What the scandal reveals about wealth, power, and accountability.
The more I read about the latest Epstein file disclosures, the more disturbed and frankly ashamed I feel.
I’m not talking about the rumor mill. Some of what people are circulating online comes from FBI tip lines or discredited claims. That isn’t what I’m referring to.
What I’m talking about are the things that actually appear in the record: emails sent to or from Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, sworn testimony from victims given under penalty of perjury, and other evidence that investigators have said could support criminal cases, such as photographs, videos, and documentation of trafficking operations.
Reading about these details is deeply disturbing.
This isn’t about people having unconventional sex lives or engaging in consensual adult kink. Adults are free to live their lives however they choose. What the Epstein case reveals is something very different: the exploitation of young girls (some reportedly prepubescent or barely pubescent) by powerful people who treated them as disposable.
These were vulnerable teenagers manipulated, trafficked, and abused by individuals with enormous wealth and influence. And for years, the systems that were supposed to protect them largely failed. It forces an uncomfortable question: what happens when immense wealth and power operate without meaningful accountability? The Epstein scandal suggests that the answer is often ugly.
When people have the money, connections, and influence to shield themselves from consequences, the worst impulses can flourish. In that sense, Epstein was not a supernatural villain or some once-in-a-generation monster. He was something more troubling: a symptom of a system where wealth and power can insulate people from the laws and moral standards that govern everyone else.
In many ways, Epstein functioned like a high-end pimp by providing powerful clients access to things they should never have been able to obtain. And our culture has sometimes romanticized that figure. For decades, entertainment media have portrayed pimps as rebellious anti-heroes rather than as people who often exploit vulnerable women and girls.
The Epstein case strips away that mythology. It shows the brutal reality behind it.
But the truth is that the problem isn’t limited to one man or one network. We’ve seen similar patterns in other high-profile abuse cases involving celebrities, entertainers, and powerful figures. Wealth, fame, and influence often create environments where victims struggle to be believed, and perpetrators expect to avoid consequences.
That realization forces a level of personal reflection as well.
Like many people, I can admit that in the past I sometimes dismissed or minimized allegations against powerful men whose work or status I admired. When people joked about or rationalized the abuse of young women by famous figures, it was often treated as scandalous gossip rather than as evidence of serious harm.
Looking back, that culture of dismissal helped create the conditions where victims were ignored, and predators were protected.
The Epstein files are horrifying not only because of what they reveal about specific crimes, but because they expose how systems of power operate. They show how wealth, status, and influence can warp justice itself.
And that is why the response to this scandal matters.
Justice should not depend on a person’s political ideology, social status, or connections. Anyone who participated in exploitation or trafficking (no matter how rich or powerful) should face real accountability.
The victims deserved protection when these crimes were happening. The least society can do now is ensure that the truth is pursued seriously and that those responsible are held accountable.
In 2000, Spike Lee was already a household name and a well-respected writer and director. He had already directed 12 movies by this time. These were She’s Gotta Have It (1986), School Daze (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), Mo’ Better Blues (1990), Jungle Fever (1991), Malcolm X (1992), Crooklyn (1994), Clockers(1995), Girl 6 (1996), Get on the Bus (1996), He Got Game (1998), and Summer of Sam (1999). Although the relative box office success of his movies from the late-1980s through the mid-1990s was already waning from Crooklyn onward during this time, his movies were still critically acclaimed, and his artsy filming and unapologetic and unafraid attitude on tackling subject matters that many other writers and directors were afraid to tackle, gave the studios and Hollywood as a whole, artistic legitimacy.
Spike Lee’s 13th movie, Bamboozled, a satirical comedy movie about the embedded racism of the entertainment media (particularly in television) along with society, did poorly at the box office and confused and even angered many people who initially watched it. Some critics, when it was released in 2000, thought that it was too shockingly heavy-headed. Roger Ebert thought that the use of blackface was too over-the-top and made the movie and its jokes more shocking than they were funny. I think that it was because of the initial shock of the use of blackface and the imitation of minstrel shows of a past in entertainment and media that is still very hurtful to black people and an embarrassment for whites, most audiences elected not to watch the movie at all.
