(Deroy Murdock, Headline USA) Far more than a mere slap in the face, Critical Race Theory is a brass-knuckled beat down of white and black Americans who bravely have battled slavery, Jim Crow, and other forms of anti-black racism.
Since Democrat-fueled, state-mandated segregation ended in 1964, even more white and black Americans have labored to advance the latter’s freedom, prosperity and life prospects.
CRT dismisses and defames these priceless efforts. And because it judges people solely on skin color, CRT epitomizes racial prejudice.
Thus, CRT has earned an icy, windswept spot atop the ash heap of history.
• In the 1850s, William Lloyd Garrison and Thomas Garett were among the white abolitionists who helped former slave Harriet Tubman guide 300-plus Southern blacks north to freedom via the Underground Railroad.
• Inspired, in part, by former slave Frederick Douglass’ moral case for abolition, Republican President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. The Union Army crushed the Confederacy and slayed slavery in 1865. Human cost: 364,511 Northern fatalities, predominantly white. Southern deaths: 260,000.
• In the mid-1930s, white impresario John Hammond promoted Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson and other black jazz greats among white audiences. Benny Goodman integrated his band when he hired pianist Teddy Wilson and vibraphonist Lionel Hampton, both black.
• Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ white co-owner, signed Jackie Robinson in April 1948 as Major League Baseball’s first black player. Rickey admired Robinson’s stoicism, which helped him endure the abuse of racists on and off the field. His calm, elegance, and athletic prowess turned foes into fans.
• Walter F. White, the NAACP’s black chief, was among those who persuaded white Democrat President Harry Truman to integrate the U.S. Armed Forces in July 1948.
• In 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, GOP-nominated Chief Justice Earl Warren and eight other white jurists endorsed black civil-rights attorney Thurgood Marshall’s argument that racially segregated schools were unconstitutional.
• The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other black civil-rights pioneers encouraged white senators Everett Dirksen, R-Ill., and Hubert Humphrey, D-Minn., to foil a filibuster by Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and other Democrat segregationists and pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Democrat President Lyndon Johnson signed it into law. Jews worked especially closely with King on this and other triumphs for equal justice under law.
• Coretta Scott King, Dr. King’s widow, peered over Republican President Ronald Wilson Reagan’s shoulder as he signed the MLK national holiday into law in 1983. Reagan also reauthorized the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for 25 years and made Colin Powell America’s first black national security advisor.
• Legendary white music executive Clive Davis made multi-millionaires of Miles Davis; Earth, Wind & Fire, Whitney Houston and numerous other black artists. They, in turn, made millions for his record labels. Worldwide, fans cheered.
• Early this millennium, Republican President G.W. Bush, appointed Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as America’s first two black secretaries of state, launched Washington, DC’s school-voucher program, and reauthorized the Voting Rights Act through 2031.
• President Donald J. Trump worked with the heads of Historically Black Colleges and Universities to secure a steady stream of federal aid for those campuses. He reauthorized and guaranteed $45 million in fresh funds for DC vouchers. President Trump worked with black activists to enact the First Step Act criminal justice reform measure and huddled with Sen. Tim Scott, R-SC, who is black, to revitalize 8,764 low-income Opportunity Zones, whose residents are 57% non-white, including 23% who are black.
Beyond these high-profile examples, tens of millions of unsung whites and blacks work, play, worship and live together—if not in pristine harmony then at least in sincere attempts to achieve that ideal.
These centuries of white–black cooperation confirm that CRT is a gargantuan, nauseating lie.
America’s rich, unfolding history of interracial collaboration for freedom, justice, and opportunity affirmatively answers the late Rodney King’s immortal question: “Can we all get along?”
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor, a contributing editor with National Review Online, and a senior fellow with the London Center for Policy Research. Bucknell University’s Michael Malarkey contributed research to this opinion piece.
