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There’s always a rich wingnut behind it

Judd Legum follows the money in the Critical Race Theory brouhaha:

Critical Race Theory (CRT), once a little-known academic concept, is now at the center of the national political discussion. CRT is discussed incessantly on Fox News. It is featured in campaign advertisements. And legislation banning it is advancing in statehouses around the country. 

This didn’t happen on its own. Rather, there is a constellation of non-profit groups and media outlets that are systematically injecting CRT into our politics. In 2020, most people had never heard of CRT. In 2021, a chorus of voices on the right insists it is an existential threat to the country. 

A Popular Information investigation reveals that many of the entities behind the CRT panic share a common funding source: The Thomas W. Smith Foundation.

The Thomas W. Smith Foundation has no website and its namesake founder keeps a low public profile. Thomas W. Smith is based in Boca Raton, Florida, and founded a hedge fund called Prescott Investors in 1973. In 2008, the New York Times reported that The Thomas W. Smith Foundation was “dedicated to supporting free markets.”

More information about the foundation can be gleaned from its public tax filings, which are called 990-PFs. The Thomas W. Smith Foundation has more than $24 million in assets. The person who spends the most time working for the group is not Smith but James Piereson, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. According to the foundation’s 2019 990-PF, Piereson was paid $283,333 to work for The Thomas W. Smith Foundation for 25 hours per week.

Piereson was also paid $140,000 in 2019 as an independent contractor for the Manhattan Institute, where Thomas W. Smith is a trustee. While Thomas W. Smith avoids public comments, Piereson is prolific. And Piereson’s writings provide insight into what is motivating the foundation’s grants. 

The people and groups behind anti-CRT hysteria claim that there is a radical new theory being taught in schools that seeks to make white people hate themselves and define everyone exclusively by their race. None of this is true. But Piereson provides an insight into the underlying ideology that explains why so much effort is being put into perpetuating these myths.

Piereson has made clear that he opposes efforts to increase racial or economic equality, even if these efforts are financed by private charities. Piereson described his views in a 2019 op-ed in the Washington Examiner:

[C]haritable foundations have felt the great sustained pressure to “pay up” for alleged sins against the ideals of racial and economic equality. It started out as pressure from a few vocal activists banging on the doors of large foundations. It’s turned into a movement in which philanthropic leaders are falling over themselves to throw money at their critics in hopes of mollifying them…

In another column published in 2019 in the Wall Street Journal, Piereson objected to the Surdna Foundation spending money on “community-led efforts that target the root causes of economic and racial inequities” because its deceased founder John Emory Andrus was a capitalist and would not have approved. 

In a 2017 column, Piereson criticized liberal philanthropists for focusing on “climate change, income inequality, [and] immigrant rights,” describing these as “radical causes.” He stressed the need for “a counterbalance provided by right-leaning philanthropies.” 

Piereson also opposes classes dedicated to the study of women, Black people, or the LGBTQ community in universities, saying these topics lack “academic rigor.” 

In the 1960s, universities caved to the demands of radicals on campus by expanding academic departments to include women’s studies, black studies, and, more recently, “queer studies.” These programs are college mainstays, making up in ideological vigor what they lack in academic rigor.

He opposes efforts to diversify professors or students on college campuses saying “diversity-promotion efforts on campus actually increase resentment on the part of both white and minority students.” Piereson argued that “racial bigotry and violence against women” is not a big problem on college campuses. He says that concerns about these issues are “irrational.” 

How did CRT, a complex theory that explains how structural racism is embedded in the law, get redefined to represent corporate diversity trainings and high school classes on the history of slavery? The foundation funding much of the anti-CRT effort is run by a person who opposes all efforts to increase diversity at powerful institutions and laments the introduction of curriculum about the historical treatment of Black people. 

It’s hard to generate excitement around tired arguments opposing diversity and racial equality. It’s easier to advocate against CRT, a term that sounds scary but no one really understands. 

Legum has a lot more detail in his newsletter.

Of course some angry, rich, white, racist is behind all this. There always is. As for the Manhattan Institute which is doing his dirty work, here’s the guy in charge of the project:

It’s not like they’re trying to hide it.

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