacuum rapidly filled by cults like those of Jim Jones. We have seen how Jim Jonesism as preached by the apostle Kendi has trivially crushed and conquered most of the feeble outposts of secular humanism in education: that is an accomplished fact.
CRT is a natural outgrowth of certain mainstream assumptions going back to civil rights. The obvious counter would be something like The Bell Curve, but even Murray admits it will never be taught in K-12 schools. So what we are going to end up with is K-12 students getting a steady of diet of stories about how terrible they were in the past, how terrible things are now, and that its all their fault. The most any of these CRT bans do is say "its so ugly to make your anti-white racism explicit, can't you just make it loudly implicit!" Kids are going to exist in this miasma of racial guilt lessons and draw the most likely conclusions. Logic and debate isn't how kids decide what the truth is, and anyway the best facts on one side will be withheld anyway.
Since any *REAL* discussion of race would involve Sailer level "noticing", the best approach is to just not talk much about race in K-12. When I was growing up we got the usual "its February, here are a few lessons about how slavery is bad, now let's move on". That seems appropriate to me. IDW types that want to teach both sides are deluding themselves. More race talk will inevitably just mean "here are some more examples of how whites are shit."
Problem is educators are being asked to do the impossible (close the racial gaps in performance) and they are running out of excuses as to why they can't, so they are just going to call small children racist and beat it out of them. If that seems like harsh criticism, the level of child abuse schools did during COVID I never would have guessed in my wildest dreams.
Rufo admits that the only real answer is to defund public schools and give people no strings attached ESAs, but then only like 5% or less of his lobbying goes into that. Exposing CRT, transparency bills, and red state bans are nice, but it's precisely because they are easier that they are less effective. That these people are monsters is already transparent, the problem is nobody can do anything about it.
Taking on local county funding of public schools, especially in blue and purple areas, is both the most impactful and most difficult option. Probably Rufo sized up in his mind the odds of passing ballot initiatives to seriously threaten public school funding and decided that it would be a costly and low probability venture for him.
Lastly, I think the focus on CRT is probably the least objectionable thing about public schools right now. COVID is #1 and gender nonsense is #2. CRT is unpopular but is a distant third. I know Rufo doesn't like that other stuff either but CRT isn't going to dive enough outrage to defeat the teachers union on its own.
The best path forward would be to try to develop a very robust pro-reform teachers movement. In the past the union has had a lot of solidarity because it was really just focused on getting more money. All this new nonsense, CFT, gender, COVID, is as abusive to the teachers as the students in most cases. You've basically got to run on "you hate working for these people too and ESAs will fund the competitors that will allow you to tell people putting you in a mask all day to take their job and shove it." You make the great enemy the bureaucrats rather than the teachers.
I don't think Tracinski's argument is a very good one. What's even more depressing is that I worry it's culturally ingrained into both libertarianism and, if there is one, the American way of doing things.
To be clear, Tracinski's argument is basically the Peltzman effect. But if you step back, the Peltzman effect is incredibly overused. Because 1) Much of the time, the compensating behavior doesn't completely offset the primary behavior and 2) Peltzman always seems to define his costs and benefits arbitrarily narrowly (e.g. even if it's the case that on-net, more people die by using seatbelts than without, the benefits to society of EVERYONE and EVERYTHING being able to travel 70mph is much, much higher and should also be part of the equation.
Nonetheless, this kind of stilted, "aren't I cute" argument has become the de-facto rationale for the US bureaucracy (remember CDC testing?) and for pundits of inaction everywhere.
You can see this by returning to Tracinski. We can't persecute these guys (who are persecuting us), persecuting them will only make them stronger! What? I suggest he, and everyone else, actually look at the history of persecution. Unfortunately, it turns out to be quite effective. If you really want to put the lie to this argument, think about how much stronger a position conservatives in media and academia are now than in times past when they were weak and persecution free.
It's nonsensical rhetorical leechcraft. And it's endemic in thought. So much more thought is given to secondary consequences and hypotheticals, that we've become paralyzed by inaction.
The problem with wokeness is that its zealots capture key positions of institutions which, on a functionalist definition, have nothing to do with wokeness and then use this institutional power to promote woke ends, to the detriment of the original function of the institution. It is no answer to this problem to say we need open debate, since the problem with wokeness is anterior to the conditions that make open debate possible. The woke will profess to be all about open debate right until the point when they have the critical mass to enshrine their favored substantive views by rule. It's happened again and again, and has been the plain pattern at least since Lenin.
Q: Others have laid out different strategies in fighting CRT. Some have suggested confronting Corporate HR Trainers either overtly or subtly so that fellow employees would 'see through' its illogic and inherent awfulness. Why are these approaches either useless or even counterproductive?