A funny thing happens with time, though. The movies that few people wanted to watch in theaters develop a cult following later. These movies are lauded and appreciated by those who understand and appreciate the messages, the humor, and the artistic decisions that made these movies the bane of audiences and critics when they were initially released. This is what happened with movies like John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982). I will admit that although I barely knew anything about the movie before and during its theatrical release, I would often pass it by when trying to rent movies at Blockbuster. The cover art with the old school minstrel caricatures made the movie repulsive to me initially. It wasn’t until years later, seeing it on a streaming service, that I watched the movie after buzz about it on the internet, particularly on social media. I suspect that many people watched the movie via streaming services like Netflix. After giving the movie a chance, I could see the message of Spike Lee’s reimagining of old school, in-your-face minstrel shows, and parallel that with the more contemporary stereotypical media depictions and capitalizing on them.
A Brief History of Minstrel Shows
Example of blackface in minstrel shows.Even black performers participated in minstrel shows. Sometimes, it was the only work that they can find as performers.
The minstrel show tradition officially began with the song and dance performance of Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice, who performed as a stereotypical character, Jim Crow, in 1828 as part of a variety show. The song “Jump Jim Crow” would become a national sensation, especially in the Northern United States, where minstrelsy would become more popular than in the Southern United States. Thomas Rice would perform the character in blackface. Jim Crow was a character that Rice created who was a black, physically disabled stablehand who walked with a limp and would do a shuffling, hopping dance.
Poster for Jim Crow
The character became very popular and spawned many more white people in blackface performing stereotypes of dim-witted, lazy, and content slaves. Increasingly, more variety shows included blackface performances. By the 1840s, shows started to be entirely in blackface. For the next five decades, minstrel shows would be the most popular form of entertainment in the United States. The Jim Crow character’s name would later be used to categorize laws that were meant to keep black people in subservient positions, as second-class citizens, and as victims of an American form of apartheid after slavery ended in 1965.
The “Disappearance” of the Minstrel Show
It can be argued that minstrelsy didn’t completely go away after the mid-20th Century when it seemed to disappear (around 1960). Stage shows weren’t as popular as they used to be as movies and television became popular media in which people mostly got their entertainment. In the beginning of the 20th Century and even with the new media, aspects of the minstrel show remained. D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915) employed many of the tropes used in the minstrel shows on the stage. It had white actors in blackface and actual black people performing stereotypical roles. Its popularity and message resurrected a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) that was dead over 40 years before this and would make it one of the most popular political organizations of the 1920s and 1930s, with members of both major political parties having membership and being influenced by the terroristic organization.
The Birth of a Nation (1915) showed the majority black state governmental bodies as disorganized, undignified, and corrupt, and the black people in them as uncivilized.A white man in blackface, who acted as one of the antagonists in The Birth of a Nation (1915), is seen being “brought to justice” (about to be lynched) by the Klansmen who were the “heroes” of this movie.
However, a new stereotype would arise that would be more dangerous than that of the childlike buffoonish “coons” and/or “sambos” of earlier minstrelsy. Starting in literature, the “black brute” trope would appear. This trope painted black men as animalistic predators who stalked white women to rape. Whereas the “sambo” stereotype was used to justify the perpetual enslavement of black people, the “black brute” stereotype was used to justify the systemic murder and second-class citizenship of black people. It is no accident that these stereotypes became popular during the time period in the United States in which anti-black lynchings were the most active (1880s – 1920s). This stereotype would not go away. Instead, it will later dominate other negative stereotypes of black men.
The classic coon, mammy, and pickaninny tropes employed by minstrel shows would be seen in early movies and shorts. The Three Stooges would use them in scenes with black domestic or service workers. The black characters in the Our Gang (The Little Rascals) series were modeled after the pickaninnies of minstrel shows. Early cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny and Felix the Cat were modeled after minstrel shows and would even sing minstrel songs in the shorts. Imitation of Life (1934) was full of the “mammy” character, Delilah Johnson, saying the most cringe-worthy anti-black things while pledging her undying loyalty to the white character, Beatrice Pullman. The biggest black stars of the early 20th Century, after movies had sound, were William (Willie) “Sleep ‘n’ Eat” Best and Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew “Stepin’ Fetchit” Perry.
More dignified and human black characters in mainstream Hollywood would come in the late 1940s. But minstrel characters would persist. In 1951, The Amos ‘n’ Andy Show premiered. The show was a live-action television sitcom based on the minstrel radio show by the same name. The show was a television hit and lasted all the way until 1960. This is the official end of the minstrel show.
