Those who are trying to inject critical race theory (CRT) in our schools are lying about a number of things, including what CRT consists of and the goals and motives of those opposing it.
With respect to the latter, the claim is made that opponents don't want the history of slavery taught to children; that they wish to keep them ignorant of the legacy of racism in American life more generally.
This is not just false, but offensively so. Those opposing CRT don't want to "erase" slavery from what's taught in American classrooms. To the contrary, any reasonable person would argue it should receive coverage commensurate with the important role it has played in our nation's history, from the failure to address it at the founding (despite the way it contradicted "all men are created equal") and the bloodiest war in our history fought to abolish it, up through Jim Crow and the civil rights movement.
The problem for CRT supporters is that they haven't bothered to notice that all of this already is taught in our schools, and has been for decades; that just as it would be impossible to find any influential opponent of CRT who opposes teaching about slavery, it would also be impossible to identify a textbook that is widely used in American history courses that fails to extensively cover it.
A challenge can thus be issued to those who claim to support CRT because of the dire need to educate American children about slavery: Identify a single lesson plan or textbook used in any public junior or senior high school history course that leaves the subject out (or Jim Crow, segregation and other manifestations of racism as well).
Alas, many of the students who arrive in my "American Experience" course fresh out of high school are indeed ignorant of many aspects of their country's past, but slavery and the ills that flowed from it are seldom among them.
The deceit on this score gets worse, however, because atop one falsehood (opponents of CRT want our children left ignorant of slavery) is placed another: that they want them left ignorant in order to uphold the system of white supremacy that CRT allegedly unveils.
Supporters of CRT simply can't resist resorting to the go-to play in the left-wing playbook - if you wrap every policy proposal in the (misleading) guise of opposing racism, then anyone who opposes what you are proposing must, by definition, be supporting racism, and can be easily tarred and discredited accordingly.
The claim that anyone who disagrees is a racist is used so often by the left because it is a handy means of snuffing out any disagreement. If you can dismiss critics as racists then you don't have to actually defend your positions from criticism.
The lies coming from CRT's supporters pile still higher when realizing that the primary opposition to CRT stems not from racism but the belief that it is itself profoundly racist.
That racism lies in CRT's foundational assumption that people should be defined by the color of their skin, that what we believe, our values, and life experiences and how we behave are but a consequence of pigmentation.
CRT thus rests upon the same core assumption which all forms of racism throughout time and place have been built and defended.
To teach children to see others primarily in terms of their race, to see race at work in all facets of life and as determinative of all outcomes is not to educate them about slavery and racism but to instill the kind of racism from which slavery and so many other historical horrors have always come.
This isn't educating about racism in order to overcome it; it is spreading its very essence.
Those supporting CRT thus manage to lie on several mutually reinforcing fronts - that slavery and its legacy aren't being taught in public schools (when they are), that those opposing CRT don't want such things taught (when they do), that opposition stems from racist intent (when the precise opposite is the case), and that what they are engaged in is combating racism (rather than promoting it).
Under the guise of educating children about racism they inject profoundly racist ideas into our schools, and then accuse those who point out the racism of being the racists.
It's a neat trick, but one that only thoroughly dishonest people would attempt to pull off.
Since it is difficult to envision a more sure way of increasing racism in American life than to systematically teach young people to define each other by race and see everything in racial terms, an admittedly cynical thought creeps in - that such increased racism wouldn't be an unfortunate, unintended consequence of CRT's spread, but precisely the point.
Anti-racism has now become the official ideology of the Democratic Party, and virtually all of its proposals are being justified in some way under that umbrella.
And when combating racism is your proclaimed rationale for existence, you'd better make sure there's a lot of it, both real and imaginary, to go around.
America isn't the racist land depicted by CRT, but it could become that if we allow CRT to become entrenched in our schools.
Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, Arkansas, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.