By Craig Fahle

Americans spend a lot of time thinking about the concept of the rule of law. Our discussions about protests, violence, drugs, immigration and just about every other contentious issue typically center on the notion that people in the U.S. must abide by the law. Yet there is one area in which that dedication to the rule of law has a lot of wiggle room: our tax system. The late Senator Russell Long of Louisiana summed up the debate on taxes rather cleverly when he said “A tax loophole is something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform.''  

Arguments about how much people should be taxed, what kinds of income should be taxed, and whether tax cuts “trickle down” to the average person have dominated our political debate since before the American Revolution. Nobody likes paying taxes. Yet everyone likely realizes that taxes are the backbone of a civil society.   

The question is, what to do when you don’t have enough tax revenue coming in to fund the things that make that civil society? 

In their annual report for 2021, The American Society of Civil Engineers found that the 10-year infrastructure investment gap between what we spend, and what we actually need to maintain our systems now stands at $2.6 trillion. That’s a lot of money. With the concept of raising tax rates pretty much dead, where does the money come from?  Here’s a concept … allow the Internal Revenue Service to do its job and collect the money that the U.S. Government is owed. This will take people and resources to accomplish.  

Naturally, the idea of investing more money into IRS enforcement and personnel doesn’t sit well with the anti-tax/small government conservatives. It also doesn’t thrill the wealthy or the corporations, who have found ways in recent years to pay virtually nothing in taxes, especially when compared to the revenue and profits they are generating. Finding ways to minimize taxes, or in some cases evade them, is seen almost as a game by many. They know the IRS is understaffed, and a typical 1040 doesn’t get the scrutiny and full analysis that it likely deserves. The current head of the IRS estimates that the country is losing about $1trillion per year due to lax enforcement. This financial bleed must stop. 

On the issue of gun violence, conservatives often make the argument that the U.S. doesn’t need any new gun laws, it simply needs to enforce the laws that are on the books. If they are intellectually honest, they would apply the same logic to our tax laws and fund the IRS to the level that makes them effective.  

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By Charles Dervarics

It’s hard to think of a policy idea with less public enthusiasm than giving the Internal Revenue Service more money to beef up tax enforcement. Like telling your kids to eat their vegetables or take out the trash, it’s a plea more likely to produce the dreaded stink eye than a hearty endorsement.

But maybe such conventional wisdom is wrong.

The issue of IRS tax enforcement was a flashpoint in President Biden’s plan for more federal spending. Advocates say it could help pay for a $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan and other new spending by cracking down on wealthy Americans who don’t pay what they consider to be a fair share of their income in taxes, although bi-partisan negotiators ultimately cut a proposal to use better tax enforcement from the infrastructure bill making its way through the Senate before the August recess.

The idea behind better enforcement is not to conduct more audits but to help close the “tax gap,” or the amount of federal taxes owed but not paid. For most Americans, it’s easy for the government to track their income because they receive W-2 forms every year. But many of the nation’s wealthiest earn their incomes through other means not routinely collected by the IRS.

In a recent investigation, ProPublica found that the 25 wealthiest Americans paid only 3.4% of their income in taxes over a five-year period. By comparison, the average American paid a much higher rate—14%--of their income in taxes. The current IRS Commissioner, Chuck Rettig, says the government is not collecting about $1 trillion of federal taxes owed each year.

To address the problem, the administration would fund technology upgrades and give the IRS access to more income information. Biden also would increase staffing to reverse recent declines that occurred despite greater complexity in the U.S. tax code. The White House has said the provisions could yield at least $700 billion in new revenue over the next decade, enough to pay for several new government initiatives.

But the plan has met strong opposition from congressional Republicans who favor smaller government and have a deep distrust of the collection agency. For critics such as Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform president, the IRS is often a political agency that undermines conservative groups. During the Obama administration, the agency acknowledged it targeted groups for extra scrutiny if they used words such as “tea party” and “patriot,” and an acting IRS chief resigned as a result. 

“It’s wrong at every level,” Norquist said of the new IRS plan.

Although Republicans have beaten back attempts to add IRS provisions to the infrastructure bill, many Democrats are still looking to insert the plan into one of its new spending initiatives. Democrats also got a boost recently when three former IRS senior leaders–all serving Republican presidents—spoke out in favor of Biden’s plan.