However, many of the most harmful aspects of the minstrel show would survive to this day through 1970s blaxploitation films, the popularity of James “JJ” Evans Jr. in the show Good Times, gangsta rap music and videos, many Tyler Perry movies, and various other popular forms of American entertainment. In fact, it is the persistence of these tropes and stereotypes in popular media, especially movies, that spawned Robert Townsend’s first movie, Hollywood Shuffle (1987). Hollywood Shuffle is a spiritual prequel to Bamboozled in many ways.
Movie poster for Hollywood Shuffle (1987)
A reimagined alternative to a current social condition
In Bamboozled, Spike Lee imagines a television network in which minstrelsy wasn’t just hidden and denied but accepted and made into a hit television show. It was the product of irresponsible capitalism that cares more about profits and the illusion of diversity than any sense of responsibility towards the community. The black caricatures are packaged and presented to mixed audiences as ironic or edgy humor while corporate executives monetize disturbingly grotesque racial spectacle, and black writers, directors, actors, producers, and crew are financially and professionally trapped in a system that greatly rewards self-exploitation. In this imagining, media is a direct descendant of the minstrel tradition and never broke from it. Society is not in a post-racist era; we are just in a more polished one.
Escaping this unfortunate reality requires systemic changes. The problems in Bamboozled are not due to changes in technology, nor will they be fixed with technology. Instead, what must be done is that the power structure must change. Modern art is profit-driven and controlled by capitalistic corporations. Capitalism rewards spectacle over dignity. This is what you experience when watching daytime talk shows featuring lie detectors and paternity tests or when listening to Sexy Redd songs. The ratings, box office receipts, album sales, and other metrics justify any moral compromise by the corporation. And most of the executives who control the distribution of art are white, so they have no sense of responsibility towards the black community, especially the poor and working-class black community.
In the movie, CNS television network is run by white people who have final say in the content that they put on air. The audiences love Mantan: The New Millennium Minstrel Show and CNS makes sure to protect itself from any charges of racism by making sure that that everyone from the cast to the crew is black. There is a scene in the movie in which Myrna Goldfarb the PR Consultant in CNS, a white woman, gives the “Mantan Manifesto” to shield the company from any scrutiny, criticism or charges of racism. It is as follows:
“Gainfully employ African Americans in front of and behind the camera.”
“Let the audience decide.”
“Who are these would-be ‘cultural police’?”
“Who determines what is Black? We are not saying anything about the entire African American community.”
“This is simply satire.”
“If they don’t like it, ‘F-‘em!’ ”
“And lastly, always smile, wear kente cloth, reference Dr. King, and remember, this show was created by a non-threatening Black male.”
The cynical way in which heavy and much-needed conversations about racist portrayals, racism, and responsibility, while hiding behind the positive public relations of black employment and opportunity, makes this manifesto even more insidious.
Spike Lee suggests that the things to do to escape this condition are to have changes in media ownership and governance. . This is not explicitly articulated; rather, it is conveyed implicitly. The issue was that everyone over Pierre Delacroix (whose real name is Peerless Dothan and the main protagonist of the movie) is white and feels no connection or responsibility towards the black audience that they are trying to capture and build on. They didn’t care if the show helped or harmed the community. The only thing they cared about was the ratings. However, simply putting black faces in seats of power in a company will not lead to any fundamental and/or significant changes if the overall economic model rewards racial exploitation. So, a big part of reform is to go with a model that doesn’t. Also, there would have to be reform when it comes to cultural gatekeeping.
The Legacy of Minstrelsy Lives On
Bamboozled is more appreciated today than it was when it was first released over a quarter of a century ago. The film is seen today as less absurd and more prophetic in the same vein as Network (1976). In 2023, the movie was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress National Film Registry. Although the film used the over-the-top idea of a modern-day minstrel show fashioned in the same manner as minstrel shows of the past, the message of the movie resonates more now than it did when it was initially released.
Online, content is measured by engagement metrics that reward outrage and caricature, and viral culture spreads and monetizes stereotypes. Black “trauma porn” is still very popular, and black pain and spectacle still generate profit. Today, many black content creators upload videos of themselves engaging in “coonery [and] buffoonery” (to quote Spike Lee himself) for clicks. Many of them are either being anti-black contrarians or engaging in hyper-performative racialized personas for algorithmic gain, mostly for the popularity and approval of non-black audiences. Both online and on television, corporate brands use black culture for capitalistic endeavors while avoiding structural change. Diversity is treated more like a public relations project and less like a way to redistribute power and ownership in the media.
