Media top headlines August 3
In media news today, CNN's Jake Tapper defends Nancy Pelosi after Sen. Susan Collins knocks speaker for 'partisan' Jan. 6 committee, PBS' Yamiche Alcindor lobbies Biden to extend eviction moratorium, and the Washingtonian attempts to cover for DC Mayor Muriel Bowser's photo scandal
Somali-Dutch scholar and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali did not mince words regarding her feelings about critical race theory in an interview with Fox News, calling it a "nihilistic" practice that will teach children to "hate" one another.
Ali is concerned about America's trend toward "wokeness," which she said is all about stoking division.
"It divides us into people of different races and it says that these racial differences are irreconcilable and then divisions along gender, along transgender, along immigrants … It sees no reconciliation, no coming together unless the people that they describe as eternal victims, black people, people of color, women, transgender people, unless they unite to destroy and dismantle our existing institutions. It's a very nihilistic, zero-sum game. It's the worst philosophy I've ever come across," Ali said.
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One of those institutions that "wokeness" appears to be seeping into, Ali agreed, is American education with the push to teach CRT, a curriculum based on the idea that U.S. institutions are inherently racist.
"What CRT tells schoolchildren and teachers, educations, is that small children can only relate to one another based on their color and their gender and all of these other identity details that they have," Ali said. "So you have one set of children who will hate the other. Black children and children of color will hate White children because they'll associate them with oppression, and they'll see them as their oppressors."
"White children, on the other hand," Ali continued, "will hate America because they will feel that it’s the legacy of America that has saddled them, burdened them with this terrible history. Both sets of children will look at America and America's legacies and institutions and all that they have either with contempt or with hatred and anger or a combination of all."
The initiative, which has often been compared to the controversial 1619 Project, is at its core "nihilistic" and "self-destructive," Ali concluded.
But the media has taken hold of CRT, even to the point of shaming opponents and parents live on their programs. MSNBC anchor Joy Reid mocked and interrupted Manhattan Institute senior fellow and CRT foe Christopher Rufo last month throughout her widely panned interview of him, and on another MSNBC program, contributor Eddie Glaude, Jr., rolled his eyes at him.
The Intercept tweeted out a piece in June that highlighted the skin color of CRT opponents, arguing that it's "mostly white" parents who are confronting their school boards about the curriculum. The New Republic left no doubt as to its feelings on the subject with the recent headline, "Angry White Parents Are Once Again Winning the Battle for the Classroom." Critics pushed back on those claims in interviews with Fox News with proof that the battle against CRT is a diverse one.
Ali suggested that the press has jumped on the CRT bandwagon because they've "decided that what sells is divisiveness."
The activist was similarly concerned that CRT appears intended to blow up the nuclear family, which she said "just boils my blood."
"All the work that we’ve done to fix these programs … the family, the school, they want to bring all of this down," she said.
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To reverse CRT’s influence, Ali noted, is to expose it.
"We need to come together, not be driven apart by these crazy people," she said.
Fox News' Andrew Murray contributed to this report.