Yesterday on ABC’s This Week, political commentator Karen Finney made the false and outrageous claim that racism is “everywhere” in America and compared the banning of the divisive Critical Race Theory (CRT) in public K-12 schools to the police brutality of Tyre Nichols’ arrest.
Finney’s attempt to paint the entire country with guilt by association for the actions of a few bad police officers was misguided and wrong. The overwhelming majority of police officers are good people who obey their oath to protect and defend. The few bad officers like the five involved in the killing of Nichols were promptly arrested and charged with murder.
“We know from the civil rights movement, you can’t just change law. You have to change hearts and minds, and anti-black racism is everywhere. We know that,” Finney said.
This is simply not true. Racism exists in our society, but it is not “everywhere”. In fact, it is much less pervasive now than it was even just a few decades ago.
Finney then made the false claim that police officers are taught to discriminate against black and brown people: “That is part of the training that these officers receive that black and brown equals danger. We see it. We have to acknowledge this comes at a time when the governor of Florida says no African American AP classes when we have demagoguery around Critical Race Theory.”
Finney’s comparison of the banning of CRT in schools to police brutality is ridiculous and offensive. CRT is a radical and divisive ideology that seeks to pit different racial and ethnic groups against each other. It is not a tool for understanding our nation’s history, but rather a tool for instilling hatred and division.
Leftists in the media like Finney see racism lurking around every corner when the truth is we’ve come a long way in the United States when it comes to race relations and discrimination. Instead of acknowledging that, they would rather seek to polarize the country along racial lines for ratings.
It is important that we recognize that racism still exists in our society, but also acknowledge that we have made significant progress when it comes to racial issues. It is also important to recognize that divisive ideologies like Critical Race Theory do more harm than good and should not be taught in K-12 schools.