The Hodge Twins started off on YouTube as fitness influencers. After a while, they were doing comedic critiques on videos, sometimes being edgy and offensive while doing it. They slowly morphed into anti-black conservative panderers to maintain an audience online.
Bamboozled‘s extreme minstrel imagery is greatly exaggerated. But to me, that is the point. In reality, the minstrelsy is much more subtle and thus, deniable. Putting those images in one’s face makes one confront the ugly truths about the treatment of black people and culture in media. We no longer see people in literal blackface (at least most of the time) performing exaggerated and dehumanizing stereotypes. But we do see a constant parade of harmful “marketable stereotypes” which, in my opinion, aren’t too much better. Bamboozled is actually less of a reimagined condition and more of an amplified mirror held up to society, including black people themselves.
Conclusion
Spike Lee’s Bamboozled shows us that racial exploitation is not a glitch in a capitalistic society built on racism. Instead, it is the feature. What was thought of as grotesquely absurd satire is now being appreciated and studied. There are video essays about this movie by young content creators online. In true Spike Lee fashion, no one in this movie is immune from criticism. Even the somewhat “conscious” but hypocritical Mau Mau, who are miseducated “hoteps” (pro-black people who are usually socially conservative while embracing pseudo-intellectualism) that constantly indulge themselves in alcohol and marijuana while having trouble making an articulate statement, catch strays in this movie, y’know what I mean? The modern media ecosystem proves that this movie wasn’t a fantasy. Rather, it was a diagnosis of our society in the form of dark satirical comedy.
I am a leftist. I am an unapologetic leftist. I am an unapologetic pan-African, pro-black leftist. I am an unapologetic pan-African, pro-black leftist who is critical of everyone, very outspoken, speaks up for marginalized groups, and is an atheist. Because of this, I have many detractors on my social media. As of today, I have nearly 42,500 followers on my Facebook page and over 3000 on my TikTok. My reach is relatively high. This translates to more people who don’t like me or my posts engaging in them. With that engagement comes some… *ahem*… “colorful” comments.
Among those “colorful” comments are those made usually by angry conservative white men who attack me and my character based on anti-black family stereotypes. To them, I am perpetually unemployed due to laziness. I am chronically and happily dependent on government welfare programs to live. I am either a high school dropout, a GED recipient, a high school graduate who was in the lower rankings in his class, or a man who didn’t earn his spot in college but was just given the spot to fill a quota. I don’t believe in marriage, have several “baby mamas,” and don’t take care of my children. This doesn’t count the other stereotypes attached to black men that I get regularly. Just yesterday, a friend of mine called me. he was lamenting about the stereotypes that he has to endure in his comments section as a black man.
Stereotypes About the Black Family
Linda Taylor was a mixed-race woman con artist who became the mascot for “welfare queens” during the 1980s. Then President Ronald Reagan used her to forward the stereotype about black women using social welfare programs to live a lavish life.Scene in the movie “Fresh” in which the very young protagonist, Fresh, is running a drug house.
The media often portrays black families in a negative light. Sometimes news programs and movies paint black mothers as unreasonably belligerent “welfare queens” who are prone to violent outbursts, constantly emasculate the men in their lives instead of supporting them (a notion that is shared by many black men in so-called “red-pill content, also known as “the manosphere“), and have multiple “baby-daddies” from several failed relationships that they are culpable of due to bad attitudes or promiscuity. Other times, black mothers are physically large, undesired, asexual women who only live to be caretakers of the people around them, especially white families. Black children are often depicted as coming from impoverished and dysfunctional homes. In these portrayals, they are often involved in criminal activity because of this. Even in cases where black children are “humanized,” they are seen participating in illegal endeavors to assume the responsibility that their absentee fathers and their neglectful mothers couldn’t handle. Thus, they are aged out of their innocence, even in television programs and movies. Black fathers are shown as mostly broke and lazy absentee fathers who love to make babies but don’t take care of them. We are seen as unintelligent, criminal, substance-abusing monsters who beat our wives and children harshly and mercilessly.
The Reality About Black Fathers
Three generations of black males together.
In reality, black fathers are the most active fathers with our children out of every other racial group, despite the conflations of black legitimacy with black male parental involvement by people like the late Charlie Kirk and others who used to paint negative stereotypes about black fathers. Most black men that I know personally are involved in the lives of their children. Many of them have at least partial custody of their children, even though they are not married to the child’s mother. In fact, many of the black men who engage in criminal behavior, like selling drugs, often cite caring for or providing for their children as a reason for it.