A: You can’t persuade zealots with logic, facts, and clever argumentation; they only understand the language of power. That’s why the campaign to prove that you’re “the real liberal” or “more antiracist than the antiracists” is doomed to failure. Like it or not, Critical Race Theory is the driving force of the modern intellectual Left; they’re not going back to the philosophy of FDR, LBJ, or MLK. And they scrupulously follow the old dictum of “no enemies to the left”—they will dispatch the centrist liberals with even more vitriol and brutality than they dispatch the conservatives. This is also the core dilemma of the IDW crowd: many of them cannot imagine aligning with political conservatives; they operate under the delusion that they can “recapture the centre” and convince the planet of the virtue of Enlightenment values. That’s not how politics works. We live in a polarized political system—one winner, one loser. You’ll remember that the Girondins went to the guillotine. If, metaphorically speaking, the centrist liberals want to avoid the same fate, they will have to make an alliance with Trump-loving, truck-driving, gun-toting Middle Americans. That’s reality. We’ll see if they heed it.
https://niccolo.substack.com/p/the-dushanbe-interviews-christopher
What if Rufo is correct? And let's do a thought experiment. Say that Nazism was very popular among teachers and was being taught to our children. How should we respond?
Good interview with Rufo on Sullivan's podcast.
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/christopher-rufo-on-crt-in-schools
It seems Rufo has moved from CRT is evil we should be able to ban evil shit to parents (through law makers) should be able to determine what their kids are taught. I think this is a mistake, at least on principle. CRT is an ideology and I don't think we should be teaching ideology. Furthermore it is a racist ideology, which I am further opposed to teaching. Again, what if parents and lawmakers wanted to teach Nazism? Should we stand by in accordance with federalism and states rights to teach what they want? Rufo has in the past posed this question to David French, clearly stumping him. Perhaps Rufo thinks CRT is so unpopular that by focusing on parents being able to determine what their kids should and shouldn't learn, it will best be defeated. This casts a bigger more liberal tent which includes people who haven't yet come around to CRT being awful.
Sullivan engages in the tendency of educated people to worry more about second order effects than first order effects. It's a strange phenomena. Obviously its good to consider possible reactions, but very educated people have a tendency to overweight second order possibilities and underweight first order actualities. Perhaps this is just the intellectual's bias: First order actualities require action, second order possibilities pondering and inaction.
The social sciences and education at the university level are fully corrupted by critical theory. Any policy approaches will just be playing whack-a-mole unless fundamental reform of university system can happen.
Tracinski is really blowing smoke with that one.
First of all, he's so obliviously proud about using 'Hispanic', but all his criticisms of Latinx apply equally to Hispanic, which is just another Academia / US Government-invented term that no members of the group used to describe themselves prior to 1970. David Bernstein's upcoming book "Classified" goes into deep detail. Hispanic also faced inertial resistance on its road to replacing the former terms - I bet this is corroborated if one were to check out NYT word usage frequency stats - because elites just kept insisting that people do so, and then Tracinski, ahem, jumped on that bandwagon. And is so proud of it! While simultaneously criticizing bandwagons! Is this "representation without authorization"? Good grief!
Tracinsky is right about the climate change thing being out of place - lefty religion, sure, but not 'woke' - but he also knows full well why "drugs" belongs on Schellenberger's woke chart. Just because there is some overlap between progressives and libertarians on some policy preference doesn't mean the motivations and rationale are at all the same, and it always ends up being one of those "Libertarians as Progressive deluded mistress" situations. "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."
If you ask progressives why they are against drug prohibition, the answer is not because they believe in the fundamental principle of bodily autonomy against which the state has no right of interference (ha ha!) but because "disproportionately black and brown ... yadda yadda ... racist police and system ... yadda yadda" - i.e., because it is a system of racist oppression, the core "woke" tenet, which is the rationale for everything they do. They would be cool the drug war x100 and tell the libertarians to take a hike if only the people who tended to get arrested were white.
"But when someone like Christopher Rufo designates [woke] as a catchall for any idea on the left, he is confirming the left’s claim that the term is malleable and crudely partisan—because for him, it is."
"Someone like"? Nice. At any rate, that's just not a fair or accurate statement about what Rufo is doing. Rufo is all-in on "CRT", and indeed, the whole point of "intersectional critical theory" is precisely to weave all the isolated "system of oppression" fibers for all the identity groups into one big ideological tapestry as the foundation for political coalition. What should people call real-world manifestations of this concept if not "CRT" or Woke"? Does Tracinsky have a better term or brand?
"If the problem with wokeness is specifically that it quashes debate—that it delegitimizes all dissent—then the way to oppose it is to advocate for open debate, with many different viewpoints being heard."
Nice try, but no, that's not specifically "the problem" with wokeness. A means, not an end. Just one of several tools it uses to defend itself. The other problem with wokeness is that it is based on a premise which is a hateful, harmful falsehood of group libel. It is not just that the woke believe it is good and necessary to punish and heretics, but that they have the legal and social capacity to do so, and do it, all the time.
