Critical Race Theory Investigator Christopher Rufo: ‘This Is How the Media Lies’

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Dr. Susan Berry

Writer and filmmaker Christopher Rufo took to Twitter Sunday to expose “five flat-out lies” told by writers at the Washington Post as the leftist media ramp up defense of Critical Race Theory (CRT), its latest darling ideology.

Citing an interview with Rufo, Post writers Laura Meckler and Josh Dawsey defined CRT as simply another academic concept currently being debated:

Critical race theory holds that racism is systemic in the United States, not just a collection of individuals prejudices … Progressives see racial disparities in education, policing and economics as a result of racism. Conservatives say analyzing these issues through a racial lens is, in and of itself, racist. Where one side sees a reckoning with America’s past and present sins, another sees a misguided effort to teach children to hate America.

Rufo asserted the Post’s definition of CRT is “Lie #1”:

“The Washington Post presents critical race theory as a benign academic concept, obscuring the divisive nature of the ideology and refusing to address the huge amount of evidence on abusive CRT programs in K-12 classrooms,” he tweeted.

Rufo referred to the Post’s definition of CRT as “deeply misleading.”

The narrative that CRT is simply another “academic concept” is actually akin to the left’s euphemistic narrative on abortion as “women’s health care,” i.e., that having an abortion is no different than having a mammogram or having a cavity filled.

In the case of abortion, the left totally dismisses the existence of the life of an unborn baby, and in the case of CRT, as Rufo said, the Post writers skip over the fact that CRT is a “neo-Marxist ideology that promotes extreme concepts such as “spirit-murder,” “anti-capitalism,” “all white people are racist,” “abolish the white race,” and the “decolonization” of American society.

Rufo noted that despite having presented the Post with “more than a dozen reports about the abusive practices of critical race theory in public schools,” these were all ignored.

In fact, if one looks to some of the newly enriched firms hired by woke school districts to peddle CRT in public schools, the ideology is readily apparent.

Recently, for example, Cumberland-North Yarmouth, Maine, woke school superintendent Jeff Porter denied his district was teaching CRT, which NBC News defined as “the academic study of racism’s pervasive impact.”

Porter’s school district, however, hired Community Change Inc., a Boston-based company that self-describes on Twitter as “a non-profit that challenges systemic racism with a special focus on white people.”

“Can’t dismantle white supremacy without dismantling capitalism,” CCI states, as it openly touts it takes on “the white problem.”

Porter’s district “Equity Leadership Steering Committee” sent a statement out to the community that asserted:

We echo the words of the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota: “In a culture that continually reinforces white supremacy, justice can only be achieved when we confront and repair the anti-blackness woven through every aspect of society—in our homes, schools, workplaces, communities, places of worship, and government.”

…

We are continuing to partner with Community Change Inc. to guide us on this journey. We are actively learning that the supposed truths we’ve been socialized to believe about blackness are violent and untrue. We will work to assess our curriculum, educate our community within and outside of our school campus, dismantle the anti-blackness all of us have internalized by living in a society built on white supremacy, and provide tools to interrupt anti-black racism.

Leftist media cannot manage a smear, it appears, without relying upon a tie to former President Donald Trump.

“Lie #2,” Rufo stated, is what amounts to the Post’s invention of “the timeline of events surrounding my involvement in President Trump’s executive order on critical race theory in the federal government.”

The Post’s version:

President Donald Trump was watching Fox News one evening last summer when a young conservative from Seattle [Rufo] appeared with an alarming warning, and a call to action.

…

The reaction to Rufo’s appearance that evening on Fox News was swift. The next day, Trump demanded action and, Rufo was soon in the White House for a meeting. Two days later, his budget chief issued a memo laying the groundwork for the federal government to cancel all diversity trainings. An executive order followed.

“The Washington Post’s account is false,” Rufo stated flatly, noting he appeared on Fox News on September 1, the memo was released September 4, and the executive order issued September 22.

“I didn’t visit the White House until October 30th,” he stated.

In “Lie #3,” Rufo noted the Post “falsifies a direct quotation.”

“In March, he wrote on Twitter that his goal was to conflate any number of topics into a new bucket called critical race theory,” the Post authors wrote, adding:

Rufo said in an interview that he understands why his opponents often point to this tweet, but said that the approach described is “so obvious.”

“I never said it was ‘so obvious’ that I wanted to ‘conflate any number of topics into a new bucket called critical race theory,’” he asserted, noting he directly rejected that interpretation in his phone interview with the Post’s Meckler.

“I challenge the Post to release the audio recording of my interview in its entirety,” he stated:

The Post also denied the Treasury Department ever made the assertion during a diversity seminar that all white people are racist, but Rufo, in “Lie #4,” presented the documents that indicate the claim is false.

The Associated Press also reported in September, in the wake of Trump’s executive order expanding the ban on the use of federal funds for certain diversity training:

The new order took issue with the Treasury Department for recently holding a seminar that promoted arguments that “virtually all White people, regardless of how ‘woke’ they are, contribute to racism” and training materials from Argonne National Laboratories, a federal entity in suburban Chicago, that included language that racism “is interwoven into every fabric of America.”

“To say that all white people contribute to racism and that white identity is inherently linked to white supremacy is to say that all white people are racist,” Rufo asserted.

The Post also made the claim that Rufo’s report about a Cupertino “power and privilege” training at an elementary school was false:

Jerry Liu, president of the Cupertino Union School Board, said the program was canceled after parents raised concerns.

“The lesson provided to the 3rd-grade students was not age-appropriate and not part of the district’s curriculum,” Liu said in an email. “Classroom instruction with these materials never went forward.”

“I have hard evidence from a parent and the school’s own principal, who confirms that the training did occur,” Rufo asserted, citing the Post’s “Lie #5.” He stated he reported for City Journal at the time the “power and privilege” training did occur and, following protests from parents, “the principal agreed to suspend future lessons.”

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