We all know that misinformation is a major issue. We had people literally storm the capital based on a conspiracy that the election was stolen. At the start of the pandemic, we had COVID deniers, and now, we have anti-vaxxers who can’t do a simple risk assessment of the situation. What often flies under the radar is the massive people of influence who share bits and pieces of misinformation to their large audiences on a daily basis, and this runs rampant within the anti-CRT movement.
We all move towards incentives, and people from all political ideologies do this whether they realize it or not. The anti-CRT figureheads have definitely found their audience, and it’s how they pay their bills. How do you keep your audience engaged? Well, that’s simple, you play into their confirmation bias. If you give someone a piece of information that agrees with their beliefs, they’re more likely to engage with it and share it. The issue is that they’re far less likely to take a moment of critical reflection to ask themselves, “Is this true?”
If you read my previous piece ‘Should Social Media Platforms Protect Dumb People From Misinformation?’, you know that I believe in personal responsibility. I’m against the idea that we have to forever babyproof everything because people won’t take two seconds to fact-check something or ask themselves if it’s true. With that said, the people pandering to their audience need to take some responsibility as well and recognize what they’re doing.
Now, before we go any further, I’d like to acknowledge the people who are probably reading this and calling me a “woke cuck”. Anyone who knows me or follows my content knows that I’ve had many conversations on my podcast with authors like John McWhorter about his book Woke Racism and Bonnie Kerrigan Snyder about her book Undoctrinate. I recognize the issues with extreme wokeness and cancel culture, but I also lack respect for people who are bad actors that merely fan the flames of the CRT moral panic just to grow their status and bank account.
In the last couple days, two of the larger voices in the anti-CRT movement have shared some very questionable things on Twitter. Christopher Rufo and James Lindsay know who their audience is, and they play into their biases like a fiddle. While Rufo shared something that would need some more evidence (even though it sounds extremely far-fetched), James Lindsay shared something that he clearly didn’t read or is purposely trying to frame as something harmful for children.
At the time of writing this, James has over 236k followers, and Rufo has just over 242k followers. I’ve been in the social media space for a while, and a cop-out people with large followings like to use is that it’s not their fault if their followers believe something they say or share. I’m on the fence about this because I believe followers have some personal responsibility, but I do take issue when these are the same people who are against social media censorship. You should either be able to police yourself or be open to the idea of the platform doing it for you, but you can’t have it both ways.
So, what was shared? First, we’ll start with James Lindsay
Where should we begin?
First, we have 0 evidence that this is for first graders. While it might be, I’m a father of a 12-year-old, I can’t remember anything this complex being sent home when he was in first grade.
Next, James has framed this as an assignment given to first graders, when it’s clearly given to the parents.
Most importantly, if you look over this piece of paper, how can you frame it as anything other than James fanning the flames of a moral panic? Again, I’ve had plenty of conversations with people about some really ridiculous race-based stuff going on in schools, but this doesn’t seem to fall into that category.
Ask yourself, how many of the people liking, sharing, and retweeting this actually read it and critically assessed it? My guess is that there aren’t many.
James might as well have shared a Sex Ed worksheet about how to talk to your kids about sex to get the abstinent religious folk to clutch their pearls. For as anti-censorship these people can be, it should make you take pause at how afraid they are to have conversations with their children.
You can argue about sexism, racism, and transphobia all day long. But when you want to debate the evolutionary psychology of group identity, status, and conflict, you’re no longer allowed to be taken seriously in this conversation. And as far as I can see on this worksheet, it’s not impressing an ideology; it’s having a conversation. There’s a massive difference.
This tweet was then shared by Lauren Chen to her 279.4k followers:
Again, where on this paper can you infer what she is stating? I see no evidence stating that any race is good or bad.
Is this misinformation? I’d say it falls into that category. At best, both James and Lauren lack reading comprehension skills, and if that’s the case, people should take them even less seriously.
As an academic, James could have recognized his error and silently bowed out of the conversation and let it just get lost in the barrage of tweets he sends on a daily basis. If he were a respectable person, he’d recognize his error or at least strengthen his argument, but that’s rare of anyone during these polarized times. Rather than doing either of those things, he decided to retweet someone who called him out for his willful ignorance:
The person he’s replying to was kind of sassy, but rather than proving his point, James decides to troll instead. This is a common tactic of James where he uses troll responses as a shield to avoid any honest debate. I actually heard him explain this in a recent podcast episode as well, and I don’t see how anyone can view this as anything other than pandering to his audience or potentially grifting.