In a Politico column, Charles Rossotti (Clinton and G.W. Bush administrations), Fred Forman (G.W. Bush administration) and Fred Goldberg (G.H.W. Bush administration) all endorsed the idea of more scrutiny for the richest taxpayers.

“The IRS expansion was based on a smart idea, which could also be good politics and serve the interests of both parties: Not more audits, but better technology and income tracking to catch wealthy cheaters,” the former leaders wrote.

They said one critical element of Biden’s plan is that banks and other financial institutions would have to report total inflows and total outflows from certain accounts, giving the IRS more information via 1099 forms on the earnings of wealthy Americans. This move, they noted, “will help taxpayers file more accurate returns and will enable the IRS to better determine where to look for scofflaws.” More IRS funding also may improve services for ordinary taxpayers, the three argued. 

For now on this topic, however, the ball remains on Congress’ court with no signs of bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill anytime soon.

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By Stephen Macaulay

I recently had the misfortune of calling an airline about a ticket. I had the “elite” number, meaning, so I supposed, that I would get quicker service. The digital system told me that I had the opportunity to leave my number and get a call back without “losing my place in line.”

When was the call projected to hit my phone? Three hours later. Fortunately, I was able to figure out how to get my question answered online.

Apparently, the Internal Revenue Service, which has lost staff (which makes it like almost every organization, be it a restaurant or an appliance manufacturing firm), has long phone wait times.

It is one thing to have to wait to find out about a trip to a pleasant place. It is entirely something else to have to call the IRS, which is best thought of in the context of calling an endodontist. Yes, you may have to do it, but you don’t like it.

So if the IRS is going to get more funding, shouldn’t it go toward adding phone service?  Certainly, billionaires and corporations are not going to be calling an 800 number to get tax questions answered. But regular folks will.

The Biden plan called for the hiring of 87,000 new IRS workers.

But it seemed that the objective was to hire, as they are colloquially called, “’Revenuers.’”

When they show up, it isn’t good for you. And odds are, you are not a billionaire.

One of the arguments that is raised vis-à-vis de facto legitimacy when it comes to the wealthy not paying in a manner that the 99% does is that the wealthy are the ones who actually invest their monies in ways that creates jobs. Warren Buffett may pay a lower rate than his secretary, but Warren Buffett creates more jobs than his secretary.

What doesn’t get the sort of attention that it should is that the tax code is so convoluted that those who can afford to hire Theseus-like tax experts to allow them to escape paying what they “should.”

Why not reform the tax code so that it is so transparent that regular folks won’t have to make phone calls and the wealthy won’t have the out of hiring the smart people who will allow them to dodge tax responsibility?

To be sure, that would be a heavy lift. And it would not happen quickly.

But let’s think about this for a moment. Hiring more people to chase down people and corporations that are making sophisticated swerves is to simply continue the existing system which is clearly deficient if it allows the underpayment of taxes to the extent that it does.

The Biden administration had projected that there could be as much as $700-billion captured over a decade.

An analogy: Almost every kitchen has two implements: a colander and a sieve.

When you have boiled pasta and need to drain the water, you pour it through a colander. The holes are large enough to let the water go through and the pasta to stay put. When you are sifting sugar, you use a sieve. The fine grains of the sugar go through while the lumps stay put.

Apparently, the existing system is like using a colander to sift sugar. How does that work out? … $70-billion a year?

So why not fix the tools? Why not make it easier for the regular taxpayer as well as for the one who would otherwise dodge: If the procedures are sufficiently transparent, then accountability will be fairly straightforward.

Let’s not be naïve. No one likes to pay taxes. The funny thing is that while no one, not even the rich, likes driving on a road rife with potholes the only way to fix the roads is through funds that are acquired only through taxes.

Does the IRS need more funding? Probably. When cryptocurrency takes hold of a bigger part of private wealth, things are going to get even trickier. In effect, the IRS is going to need a quantum computer, but they’ve got an old Dell running Windows 95.

Funding or not, the system needs to be simplified. The system needs to be fixed.

