At the heart of wokeness is a lie – the Marxist lie that human society is reducible to power imbalances between the oppressor and the oppressed. Thus wokeness depends on false narratives to sell itself and smear its opponents.

Below is the next in a series of the Top Ten Woke Lies subverting American politics and culture. To see the first two posts in the series, Lies #10-8 in ascending order, click HERE and HERE.

7) Critical Race Theory is Not Being Taught in Schools

“There is little to no evidence that critical race theory itself is being taught to K-12 public school students,” wrote Bryan Anderson in November 2021 for the leftist propaganda outlet PBS News Hour, in a piece that suggested conservatives are paranoid bigots for fretting about it.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) – practically a household term now – is a cultural Marxist offshoot that began as a body of legal scholarship which viewed the law through the lens of racism and oppression, and which aimed to empower activists to dismantle that system of power. But in a matter of a few decades, CRT swept like wildfire from higher education all the way down to pre-kindergarten. Its core concepts – among them white privilege, implicit bias, and systemic racism – have also infiltrated other areas of society now apart from education: politics, business, entertainment… It’s hard to point to any aspect of our culture that hasn’t been touched, if not ravaged, by it.

The Left, of course, denies this, especially regarding its presence in education. Their three-step strategy for dismissing conservative claims that CRT is a tool for subversion in the classroom goes like this:

1) CRT in schools is nothing more than a boogeyman invented by the Right – it’s not a thing;

2) CRT in schools is a thing, but it’s not being taught like Republicans claim;

3) Republican legislation to ban or limit CRT in schools is racist!

The same formula applies, by the way, to the terms “wokeness” and “cultural Marxism”: first, smear the Right’s concerns about such terms as imaginary, bigoted, and fear-mongering. Then fight tooth-and-nail and cry racism when the Right tries to boot these ideological weapons from being taught in schools as truth.

If it’s true that CRT isn’t being taught in K-12 schools as PBS News Hour claims, as Jonathan Butcher wrote for the Heritage Foundation, “why would the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, invest in a campaign to keep the theory in K-12 instruction? That is, how could the union keep critical race theory in classrooms if it wasn’t there in the first place?”

The answer is that CRT is being taught in classrooms all around the country. But many on the Left insist that it is not, simply because it often isn’t explicitly labeled Critical Race Theory.

By the fall of 2021, bills that banned teaching certain CRT tenets in K-12 schools had already become law in five states—Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, Texas and Tennessee—and had been proposed in 20 more. As the movement to reject CRT grew, articles opposing these bills started appearing in the mainstream media, claiming CRT wasn’t even being taught in schools in the first place.

“For example,” as Raymond Burns noted in an article last year at Areo appropriately titled, “Yes, Children Are Being Taught Critical Race Theory in K–12 Schools in the US”:

NBC News published an article titled, “Teaching critical race theory isn’t happening in classrooms.” Similar claims were aired by the PBS News Hour, the New York Times, Salon and various regional news outlets (while, in the UK, the Guardian stated firmly, “CRT is not being taught in K-12 schools, which teach students from five to 18 years old”). A New York Times article asserted, “Education leaders, including the National School Boards Association, deny that there is any critical race theory being taught in K–12 schools.” Such articles often supported this claim by asserting that CRT is solely a legal theory—taught only in higher education—as an “advanced scholarly framework … focused on race inequality and the law.”

“Anyone familiar with CRT knows that its core tenets are being taught to children in many of America’s K–12 schools—and taught as if those tenets were facts,” Burns asserted.

He went on to note that CRT had become so widespread within teacher training by 2018, a four-volume set called Critical Race Theory in Education had compiled 82 scholarly articles on how to apply CRT to education.

Burns added:

In September 2021, WITF Live ran an article by Gabriela Martinez asserting that, “it [CRT] isn’t being taught in Pennsylvania.” And yet the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s “Racial and Ethnic Identity” webpage has a recommended reading list that is overflowing with works by CRT scholars… And in case that still leaves any doubt that this ideology is being disseminated in Pennsylvania schools, the webpage also has a link to “vetted resources for addressing race, racism, and systemic inequality in the classroom” that include lesson plans, activities, videos and reflection exercises.

