Colorado Democrats are doubling down on teaching critical race theory as the fight over the toxic ideology escalates in school districts across the country.

Arvada State Sen. Rachel Zenzinger backed teaching critical race theory to children in comments reported by Axios.

Zenzinger, Chair of the State Senate Education Committee, said she supported teaching children history from a critical race theory perspective.

The other side: Democratic state Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, the education committee chair and a history teacher, says the issue is overblown and being driven by national politics. She backs teaching the material to children.

 

“We have used critical race theory as this lens on how you view history and we’ve been doing it for years — in my mind it’s not new,” she told Axios. “It’s appropriate — we should be more inclusive and teach from this perspective.”

Just last week NBC News reported “virtually all school districts insist they are not teaching critical race theory.”

As Zenzinger’s comments indicate, nothing could be further from the truth.

Broadly speaking critical race theory grew out of critical theory and traditional Marxist views on economic class divisions.

Critical theory, Marxist-inspired movement in social and political philosophy originally associated with the work of the Frankfurt School. Drawing particularly on the thought of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, critical theorists maintain that a primary goal of philosophy is to understand and to help overcome the social structures through which people are dominated and oppressed.

However, instead of economic class, critical race theory focuses on race and assumes that all social and legal institutions within the United States are rigged against “minoritized” groups.

CRT teaches that members of a “minoritized” racial group are victims of a system that is rigged against them. Those born into “privileged” races are inherently exploiters of minorities.

Democrats like Zenzinger defend it as a “lens for understanding vague buzzwords such as ‘systemic racism’ and ‘racial equity.'”

The theory holds racial divisions are set in stone such that no individual can ever be overcome their status as a member of the oppressed or opressor group.

Chair of the Colorado Republican Party Kristi Burton Brown blasted the idea children should be indoctrinated with the ideology.

“Parents don’t want their children to sit in school and be told that by virtue of things they cannot help, their race, their ethnicity, they are either the oppressed or the oppressor,” Brown said while substituting for Dan Caplis on KHOW last week.

“None of their choices matter. None of their character matters. Nothing they choose to do in their behavior can change the fact, according to critical race theory, that they are either an oppressed or an oppressor.”

By contrast, Democrats like Zenzinger seem to be under the illusion critical race theory is really just about recognizing the legacy of racism in America.

In reality, critical race theory goes much further.

The theory rejects core tenets of the American, classically liberal, Judeo-Christian value system according to two leading academic proponents of the theory.

“Critical Race Theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and the neutral principles of constitutional law” (Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, p. 3).

Critical race theory also explicitly rejects the core message of Martin Luther King, that Americans could one day judge individuals based on the content of their character and not the color of their skin.

In other words, critical race theory has one message for “minoritized” groups; you are screwed, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Regardless of anyone’s background, what a discouraging and terrible message for children.

Zenzinger’s support for critical race theory is all the more baffling when one looks at the polling.

Recently conducted surveys show extremely soft support for teaching critical race theory, with just 15% of Independents and 19% of all voters holding a positive view of the theory.

If the reaction from concerned parents in Loudon County Virginia is any indication, we suspect that Zenzinger is about to get an earful from her constituents.