Critical Race Theory as Metaphysics

The balance of opposition to critical race theory in schools is not led by people who have an alternative comprehensive vision of education and schooling. It’s led primarily by people who, inchoately and inconsistently, believe in John Dewey’s vision for public schooling as an institution meant to mutually assimilate diverse children to each other, and to provide a civic and social touchstone. They want school to give their kids a few critical skills, extracurriculars to support the development of character, to prepare the brightest pupils for college, to give all students a basic familiarity with each other, and to inculcate broad allegiance to a loosely defined American civic creed.

But an allegiance to even a loosely defined American civic creed can only be the product of a broad consensus about the goodness of America itself, the basic terms of the American project of self-government, and the like. Political polarization is dissolving that consensus. Progressives, who have disproportionate representation in the culture-forming institutions of schools and mass media, have abandoned the broad center for their transformative agenda.