THEY CAN’T GET THE STORY STRAIGHT: When it comes to the controversy over Critical Race Theory, progressives have been making two contradictory arguments, neither of which are correct.

The first argument is that CRT merely describes historical examples of racism in the American legal system, and therefore should be uncontroversial except for those who want to censor discussion of the history of racism in the US.

The second argument is that CRT is not taught in public schools.

These arguments contradict each other, because public schools obviously do teach about the history of racism in the US, so if that’s all CRT is, it is indeed taught in public schools.

All this is certainly nothing new to Instapundit readers, but it is rather rare to see both arguments made within paragraphs of each other in the same article, as in this Washington Post piece:

For what it’s worth, I noted discriminatory federal housing and mortgage policy in an article I wrote in 1994, before it was cool to note that the federal government was complicit in American racism, and no one has ever accused me of being a Critical Race Theorist…

And by the way, I recently gave a talk at the University of Chicago about Critical Race Theory and the reasons it’s problematic. And I meant actual CRT, that is both taught in law schools and other academic programs and is having influence on grade school education, not the stylized, inaccurate versions that have become fodder in political debate. You can watch it here.