Elizabeth Palley: When States Outlaw [Teaching] Critical Race Theory, They Outlaw Training Social Workers

I went in to this with an open mind. Because I, of course, am skeptical of any such government interference with university education. (Not K-12 so much--that's more heavily-regulated, and I don't understand it.) 

   But, of course, no one is "outlawing" CRT. Much less the teaching thereof. Which is different. What FL laws are trying to ban is indoctrination--which, make no mistake about it, has become extremely common inside--and outside--universities. No one thinks teaching about CRT should be--or could be--banned. The idea is to prevent people from having to endure what are, in effect, political indoctrination sessions as a condition of their employment or education. And a big part of the problem is that CRT and related leftist tales are being represented as fact, not opinion/theory/speculation. The left rules academia, and CRT and (trans)gender ideology are the twin flagship insanities/inanities of the left. Thus they've taken over everything and are--as are all progressive dogmas--protected from criticism by the shrieking Reavers of "cancel culture." 

   At any rate, I went into the essay with a reasonably open mind, somehow having thought it might be about the dangers of government interference in such things. 

   Wrong.

   In fact, the essay basically makes the case against CRT. The author argues that social work and social work training are impossible without CRT. Which is preposterous. To quote:

What does learning about race and identity have to do with providing mental health care, addiction treatment, and other vitally needed services? According to the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), the national governing body that accredits social work programs, everything.
The CSWE explicitly requires that all bachelors and masters social work programs teach students to “understand the forms and mechanisms of oppression and discrimination and recognize the extent to which a culture’s structures and values may oppress, marginalize, alienate, or create privilege and power.”

It is simply not possible that social work cannot be done except by learning a radical, highly-idiosyncratic, irrationalist, pseudoscientific theory about "structural oppression," "privilege" and "power." Wikipedia says that social work long predates these concepts--which were generated round about last Tuesday in the weakest regions of the humanities and social sciences. Palley's essay is an exemplar of the problem: it shows that these idiosyncratic, far-left ideas have become so dominant on the academic left that they are now seen almost as axioms. We are told that it is impossible to teach about slavery without teaching CRT--even that it is impossible to teach  about racism at all!--or even about American history without it! Amazing! CRT wasn't even fabulated until the mid-1970s. So before about the bicentennial of the nation, there was no American history, no history of slavery, no one had ever noticed racism...and there was no social work.

   This is basically why it is reasonable to bad CRT from things like K-12, general education curricula, "training"s required for employment, and the like--it's become a religion, and is taught as some impossible combination of science and faith: science in that it's been proven, faith in that it cannot be questioned. 

[Addendum: Oh, and: even if FL-style constraints on teaching CRT, gender ideology, etc. pass, I myself will insist that they be revisited asap. But, for right now, we need to stop the bleeding.]