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By Craig Fahle

Last week, 56 Democrats serving in the Texas legislature bolted Austin for Washington, denying a quorum necessary to pass a package of bills aimed at changing voting rules in the state. It is at best a way to stall the bills and refocus public attention onto voter suppression efforts around the country, and to prod Democrats in the US Senate to eliminate the filibuster and pass meaningful updates to the voting rights act. It is likely doomed to fail, but the fight is just, and necessary.  

Targeted changes that potentially affect a specific group of voters used to be subject to federal judicial review but has pretty much been wiped out by the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder and its 2021 decision in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee. Both decisions negated major parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Republican controlled legislatures around the country have been nibbling at the edges of these bills for years … now, it is a feeding frenzy.  

Why now? Because Trump’s “big lie” about the election somehow being stolen gave these legislatures the excuse they needed to pass bills they didn’t have the guts to try before. Despite any evidence of widespread fraud, and a jaw-droppingly poor performance in trying to adjudicate the “big lie”, legislators can now with a straight face claim that people’s faith in our electoral system is at risk. 

“Election integrity” is the cover Republicans have been looking for to go back to the days of voter repression. It is not a coincidence that dozens of states have passed or are considering bills that place new restrictions on voting, including reducing access to mail in and absentee ballots, reduction in the number of polling places, reducing drop box locations, reducing early voting hours and locations, and tougher ID requirements. In many states, they have the votes to do it, and the courts have decided that they have no role in ensuring that voting is fair and equitable.   

What is the proper response from Democrats? How does one fight for something as fundamental as the right to vote without impediments that are rooted in a bad faith argument? Leaving the state to prevent a quorum seems extreme, but this is exactly what their voters want them to do: Fight the good fight as hard as they can, and as long as they can. Denying a quorum is the state legislative equivalent of a hail Mary pass: there is a slim chance of success, but it shows that you won’t back down. Unlike the minority in the U.S. Senate, who can gum up the works behind the allegedly sacred cloak of the filibuster, state legislators are limited in the tools they possess. 

Republicans and Democrats alike have used this tactic recently. It rarely works. Symbolically, though, it matters. Democratic voters have argued for years that their party needs to fight as hard, and as dirty as they believe the Republicans do for the things they want. If Democrats give up now, they run the risk of alienating their own, which will do more to crush them in the midterms than anything the Republicans and their sudden feigned interest in “voter integrity” ever could.  

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By Todd Lassa

Democratic state lawmakers must return to Texas from Washington, D.C., sooner or later and face Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s threat to have them arrested. Abbott promises to extend special sessions of the Texas legislature in order to force a vote. 

The Democrats’ swift departure to avoid a quorum for a special session of the bi-cameral state legislature drew added attention to the U.S. Congress’ For the People Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which will require Democrats in the US Senate to end the legislative filibuster too late to help pass them. 

Like Georgia’s new voting laws, the Texas proposals – SB 1 in the Senate and HB 3 in the House of Representatives – are high-profile for acceding to former President Trump’s untrue claim that Electoral College votes in these states were “stolen” from him in last November’s election. But the states also have encouragement from the eight-year-old Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which essentially removed Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and this year’s decision in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, which guts its Section 2.

According to The Texas Tribune, Republican state lawmakers see SB1 and HB3 as “starting points” for a new electoral bill to which the 67 (of 200) Democratic state representatives could contribute, if only they would come home. 

The two bills’ key provisions:

•Require a monthly review of the state’s massive voter rolls (Texas’ total population is 29 million) to identify possible non-citizens and prevent them from voting.

•Ban drive-through voting (which Harris County offered in 2020).

•Impose new regulations for early voting hours.

•Ban 24-hour voting (another Harris County initiative). 

•HB 3 requires a maximum election day window of 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., while SB1 proposes 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.

•Both bills add an extra hour of required early voting hours for local elections, for a nine-hour window.

•Lowers the population threshold for counties required to provide at least 12 hours early voting. Currently, counties with population of at least 100,000 are required to provide early voting; SB1 would require the early voting standard for counties of at least 30,000 population, while HR3 would require the standard for counties of at least 55,000.

•Both bills would add one weekend hour of voting, to require six hours of weekend voting. The state Senate and House have retreated from proposed restrictions on Sunday voting, known as “souls to the polls,” at Black-majority churches.