That anti-CRT crowd would have you believe that school is an 8-hour day across the country of teachers explaining to children why white people are terrible. There are definitely some awful teachers out there who have done some of these things, but when you choose to follow the anti-CRT panderers, you get stuck in a bubble that can inflate the problem. This is done through cherry-picked stories, and some of them are highly questionable, such as the one Chris Rufo just shared.
The video above has over 1 million views, 10k likes, and over 4k retweets. This video is of a mom saying her six-year-old came home to say she was told in a history lesson that she’s evil because she’s white. This is yet another example of engaging and sharing something without questioning it in the slightest.
So, let’s start with the best-case scenario that this woman is telling the truth.
Has anyone asked for evidence of this? Have any other children corroborated this story? Is it possible that the child misunderstood something? Is it possible that the child is misunderstood something because of the conversations going on in the home? Is it possible that the child is not telling the truth?
For anyone who thinks it’s awful to ask these questions of the child’s experience, I’d ask those same people if they believe every person who claims racism and transphobia. If we’re going to question stories, we don’t get to pick and choose based on “our side”.
But finally, we need to ask if this even happened. If you’ve watched any schoolboard meetings our City Council meetings, you’ve seen how many delusional statements have been said as truths. It was just a few months ago we had people trying to stick spoons on their skin to “prove” that vaccines make you magnetic.
The reality is that we all want to hold news outlets to a high standard of truth and reporting, but we’re completely overlooking the thousands of influencers who play fast and loose with what they share without an ounce of skepticism. This is the type of misinformation we have to be worried about because it’s happening more frequently and there are 0 repercussions for it.
In that same interview I mentioned earlier with James Lindsay, he criticized Jonathan Rauch’s new book The Constitution of Knowledge, and it’s no wonder. Rauch discusses the firehose of misinformation that people like Trump spread, which made it impossible to fact-check everything. James Lindsay, Chris Rufo, and many other bad actors on both sides use this same strategy. They flood Twitter with whatever their audience wants to hear, and since they aren’t the President or anyone with real accountability, they get away with it far more often with little to no accountability.
I’ve been working on organizing all the books I’ve read, and I have multiple lists of books on becoming a better thinker. There are lists for education, social issues, critical thinking, self-deception, and biases. For the rest of the categories, click here.
I’m always open for a conversation and to be shown what I might be missing or where I may be wrong, so feel free to email me at TheRewiredSoul@gmail.com
Okay, so let's look at this. I saw James Lindsay's tweet, and immediately recognized the fact that the homework assignment was WITH a parent. While I can't say what school, or what grade, it came from, it's obvious what it is. Minus him naming the school, and grade - which aren't that relevant, and probably should've been skipped - it's still a kid's homework assignment. And, yes, it's a conversation. But one coming from a school, whereas it's the kind of conversation parents should have at home, without any school involvement. What happens to it once the conversation is had? Does the "drawing" or "list" of "group identities" then stay at home? Why are schools even involved in "group identities?" That, right there, is the problem with CRT being in the classroom.
As an aside, you saying "...how afraid they are to have conversations with their children" isn't much different, is it? Sounds rather anecdotal. Do you have proof that religious people are afraid?
I also believe you mischaracterized Lauren Chen's tweet. She only spoke about race - not one being "good" or "bad." It's progressive obsession with race, which is pretty much all CRT is. Stressing differences, rather than commonality, can cause resentment. Ever try to compare two kids, and praising one for something, but not the other? Check in with some siblings on that one.
Christopher Rufo's video is anecdotal. So are numerous stories, articles, biographies, and all kinds of other things we read. So what? There's no reason to interview other kids. You either believe this mother, or you don't. You either understand that her child said this, whether it was clear to her, or her own misunderstanding of what took place at school, or it's not. It's no different than the article in The Atlantic where Ndona Muboyayi relates what her son said to her about what he learned at school (‘The Narrative Is, “You Can’t Get Ahead”’- April 3, 2021). It's simply a parent relating what happened. Believe it, or don't. Pick and choose based on what you prefer to believe, like too many do.
You can look at all of this with skepticism, but after a time you hear enough of the same anecdotal stories, over and over, that continuing to believe they're all "misinformation" gets a little harder.