Why Does Joe Biden Want Schools to Teach That America Is Systemically Racist?
Few people outside academia had ever heard of critical race theory before President Donald Trump banned the teaching of this “malign ideology” to federal employees. Now you can barely make it a week without reading some headline about this philosophy. Joe Biden rescinded President Trump’s executive order on his first afternoon in the Oval Office. Now he wants to pay schools to teach ideas from the New York Times’ 1619 Project and from critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi.
On April 19, the Department of Education announced that officials are setting aside $5.3 million in taxpayer money for K-12 schools to teach that America is systemically racist.
Specifically, the Department of Education wants to teach values being promoted by the 1619 Project, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and Ibram X. Kendi. The 1619 Project says the United States was founded not in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence—but 157 years earlier, when the first African slaves arrived. The National Museum of African American History and Culture says valuing things such as “the nuclear family,” “self-reliance” and “objective, rational linear thinking” is a manifestation of “white culture.” And Kendi says America needs a Department of Antiracism with the power to abolish any law at any level of government deemed insufficiently “antiracist.”
According to the Department of Education, these steps are necessary to advance “racial equity” and better support “underserved communities.” Yet Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and three dozen other Republicans wrote a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona noting that this “is a time to strengthen the teaching of civics and American history in our schools,” not a time to “double down on divisive, radical, and historically dubious buzzwords and propaganda” like the 1619 Project.
Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson maintains the website Criticalrace.org, which features a list of more than 300 colleges and universities promoting critical race theory. And the Biden administration wants to spread Critical Race Theory to America’s K-12 schools. This neo-Marxist philosophy is quickly becoming institutional orthodoxy in the United States. So, it is vital for all Americans to understand what critical race theory is and where it comes from.
Marxism was built on the theory of class conflict. Karl Marx believed that the only way to end poverty was for the working class to overthrow the capitalist class in a violent revolution. But Marxism only became popular in feudal societies like Russia and China, where the people were poor and desperate enough to risk everything in a people’s revolution. In free-market societies like the United States, people could escape poverty through education, hard work and good citizenship. So the theory of class conflict never took root in the U.S. like it did in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Rather than give up on their dream for a socialist society, Marxist scholars in the U.S. substituted race for class and sought to create a revolutionary coalition of ethnic minorities against a white majority. In 1989, Kimberlé Crenshaw organized a retreat titled New Developments in Critical Race Theory that effectively created a new kind of communism where race conflict replaced class conflict in the quest to overthrow free-market capitalism and replace it with socialism.
This is why Kendi says, “In order to truly be antiracist, you also have to truly be anti-capitalist.” His ideology is not a way to overthrow racism; it is a way to overthrow capitalism. “An equity-based form of government would mean the end not only of private property, but also of individual rights, equality under the law, federalism, and freedom of speech,” wrote Christopher Rufo in “Critical Race Theory: What It Is and How to Fight It.” “These would be replaced by race-based redistribution of wealth, group-based rights, active discrimination, and omnipotent bureaucratic authority. Historically, the accusation of ‘anti-Americanism’ has been overused. But in this case, it’s not a matter of interpretation—critical race theory prescribes a revolutionary program that would overturn the principles of the Declaration [of Independence] and destroy the remaining structure of the Constitution.”
It was the original intent of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin to have an image of the Anglo-Saxon kings Hengist and Horsa on one side of the Great Seal of the United States and an image of Moses and the Israelites following a pillar of fire out of Egypt on the other side. They recognized the similarities between Anglo-Saxon common law and the laws of ancient Israel, and they based the U.S. Constitution on these commonalities in an effort to realize the words engraved on the Liberty Bell: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10).
Contrary to what many leftists claim, it was failure to apply the principles contained in America’s founding documents that enabled slavery to exist in the U.S. And it was the language of the Declaration of Independence and the legal structures of the Constitution that empowered Congress to emancipate slaves and make them full U.S. citizens!
“Liberals in academia and in the judiciary have long fought legal battles to undermine the U.S. Constitution,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in his article “The Real Agenda Behind Black Lives Matter.” “The truth is that America’s Constitution has given more freedom to more people than any other government charter in history! It was the system this document built that allowed the United States to become one of the first societies in history to completely abolish slavery. The U.S. Constitution is a noble document that has inspired and enabled so many to attain accomplishments that any other system anywhere else in the world would have denied them!”
Yet today, critical race theorists are trying to destroy the Constitution so they can replace it with a new system based on the “redistribution of wealth” and “omnipotent bureaucratic authority.” These radicals believe that if they can convince millions of Americans that their nation’s governing structures are systemically racist, they can create a revolutionary coalition of the dispossessed with the power to conquer the nation. Yet both history and Bible prophecy show that their efforts to create a revolutionary coalition will only end in civil war.
During the height of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the late Herbert W. Armstrong wrote from a unique perspective—neither white nor black, Republican nor Democrat, but based on the eternal truths of the Bible. Mr. Armstrong taught the way to true peace and correctly identified the problems plaguing race relations. Yet he also understood what the Bible prophesied for the near future.
He wrote in the October 1963 Plain Truth, “Make no mistake! This is no light matter to pass over casually! Race war is coming! Racial tensions, passions and hatreds are being deliberately stirred by organized planning. It will explode into mass violence that will stagger the imagination! It will be whipped into an accelerating crescendo until human blood runs like rivers!”
His warning highlighted the fact that racial violence in America is not happening because of an innate hatred between races. It is being stirred up by radical politicians, many of whom are trying to scare people into voting for them. In the 1960s, this tactic spiraled out of control as hundreds of people took to the streets to riot. And it is about to spiral out of control again, only in a much bigger way.
A sobering prophecy in Isaiah 1:7 shows that end-time Israel (the United States and Britain) will be cursed with race problems as a result of its rebellion against God’s law: “Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.” This is a terrifying passage about non-Israelites rioting in the cities.
A related prophecy in Ezekiel 5:12 reveals that one third of the population of America and Britain will die from the pestilence, famine and violence that will result from civil war. That is 10 times more than died in the devastating civil war unleashed by Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution. (Request our free book Ezekiel: The End-Time Prophet for more explanation of this prophecy.)
The coming violence in America’s cities is punishment, but it is punishment with a purpose.
God will use this violence to show us the result of sin and turning away from Him to our own ways of thinking. He will use it to lead us to Him (Ezekiel 12:17-20). God blessed Abraham for his obedience to His law, but his descendants failed to follow his example. Only after people learn this lesson will God bless America—and all nations—with peace, joy and prosperity.
To learn more about how prophecies from Isaiah, Hosea, Ezekiel, Revelation and other biblical books apply to America today, please read “Communism in America Today,” by Gerald Flurry.