•A ban on unsolicited distribution of mail-in ballots – the House version would make it a state felony subject to a jail term, and both HB3 and S1 would prohibit state funds to “facilitate” unsolicited distribution of applications by third parties. These proposals are a direct response to Harris County’s attempt to “proactively” send mail-in apps to all of its 2.4 million registered voters last year, the Tribune reports.

•New ID rules that would require voters to provide their driver’s license numbers, or if they don’t have one, social security numbers, on ballot applications, with matching information on the return envelopes for their ballots. 

•New correction process for ballots normally rejected because of a missing signature or an endorsement a local review board determines does not belong to the voter who returned the ballot (this appears to be a concession to Democrats, the Tribunenotes).

•Monthly citizenship checks of the state’s voter rolls to identify non-citizens, requiring the Texas secretary of state’s office to compare the statewide voter registration list with data from the Department of Public Safety to pinpoint individuals who told the department they were not citizens when they obtained or renewed their driver’s license or ID card.

•The “Crystal Mason provision” in HB 3 would require judges to inform potential voters if a conviction prohibits an individual from voting and would require proof beyond a provisional ballot for an attempt to cast an illegal vote to count as a crime. Crystal Mason was on supervised release for a federal conviction when she cast a provisional ballot in 2016 and said she did not know her conviction made her ineligible to vote. This is another apparent concession to Democrats.

•Language to strengthen the autonomy of partisan poll watchers by granting “free movement” within a polling place, except for being present at a voting station when a voter is filling out his or her ballot. Both HB3 and S1 would make it a criminal offense to obstruct their view or distance the observer “in manner that would make observation not reasonably effective.”

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By Bryan Williams

Legislators walking out of their duty is no new thing. It has happened before in Oregon (where it was the GOP who walked out in order to stymy legislative work), and Republicans in the California legislature have pulled similar stunts earlier in this century. Is it effective? No. It’s a stunt that doesn’t make any positive point. As the old saying goes, “90% of completing anything is just showing up.”

When I worked in the California Assembly earlier in this century, the GOP still had sway within state government. Republicans in the California Senate blocked passage of a budget for nearly three months. During that time, already underpaid legislative staff (me included) didn’t get paid, along with millions of others across the state, all to make a point about not raising taxes. But in California, taxes will be raised one way or another, “whether you like it or not,” as our current governor, Gavin Newsom, has said about another issue (gay marriage) that a minority in California opposed.

Republican proponents of the Texas legislation note that the net effect of the state law that Democrats are trying to kill would extend voting hours, not constrict them. As the center column outlines, an extra hour of early voting would expand the poll window to nine hours, an extra hour of voting would be added to weekends, and the early voting minimum of 12 hours would be required for counties with fewer than 100,000 population; to either 55,000 (state House bill) or to counties with just 30,000 population (state Senate bill). 

Even as Democrats walk out on this, they retain their salaries and perks. What’s so hard about voting yes or no on something? There is more to be said about going on record and voting up or down on a bill than by walking out.

Since their exodus nearly two decades ago, California Republicans have become a much smaller, less effective presence in the state legislature than Democrats in Texas, with only 19 seats out of 80 in the Assembly (they had 32 in 2010) and a pathetic nine of 40 seats in the state Senate. Texas Democrats are in much-better shape, with 13 of its 31state senators and 67 – the members who flew off to Washington – of 150 in the bi-cameral legislature’s House of Representatives. 

If I were a Texas Democrat, I would vote “yes” for legislation that would expand voting hours and clarify when and where the polls are open. Just as with the much-maligned Georgia law, the Texas proposals seem common sense to me. We should also expect state and local governments to cull their ballot rolls regularly. In 2021, it shouldn’t be hard to figure out if someone has tried to vote more than once, or for that matter hasn’t voted since 1994 – who may be dead voters, or maybe just recalcitrant Texas Democrats.

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Comments by affirmative debaters in the July 15 Braver Angels national debate:

“It does a disservice to the depth of experiences [by the nation’s numerous groups and tribes] that racism is not one one of the things that has to be overcome.”

--Luke Nathan Phillips

“One of the things I’d have to agree with is America is changing.” …

[Question: Who is America’s first black president?]

