Letters

John Neely, in the December 2 edition [“They Should Know,” Letters], takes issue with another reader’s concerned comments about critical race theory being taught in our schools as though it is an unfounded straw man argument. Mr. Neely describes the social injustice that people of color are forced to endure; indeed, social enlightenment is warranted even though he insists that CRT is not part of our schools’ curriculum. He goes on to say that today’s students will not “wilt when exposed to troublesome truths.”

Mr. Neely invokes the memory of George Washington as one of our great Founding Fathers but can’t help himself, mentioning how flawed he was for being a slave owner, implying that it is never mentioned in our American history.

This is not secret information known just to a privileged few. Progressives like to pretend that slavery in the U.S. is strictly a western European construct, while ignoring its existence throughout the world for thousands of years. Black slaves were quite often sold by their own tribal leaders when they fell out of favor with the tribe.

Rather than celebrate the great advances that we have accomplished, progressives choose to dwell on what was simply the standard of the day, however immoral it was and is viewed by today’s standards.

Indeed, our great nation would not exist as it is today without the compromise of the 3/5 rule for slaves. Without it, our Constitution would never have been ratified by the Southern states whose economies relied on slavery.

Slavery is still alive and well around the world; organ harvesting is lucrative and common in China — yet where is the outrage? These are “troublesome truths” that progressives would rather ignore while admonishing those who resist the twisted logic of CRT.

Classics like “Huckleberry Finn” are now banned from some public school libraries, as is Dr. Seuss. The historically debunked New York Times 1619 Project is still sourced by some as an accurate accounting of our first settlers, so white people can apologize for the original sin of introducing slavery onto America’s shores.

One father, Andrew Gutman, this past April, was so disgusted with the teachings of Manhattan’s elite Brealey prep school that he accused them of trying to “brainwash” its students with “woke” ideology by “viewing every element of education, every aspect of history, and every facet of society through the lens of skin color and race.” His 1,700-word treatise listed 10 objections to the school’s teachings, before pulling his daughter from the school, denying them the $54,000 annual tuition.

Simultaneously, the headmaster of the prestigious Dalton School, Jim Best, resigned because outraged parents found the anti-racist curriculum there repulsive.

Mr. Neely claims this does not exist in our schools; how troublesome.

John Porta

Westhampton