Nebraska Governor exposes racist nature of CRT

 Pete Rickets:

Chancellor Ronnie Green believes the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) is racist. Under his leadership, UNL recently released a plan to address “institutional racism” as part of its “Journey for Anti-Racism and Racial Equity.” From racially motivated hiring practices to divisive trainings, the plan would inject Critical Race Theory (CRT) into every corner of campus.

At the foundation of UNL’s plan are the writings of Ibram Kendi, who has openly called for discrimination on the basis of skin color. Kendi has written that “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.”

This plan is the product of ideologues—not thoughtful Nebraska academics. Needless to say, I could not be more disappointed in the Chancellor’s plan, and I completely disagree with the notion that UNL is a racist institution. UNL’s focus should be on educational excellence, not ideological indoctrination. At its core, the plan is legally questionable, intellectually flawed, and politically charged.

UNL’s approach not only pushes CRT, but also runs counter to the Nebraska State Constitution. Article I-30 expressly forbids racial discrimination in public education stating that “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of...public education.”
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UNL’s plan is also based on the flawed assumption that differences in outcomes among racial groups are the result of systemic racism and how people are treated based on skin color. The data, however, doesn’t support this conclusion. The University’s plan makes the claim that racism is “often structural and embedded into systems,” however, it does not spell out specific examples of what this looks like at UNL besides vaguely stating there are “different outcomes for different groups.” In reality, degree completion rates of White and Asian students at UNL are virtually identical. In fact, Asian students in Nebraska (on average) display the highest measure of college degree readiness of any racial group.

Additionally, there are factors other than “institutional racism” that help explain educational outcomes. For example, nationally, students of groups with high family income levels and low nonmarital birth rates tend to do better on measures of academic performance. In Nebraska, data shows students from higher income families are more likely to go to college than their peers from low-income families. Additionally, males from low-income White households in Nebraska are less likely to attend college than males from low-income Asian, Black, or Hispanic households. There are a variety of factors that influence educational outcomes, and it’s important to look closely at the data to understand the full story.

UNL is also presenting its plan as non-political, however, the plan fails its own test of diversity by presenting only one view of race relations in America. The chancellor’s resource list features the writings of Critical Race Theorists like Ibram Kendi and the New York Times’ 1619 Project, while excluding the scholarly work of conservative Black intellectuals like Glenn Loury, Shelby Steele, and Robert Woodson who strongly disagree with CRT. The University’s plan gives the impression that CRT has universal scholarly support, when it clearly does not. In fact, some respected academics, including John McWhorter, a linguist at Columbia University, have gone so far as to call CRT a new form of racism.
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I think Rickets gets it right.  I would also bet that sports teams at the university do not select students based on a disparate impact model.  They do not use "equity" to make sure Asians and small white guys make the team.  I suspect it is strictly a merit-based system which should be the model for the rest of the university.