“Technically, Barack Obama’s mother was not black. (Thus) he was white. … But one drop of blood in the South [before the Civil Rights Act] protected [white] property rights.”

--Russell Ballew

“I absolutely believe you can love your country and love your heritage and believe America is racist, just as you can love your family if they’re racist. There can be no reasonable argument that America was not a racist nation to at least the late 1960s. … The burden of proof is on everybody who believes things are different now.”

--Silas Kulkarni

“Is America a racist nation? My answer is ‘yes,’ and our story is not finished. … But unfortunately, race continues to be part of legislation [restrictive voting bills in Georgia, Texas, etc.] … The legacy of racism, while it is less overt than in the past, continues to be real … Indifference to the plight of others contributes to racial indifference [rather than] racial justice. …”

--Bruce MacKenzie

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By Todd Lassa

If there is a more provocative debate topic than “Resolved: America is a racist nation,” it has yet to be written down. When liberal and conservative members of Braver Angels tackled the resolution in a national debate Thursday evening, they generally dug to the core of the issue, citing both American and personal history, with far less concentration than usual on current events. There was much more nuance than one might expect from this resolution.

Braver Angels debates are not held to declare a “winner” or to convince liberals or conservatives to switch sides. In fact, while the “affirmative” side of the resolution, that America is a racist nation, is generally associated with a left-side point of view, the first debater to speak on this side was Luke Nathan Phillips, a self-described conservative and Braver Angels staffer. As the first affirmative debater, he “urged fellow conservatives to take [the issue] more seriously.”

“Over the course of our history, it has [become] an even bigger deal than people make of it,” Phillips said.

Conversely, the debate’s third speaker in the negative, arguing that America is not a racist nation, was another Braver Angel staff member, Monica Guzman, who usually identifies as a liberal. 

“To me this is not just about a story, this is about a headline,” Guzman said. When I look at the resolution, (asking) ‘Is America a racist nation?’ I’m looking at a headline.”

While Guzman has “deep concerns about how seriously people are taking the racism that has (permeated) American society,” she believes the goal in raising the issue is progress against such racism.

In the end, affirmative and negative Braver Angels debaters almost rendered the resolution moot. Both sides seem to agree that the people of the United States have by a plurality always strived to reach for the ideals that our Founding Fathers wrote into the Constitution, even if most of those Founding Fathers owned enslaved men and women. They agree that the American experiment is a work-in-progress, and affirmatives and negatives alike believe we have come a long way since the Civil War, since Reconstruction and resulting Jim Crow, and since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

If you are at all interested in this debate topic – and why wouldn’t you be? – please watch the debate on Braver Angels’ YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtlZ4t6aS4rAJoPyYD9DGLA

Meanwhile, read the left column for a few select comments by affirmative debaters, and the right column for select comments by negative debaters on the subject of racism in America.

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Comments by negative debaters in the July 15 Braver Angels national debate:

“A lot of this discussion is a semantic one … [Citing a Pew Charitable Foundation study that 8% of Americans of all races and ethnicities are ‘bigots’:] “Lots of people are bigots because a lot of people are jerks and jackasses. But that doesn’t mean America is a racist nation.”

--Prof. Wilfred Reilly, Kentucky State University, and author, Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War

“The country has changed greatly. My kids have changed the country … [Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s former pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, who made many incendiary speeches about American racism] “spoke as if America is static. Racism is still present in this country, and every country in the world. I am a proud conservative, but I agree with Presidents Obama and Clinton when they say there is nothing wrong about America that cannot be cured by what’s right with America.”

--Steve Saltwick

“If we define ourselves by the worst thing we have done, we reduce our ability to rise above them. … America as a racist nation can be part of our story of redemption. … If America is a racist nation is argued as a headline, I’m afraid it will do us in.”

--Monica Guzman

“America is much more than can be contained in a single word. … Just because we are pluralistic does not mean we cannot be united. … America, my friend, cannot be a racist nation, because the natural condition of human equality can never be racist.”

--Christian Watson, Spokesman, Color Us United

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Whether or not you plan to participate in Braver Angels’ July 15 national debate on race in America, we want to know your opinions on this most contentious of issues. 