Sure, call for open debate! But then, also in the same breath please also call for non-discriminatory platforms and the total abolition of laws that allow someone to be sued, fired, or disciplined for offense. Otherwise, how are you going to get people to argue the other side of that debate? Tracinsky then goes on to say that the poor women swimmers had to complain anonymously, precisely because they didn't feel it would otherwise be safe to participate in open debate. Make it safe! Or would doing so be 'illiberal'?
"But if everything is “woke,” nothing is. ... But if wokeness is just a catchall for any ideas held by supporters of a rival party or faction, then the way to oppose it is to oppose any expression of your opponents’ ideas."
This is kind of nuts. *The* way to oppose it? *Any* expression? There are lots of ways besides that to oppose wokeness, but it's not "just a catchall". He recited Pluckrose's description, but let's face it, 95% of the woke don't have any clue about all that "knowledge is culturally constructed" academic jargon.
Here, I'll make it easy. My favorite economist has a great expression, "Price Discrimination Explains Everything." A lot of people don't realize it, but it's everywhere, if you learn about it you'll start to see how it explains so much, and so often when something seems to deviate from the nice, simple story about how things are supposed to work, it's usually to blame.
What does 'CRT' really mean?
It means, "White Racism Explains Everything."
What does 'Woke', i.e., "Intersectional Critical Theory" really mean?
It means "Bigoted Oppression Explains Everything."
In the alternative, just replace 'price' with 'unjust' = "Unjust Discrimination Explains Everything."
Again, I'd ask Tracinsky, "If we don't want public schools to teach kids the lie that 'white racism explains everything', then, according to you, do we just have to suck it up, or if not, then what's the text of the law that would effectively stop it and which you are cool with? Is your answer just, 'Abolish public schools'?"
Open debate of political correctness is already for the most part banned within universities. You'll get kicked out if you're a student, and you'll be fired if you work there. Some star faculty get exemptions, but then the administration finds some indirect way to shiv you (see Amy Chua for an example meant to encourager les autres). We are already suppressed by the existence of pervasive Test Acts within institutions designed to exclude anyone who does not tow the line with PC.
If we just call wokeness political correctness, it exposes the stasis in American culture and politics. The chart by Boghossian and Shellenberger that Tracinski links to is interesting, but I have the sense that this is really about, for them, shoring up the secular humanist project which has diminished nigh to the point of doom. Tracinski also at the close of his article makes a plea for a secular liberalism that he seems to believe is deeper-rooted than it really is. This is part of a category of moderation that I find both funny and pervasive: "the causes are good, but I am resolutely opposed to the effects of those causes!"
What would Carl Schmitt say about this attempt to declare political correctness to be a religious doctrine? He would of course say political doctrines are religious doctrines.
In Chapter 3 of Political Theology, Schmitt writes:
"All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development -- in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent God became the omnipotent lawgiver -- but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts."
He then goes on to say (my paraphrase) that the modern constitutional state is inseparable from a deistic conception which 'banished the miracle from the world.' It is futile to try to forever banish the religious sensibility from politics. A leftist politics of the Jim Jones variety is always going to clean the clock of schoolboy secular leftism. The constitutional liberalism of the founders was written around a Christian culture. Find-and-replacing Christianity with nothing creates a vacuum rapidly filled by cults like those of Jim Jones. We have seen how Jim Jonesism as preached by the apostle Kendi has trivially crushed and conquered most of the feeble outposts of secular humanism in education: that is an accomplished fact.
CRT is a natural outgrowth of certain mainstream assumptions going back to civil rights. The obvious counter would be something like The Bell Curve, but even Murray admits it will never be taught in K-12 schools. So what we are going to end up with is K-12 students getting a steady of diet of stories about how terrible they were in the past, how terrible things are now, and that its all their fault. The most any of these CRT bans do is say "its so ugly to make your anti-white racism explicit, can't you just make it loudly implicit!" Kids are going to exist in this miasma of racial guilt lessons and draw the most likely conclusions. Logic and debate isn't how kids decide what the truth is, and anyway the best facts on one side will be withheld anyway.
Since any *REAL* discussion of race would involve Sailer level "noticing", the best approach is to just not talk much about race in K-12. When I was growing up we got the usual "its February, here are a few lessons about how slavery is bad, now let's move on". That seems appropriate to me. IDW types that want to teach both sides are deluding themselves. More race talk will inevitably just mean "here are some more examples of how whites are shit."
Problem is educators are being asked to do the impossible (close the racial gaps in performance) and they are running out of excuses as to why they can't, so they are just going to call small children racist and beat it out of them. If that seems like harsh criticism, the level of child abuse schools did during COVID I never would have guessed in my wildest dreams.
And to the extent he inspires illiberal bills in red states?