Tom Horne is making a monstrous mistake on critical race theory

Kathy Hoffman should be able to soundly thump Tom Horne in the race for Arizona superintendent of public schools without painting him as a monster.

He’s not, at least as far as Trumpublicans go. He’s a calm, reasonable man who seems to truly believe that a campaign message of “stop critical race theory” is what’s best for public school students in the state, most of whom are minorities.

He’s wrong, of course. But he means well.

“My philosophy,” Horne said in a recent phone interview, “is that we’re all individuals, brothers and sisters under the skin. Race is irrelevant, we’re all entitled to be judged on our individuality, and race doesn’t matter for anything. Critical race theory teaches the opposite. It makes race preeminent, a preeminent quality.”

Bless his heart.

Race does factor into these debates

Broadly, critical race theory is nothing more than a way to take race out of a purely historical context and situate it in the present day. It’s a way to view historical events and their ongoing effects from a perspective that’s not centered exclusively around white men.

Specifically, Horne takes an admirable position in saying that “race is irrelevant,” but that’s just not true. Just ask anybody who got pulled over and asked to show their papers under Senate Bill 1070.

Horne, a Harvard-educated political veteran, must understand that.

Surely, he must look around and wonder why is it that Black people have been in the U.S. since the nation’s birth, but have only been elected to the White House once, the governor’s office twice and the Senate six times since Reconstruction? He must occasionally wonder why are the numbers even worse for Native Americans?

Certainly, race and racism in public policy, law enforcement, housing and education would have to factor, and if we examine the effects on the present of decisions made in the past, we should be able to disrupt the cycle, creating more opportunity for equality, which is Horne’s stated goal.

Horne is campaigning on a decade-old idea

It’s unbelievable that he’s still campaigning on an issue that he first raised more than a decade ago in a fight against ethnic studies in Tucson schools.

“The more I looked into it, the more I was shocked about what was going on,” Horne said. “I thought it was racist, because I believe in logic, anybody can be racist, it’s not the monopoly of whites.

“I found that they were anti-merit. … They push to stop having schools that admit by merit, that’s supposedly white oppression.”

Debate remains: Measure limiting school instruction about race is revived

Here’s hoping Horne is exposed to some different perspectives, because we know that test scores as a measure of academic achievement are slanted toward upper middle-class and wealthy kids, and that those kids are disproportionately likely to be white —because of generations of institutional racism!

Surely, Horne must recognize how divisive he’s being when he looks around to see that the people who support his anti-critical race theory stance are the same people screaming about a nearly 2-year-old election conspiracy theory. He would have to wonder why his opponents are the people who advocate for Black, Hispanic and Native schoolchildren —the kids who would stand to get a boost from critical race theory coursework.

Voters don't make these sorts of arguments

Horne quotes from “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction” to show his frustration with the issue.

“Unlike traditional civil rights,” Horne read, “which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory addresses the very foundation of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, enlightenment rationalism and neutral principles of constitutional law.

“Would you have any idea why they would be against ‘enlightenment rationalism’?”

No. I wouldn’t and neither would most voters because those words make no sense outside of academic circles … You know? Kinda like critical race theory? I digress.

(Enlightenment rationalism, by the way, values logic above all else, which can be helpful in decision-making, but it’s not the way many cultures operate or view the world. For example, if you tell a Black person that it’s irrational for them to get offended over being called racist slurs, you might be right, but that perspective completely misses the point.)

The passage that Horne quoted also makes the case that Martin Luther King advocated in the Dream speech, when he discussed the “fierce urgency of now.”

“This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.”

He thinks he's doing right, but it's dragging us back

Horne defended his position in part by saying that he attended the March on Washington.

“I wouldn’t argue with anything MLK said … his philosophy is very much my philosophy,” Horne said.

“My reading you that quote didn’t mean I was in favor of incrementalism, it means I was shocked that what they’re against is equality theory, legal reasoning, enlightenment rationalism and neutral principles of constitutional law.

“I think every one of those things is basic to the American ideals, and I think teaching kids to be against those things is poisonous. … I think they’re against neutral principles of constitutional law and equality theory because they want racial preferences, that’s my guess.”

I think he actually believes he’s doing what’s right for the nation to move forward, when in reality he’s dragging us back.

Hoffman should be able to beat Horne without painting him as a monster, because he’s doing a pretty good job of it, himself.

Reach Moore at gmoore@azcentral.com or 602-444-2236. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @SayingMoore.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Tom Horne uses critical race theory to drag us backward