To register your opinion, please email editors@thehustings.news, or go to thehustings.substack.com and leave a comment. Please include your name and your home town, or region of a state. 

We will only post comments that adhere to our standards of civil discourse. Comments will be edited for length and clarity and will be published in this column and in the right column on Friday, July 16.

Scroll down using the vertical scrollbar on the far right of the page to read David Amaya's comments on critical race theory in the left column.

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(Please click on the date above for today's News & Notes.)

Race in America is the subject of constant argument in the U.S., and this year, it has touched nearly every political issue under discussion, from Thomas Jefferson’s slave ownership to removal of Confederate leaders’ statues, from the economy and the environment to policing and of course, voting rights. This Thursday, July 15, Braver Angels will hold its next national coliseum debate on the bold resolution: “America is a racist nation?” beginning 8 p.m. Eastern time via Zoom.

The debate is free and open to the public, but you must register in advance at: https://braverangels.org/event/coliseum-debate-national-debate-racism-in-america/

As always, audience members are encouraged to participate as speakers and in the Q&A sessions. 

The Hustings will feature a preview of arguments, in the left and right columns prior to the debate. Come to this page Wednesday to prepare for the arguments. On Friday, we will post your comments on the debate in our left and right columns. [UPDATE: THE PREVIEW SCHEDULED AHEAD OF THURSDAY'S DEBATE HAS BEEN CANCELLED, BUT POST-DEBATE READERS'/AUDIENCE COMMENTS STILL WILL BE POSTED ON FRIDAY. PLEASE SEE BELOW FOR INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO SUBMIT COMMENTS.]

Teaching critical race theory is currently the most contentious issue within the subject of race in America. Scroll down this page to read the post on CRT, with Nic Woods’ explanation of what it is in the center column, and David Iwinski’s conservative opinion of it in the right column and David Amaya’s liberal opinion in the left column.

To submit your comments, email us at editors@thehustings.news or post a comment at thehustings.substack.com.

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For more information on Braver Angels, go to braver angels.org

Whether or not you plan to participate in Braver Angels’ July 15 national debate on race in America, we want to know your opinions on this most contentious of issues. 

To register your opinion, please email editors@thehustings.news, or go to thehustings.substack.com and leave a comment. Please include your name and your home town, or region of a state. 

We will only post comments that adhere to our standards of civil discourse. Comments will be edited for length and clarity and will be published in this column and in the left column on Friday, July 16.

Scroll down using the vertical scrollbar on the far right of the page to read David Iwinski's comments on critical race theory in the right column.

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By Chase Wheaton

The United States was first founded on a number of different belief systems. These included the belief that people should have the freedom to practice any religion they’d like, the belief that people should have the freedom to criticize and speak out against their own government without fear of punishment, and sadly, yes, the belief that Black people were meant to be enslaved simply because of the color of their skin. That is an objective truth, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either not knowledgeable of American history or is deliberately trying to portray our nation as something it isn’t. Oddly enough, right now there are efforts being led by conservative legislators across the country to do just that by passing laws to ban teaching critical race theory (CRT) in K-12 schools.

These right-wing efforts to whitewash history books and the American education system more than it already is are unconscionable, and the legislators leading these efforts, as well as those in support of them, should be ashamed. Many of these legislators have made bogus claims that teaching CRT in K-12 schools is divisive and contentious, but I would instead argue that it’s their own white fragility and fear of being confronted with their privilege, that’s making them feel that way. 

In fact, there’s nothing divisive or contentious about CRT at all. CRT is simply an educational framework based on science and law that says that racism, and in turn, white supremacy, are woven into the fabric of America, and that Black Americans therefore continue to experience the effects of racism and white supremacy to this day. Again, I would consider this to be an objective truth. There are countless statistics that show the unfair treatment that Black Americans receive when it comes to finding equitable housing, jobs, health care, and education, and even more that show the clear racial bias present in the criminal justice system. But for some sad and hateful reason, instead of trying to pass legislation that would remove this bias from these different systems, or that would create a more equitable and just country for Black Americans, Republicans are focusing their efforts on this figurative “cleansing” of American history and the consistent gaslighting of Black Americans as they describe their experiences living in America. 

