You probably never heard of Thomas W. Smith of Boca Raton, Florida. I never did until I discovered that Smith, who operates a hedge fund, is at the center of a network of groups misrepresenting and battling against Critical Race Theory in an effort to rally grassroots support for their rightwing agenda.
According to federal tax submissions, Thomas W. Smith is the sole contributor to the Thomas W. Smith Foundation, which claims to support “free markets.” In 2019, he donated $18,397,811 to the Foundation. The Foundation has more than $24 million in assets and is operated by James Piereson, a senior fellow at the rightwing Manhattan Institute where Smith is a trustee. The Manhattan Institute, one of the leaders in the anti-CRT campaign, has received over $4 million from the Smith Foundation to do its dirty work.
Overall, between 2017 and 2019, the Smith Foundation donated almost $13 million to organizations attacking Critical Race Theory. These include the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), $425,000, the American Enterprise Institute, $1.1 million, the Alexander Hamilton Institute (AHI) with ties to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, $150,000, the Daily Caller Foundation, another group with ties to Tucker Carlson, $100,000, Turning Point, a conservative youth group, $400,000, The Federalist, a conservative publication, $150,000, Heterodox Academy, academics promoting “viewpoint diversity on college campuses,” $250,000, Judicial Watch, which describes CRT as a “totalitarian assault on children,” $150,000, The Federalist Society, $720,000, and The American Spectator magazine $210,000. An article in The American Spectator described Critical Race Theory as a mechanism for "extremist indoctrination in America’s schools" with roots in Marxism.
For the sake of clarity, Critical Race Theory was originally a legal approach to understanding the lingering impact of race and racism on the American legal system. In the last decades it has been adopted by social scientists and historians as a tool for explaining how and why racial differences in income, education, law enforcement and life expectancy continue because of systemic racism. Critical Race Theorists argue that racism and racial inequality persist because discriminatory practices and attitudes are deeply imbedded in and reinforced by American economic and political institutions. For example, the Electoral College, while not racist in design, serves to give disproportionate power to smaller largely white states. Wyoming, with a population of fewer than 600,000 people, 92.5% white, has the same number of Senators as California with a population of over 40 million, a little over a third of whom are non-Hispanic whites. On Long Island, New York, local school funding and 124 mini-school districts contribute to segregated schools and unequal educational outcomes. School choice and gifted classes in New York City have made it possible for affluent, mainly white, families to "gentrify" former minority communities while allowing their children to attend non-minority schools.
Claims made by the rightwing anti-CRT crowd border on the crazy. Scott Baldwin (Rep), an Indiana State Senator introduced legislation to ban Critical Race Theory and related concepts in K-12 education. Baldwin’s name, incidentally, is on a membership list of the Oath Keepers, a far-right anti-government militia being investigated for its role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the United States Capitol building in Washington DC. Baldwin claims he only made a small donation to the group before it was involved in these actions.
Baldwin’s bill includes a provision that teachers “remain impartial in teaching curricular materials or conducting educational activities.” During a committee hearing, Baldwin acknowledged that this provision means teachers must be impartial when teaching topics like the European holocaust when Nazi Germany systematically exterminated 12 million people, including 6 million Jews. Baldwin does not believe teachers should be permitted to express their views on Nazism or any other "ism" in the classroom. When pressed by a local newspaper, Baldwin later stated that he objected to “Nazism, Marxism and fascism,” but did not agree to any revisions in the bill.
The Baldwin bill mirrors others being promoted in state legislatures by the rightwing Heritage Foundation the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and the Goldwater Institute of Arizona. Teachers would be subject to censure and schools and school districts to civil lawsuits if a teacher expressed a prohibited opinion in class. The bills also require post "all classroom curricula online” so parents and extremists groups could review for possible CRT implications.
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