Thus, the woke lie: Critical Race Theory isn’t being taught in schools, you right-wing conspiracy nuts. So don’t even think about banning it!

6) Diversity is Our Strength

“The diversity of humanity is our greatest strength,” declared Mr. Wu Hongbo, Under-Secretary General of the United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs at a recent Global Forum on Migration and Development. “Where ethnic or religious groups live side by side in harmony, diversity can spur creativity, learning and innovation.”

This is the constant refrain from the supporters of the corrosive Diversity, Equity and Inclusion movement, from the political establishment to the military to human resources departments and boardrooms all across America: that variety of skin color and sexual orientation helps groups and organizations think outside the box by bringing a wider range of viewpoints to the table. Having “black” or “queer” or “differently-abled” perspectives, whatever those mean, purportedly spurs creative, innovative solutions to issues. No one ever cites an example of how, say, a specifically “non-binary” or “Latinx” angle solved a corporate problem, much less a military one, but the insistent claim nevertheless is that this approach is inherently superior to seeking solutions from a roomful of cisgender white males.

See, for example, this September 2022 speech by Air Force Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost at the Air and Space Forces Association’s 2022 Air, Space and Cyber Conference, in which she declared that diversity and an “inclusive force” are a “strategic imperative” for the U.S. military. In fact, Van Ovost stressed that it’s not enough for the U.S. alone to have a diverse military; we must also set an example for our allies to prioritize diversity as well. She doesn’t admit this, but that’s because, as National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in a White House press briefing last month, the Biden administration is committed to the spread of “LGBTQ+ rights” as “a core part of our foreign policy.” So, pushing diversity is not truthfully about innovation and strength; it’s about spreading the cultural Marxist gender ideology.

The false assumption in the bumper-sticker slogan “Diversity is Our Strength” is that there is such a thing as a “black” or “queer” or “differently-abled” perspective. Anti-racist racist Ibram X. Kendi and conservative economist Thomas Sowell are both black; do they share a single “black” perspective? Do they have the same “lived experience”? Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (Democrat) and former National Intelligence Director Ric Grenell (Republican) are both homosexual; do they share a “queer” perspective? To assume that they do is collectivist thinking, not individualist. It is identity politics, and identity politics is by definition divisive. Divisiveness by definition weakens, not strengthens.

Rhetorical question: does anyone think Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and the Iranian mullahs are making diversity in their own military forces a “strategic imperative,” and promoting it abroad “a core part” of their international agenda?

The woke notion that diversity of skin color or sexual preference translates into strength has never been embraced by any culture or society in the history of mankind. Strength does not come from one entity atomized into many individuals whose differences are amplified, but from many individuals united in focus and aims. E pluribus unum, not plures ex uno.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with diversity of skin color, sexual orientation, or worldviews per se. But let’s not pretend that the virtue-signaling, totemic slogan “Diversity is Our Strength” has any validity in the real world. When diversity is prioritized over quality, skill, or talent purely for the sake of fulfilling quotas of racial or sexual orientation, then the team’s mission is compromised. When the mission is winning a war, as with our military, enforcing “equity” could be catastrophic.

As Christopher Bedford put it at The Federalist, “those who preach the gospel of diversity, be it multiculturalism, critical race theory, or any other novel heresy, don’t care about what unifies us. Often, they resent it and instead actively promote what makes us different.” The push for diversity did not stem from a sincere belief that a multiplicity of skin tones is empowering. It grew out of the radical Left’s hatred of 20^th century America’s unparalleled prosperity and power. It was spawned out of their malevolent aim to subvert American exceptionalism and dismantle the system that stands in the way of their collectivist utopia. In other words, “Diversity is Our Strength” is just another woke lie.

Stay tuned for more woke lies.

Originally published at Culture Warrior