Furthermore, there are several layers of irony to this discussion that should not be lost on you. First, at the same time that Congress and President Biden passed, and signed into law, legislation marking Juneteenth as a federal holiday as a way to acknowledge that Black enslavement did not end in 1863, the conservative legislators behind these efforts are making it so that children in some states won’t even be able to learn that truth. Second, the fact that this group of legislators, who are trying to insert themselves into the American classroom and impose restrictions on those academic settings also claim to be the party for less government and regulation, is both astonishing and absurd at the same time. Finally, the fact that this is yet another example of white people telling Black people what they are and are not experiencing in their day-to-day lives, is sadly but almost quintessentially American.

This general delusion and departure from reality is unfortunately just what I’ve come to expect from the modern Republican party. This is the same group of politicians who, to this day, claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, without any proof or evidence of the sort. The same group of politicians who nominated a racist proponent of the ‘Birther Movement’ to the Oval Office. And most despicably, the same group of politicians who say that All Lives Matter, but not that Black Lives Matter. Whether they like it or not, and whether they’ll say so or not, racism is embedded into the foundation of our country and is still very much prevalent in our nation today. But unless schools are able to teach children about this, and empower them with the knowledge to dismantle the racist systems in place, how can we hope to progress past this appalling reality?

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By Nic Woods

… (M)odern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.

If anything in 2021 fits George Orwell’s description above, it is “critical race theory.” 

To the right, based on recent media – both mainstream and social – discussions, critical race theory is 

1.) critical of America 

2.) centering racism, and 

3.) only a theory.

The left understand it no better. It’s something that should be seriously considered – how does America move forward as a nation without grappling with its past?

To many African Americans, both left and right, it’s a school of legal scholarship that academics have been studying, without incident, for about 40 years. The American Bar Association definition is a huge paragraph, but the gist is that it’s “a practice of interrogating the role of race and racism in society that has spread to other fields of scholarship from law” that “recognizes racism is not a bygone relic of the past” but “acknowledges the legacy of slavery, segregation, and the imposition of second-class citizenship” on people of color “continues to permeate the social fabric of the nation.”  

It was not diversity or inclusion training. It is not in the history, government, or social studies lanes, particularly not K-12, as it’s too complex for a sixth grader or a high school senior to understand. It’s also not about religion, although the recent Southern Baptist Convention spent an inordinate amount of time debating it, inviting a schism among themselves in the process. 

As a result, the recent explosion of the term in those circles is … rather confusing.   

But isn’t that the point?

Facts, and definitions, about CRT don’t matter. If it did, it would be defined whenever mentioned so there’s no confusion of what is being discussed. But that definition never comes.

It’s really not about facts – it’s just another contest of status, power, and wealth in an era rife with such contests. It’s really about angst that the people who have told the story for generations won’t get to exclusively tell the story anymore. And the story, viewed through other lenses that have existed all along, will go to places where they don’t want to go.

Thus, the opposing calls for “objective history.” 

This is more of a chimera, because outside of “The American Civil War was fought between 1861 and 1865,” there is not much we “know” about the American Civil War and its aftermath that isn’t from someone’s point of view. If you consider a POV, you leap from objective facts to history and, without that history, the current culture war makes no sense. 

That CRT and “The Lost Cause” – an ideology that advocates the belief that the cause of the Confederacy during the Civil War was heroic, and not just centered on slavery (despite the documentation from Confederate leaders) means so much right now that a vocal minority claim to be willing to start another Civil War over it means there is nothing at all objective about history.   

What people seem to fear about critical race theory is that history would be rewritten to exclude everything that “makes America great.” But the history we learned in school was never objective. We don’t learn how Manifest Destiny looks to the Native American. We don’t get the Mexican-American POV of the Treaty of Hidalgo. That all matters, and the exclusion of that to be “objective” does everyone a disservice. 

Whatever your feelings about The New York Times’ 1619 Project, that America for Blacks starts in 1619 when enslaved people from Africa were first brought to the colonies is probably more accurate and objective than that America was “discovered” when settlers from Britain landed at Plymouth Rock or Jamestown – the Portuguese, Spanish, French and Dutch who preceded the British might have something to say about that. 

And what most of us “learned” about the Reconstruction period of U.S. history is told from the POV of the U.S. South – so, in a way, they lost the battles but won the narrative of how the country views the war – and because of groups like the Daughters of the Confederacy, a substantial number of Americans believe that the enslaved enjoyed their bondage and what a shame it was that they were forced to leave their masters for lives unknown.

Maybe, the full terror – as some have expressed in public – is that their 10-year-old is going to come home and call them a racist. If that’s the fear, maybe spend less time railing at a four-decade-old legal strategy and start reassessing your life and priorities. 

Just because a concept effectively gets your blood boiling, doesn’t mean it should.

Note: Read the complete bibliography for Nic Woods’ column at thehustings.substack.com

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Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news. For the bibliography on Nic Woods’ column, go to thehustings.substack.com

By David Iwinski

A stew that has been simmering for over 45 years and has, so it seems, all of a sudden boiled over is the liberal cause célèbre of critical race theory, or CRT. As a man in his late 50s, this acronym confuses me immediately since I always think of CRT as Cathode Ray Tube, the field name for a basic computer monitor on our desk before flatscreen and plasma became ubiquitous. Truth be told, however, I have some familiarity with the concept since critical theory was all the rage when I was in law school back at the University of Pittsburgh in 1984. 

Fast-forward to present day and we not only have the acronyms and buzzwords flying across social media, but now high school and even middle school curricula are being pressured to include teachings on critical race theory to youngsters. For most of the uninitiated, the biggest question and, it seems, the hardest one to get an answer for is: What is critical race theory? 

Even a basic Internet search trying to get a fundamental understanding is somewhat akin to trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. The definitions are long, complex, loaded with jargon and virtually never, ever have any sense of clarity or finality. The basic essence seems to be that race infuses everything without fail and that no human action is done not only without considerations of race but not without active suppression of one race and promotion of another. 

In an attempt to get a baseline grasp of the current understanding of CRT, last weekend I watched eight hours of recent on-line debates between supporters of CRT and those trying to stop the infiltration of this dogma into our schools. It was interesting and reminded me a lot of college debates arguing the application of communism and socialism. Whenever a person supporting democratic and capitalistic ideals would point out the failure of virtually every society organized around communist and socialist principles, which often resulted in mass deaths by government action or starvation of the populace (not to mention a suppression of freedom and terrible economic activity), the classic rejoinder was, “Oh, that wasn’t real communism, it was communism corrupted by someone who didn’t really understand it or practice it properly.” 

Uh huh, sure.

Whenever someone who is against CRT in these debates would bring up the damage that could be done to society by positing that everything is based on race, racism and discrimination and would cite examples about this would not build a more cohesive and fair society, the opposing side would immediately say, “Oh, that really isn’t critical race theory, what you are talking about is someone’s distorted application.” And there would then follow a long dissertation filled with jargon trying to essentially say that anything negative associated with CRT couldn’t be true.

I consider myself a fairly bright individual, but I couldn’t find anyone making a single case for how it would somehow improve the quality of our society and, more importantly, how something this complex and convoluted could possibly be taught to grade school and middle school students. Where are the genius communicators who will be able to distill the essence of this into young and malleable minds? Where are the textbooks age-appropriate that can explain it, because I would honestly love to read one so I can understand it.  

Unfortunately, we often see this kind of hyper-complicated deflection occurring on the left whenever digging into the details would reveal some uncomfortable truths. We all remember when Nancy Pelosi said of the Affordable Care Act, in 2010: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it." That didn’t turn out so well since many of the touted “truths” of Obamacare turned out to be complete falsehoods. 

Maybe the folks on the left think we will be fine to subject our children and schools to the doctrines of critical race theory so we can only later find out what it’s all about. 

What I think they are going to find is that while middle-America and conservatives will tolerate a lot of baloney, experimenting on our children with radical, undocumented and nearly impossible-to-understand racial theories that may essentially teach them that they are flawed aggressors from the very beginning without redemption will not be warmly embraced or tolerated.

Teaching our youth the truth about slavery and the effect it had on people and our society -- absolutely an essential to a clear understanding of American and global history. Teaching our youth that if they are white that they are born racist and are destined to make all their decisions based on racism and that is infused into every aspect of their life -- not a good idea.

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