In the song “Foe Life” by West Coast hip-hop artist Mack 10, he raps:
“Cause a nigga gotta eat, fuck the world Let the bullets hurl and feed my baby girl”
In the beginning of “Juicy”, rapper Notorious B.I.G. said,
“Yeah, this album is dedicated to all the teachers that told me I’d never amount to nothin’, to all the people that lived above the buildings that I was hustlin’ in front of [and] called the police on me when I was just tryin’ to make some money to feed my daughter (it’s all good), and all the niggas in the struggle. You know what I’m sayin’? It’s all good, baby baby!”
How Does This Relate to Me?
However, I never been involved in the sale or distribution of illegal drugs. I’ve been working since I was 10 years old and had my first paycheck job at the age of 13. I came from a two-parent home in which my father was an entrepreneur. I married a woman at the age of 24, and we had three children together. Neither of us came into the marriage with children. We were married for 5 years before our first child was born. Our marriage ended after 22 years, and I became the primary parent to my three children, taking care of their daily needs. I was a paid paramedic /firefighter for years, was on the Dean’s List in college, and was an active PTO dad for all my children. I rarely drink or smoke marijuana.
However, let those whose only contact with black folks is in the evening news tell it, and I am some embodiment of negative black stereotypes. These notions are not benign. They have real-life consequences. Such negative stereotypes have gotten me harassed by police when I was younger, and perhaps closed the door on opportunities for me.
Local news stories and the utterances of famous talking heads in legacy media and online push these narratives. What is disturbing is that many people cannot see the racist undertones attached to the “harmless” facts and figures that are constantly thrown out to the public, yet rarely scrutinized.
Ten years ago, Critical Race Theory was a relatively obscure academic course, typically offered at the university or graduate school level. Relatively few people, mostly those with majors and/or minors in sociology or African and African American Studies, or those seeking a law degree, were aware that this course even existed. Since around 2020, Critical Race Theory (CRT) has become one of, if not the most controversial, subjects in schooling, and the proverbial boogeyman of everything wrong with contemporary education in the United States. For those on the right side of the political spectrum, CRT has been blamed for many of the societal ills in today’s America.
But what exactly is Critical Race Theory?
CRT is an academic and legal framework created by law school professors, activists, and academics, including Derrick Bell, Alan Freeman, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Angela Harris, Charles Lawrence, Mari Matsuda, and Patricia Williams during the mid-1970s. These individuals observed that the advances of the Civil Rights Movement were stalling and even being rolled back. They realized that racism was getting more covert and subtler than it was during the 1950s and 1960s, the peak of the Civil Rights Movement. They concluded that new theories and legal strategies were necessary to identify and combat these more covert forms of racism.
Critical Race Theory teaches that race is not a legitimate scientific taxonomical classification of human beings with varying physical differences. Instead, race is a somewhat arbitrary social construct in which the effects of the belief in the scientific validity of race are still very socially significant.
Mosaic of different racial characteristics forming one male face.Black and White twins, Lucy (L) and Maria Aylmer (R). The girls are fraternal twins with the same biological parents, Donna Douglas (a black woman with a white parent) and Vince Aylmer (a white man). Often mistaken for friends, the girls often carry birth certificates to prove that they are sisters.
It also teaches that racism is not merely the anomalous product of misled individuals. Rather, it is the embedded feature of a society built on racial separation, animosities, and rigid hierarchies. Racism is woven into laws, policies, and practices despite the claims and assertions of meritocracy and color-blindness. Racism is not always the intentional consequence of malevolent deeds of individuals due to ignorance, hatred, or irrationality. Instead, racism is more often a manifestation of the unintentional consequences of subconscious choices, even though these consequences can be predicted by those who are aware of the ambience of racism.
Opponents of CRT argue that it is a racist ideology, rooted in Marxism, that demonizes white people for the actions of a relative few in the past. In their minds, CRT scapegoats white people for the socioeconomic and moral failure of many black people and other racial minorities. They conflate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives (such as DEI training) with Critical Race Theory courses. They claim that CRT is being taught to children in K-12 schools in non-English and Non-Social Studies courses.
The Backlash…
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr during his May 8, 1967, NBC Interview
“… And honesty impels me to admit that America has a broad racist element still alive. Racism is still existing in American society in many areas of America, North and South. And the other thing is that there has never been a single solid, determined commitment of large segments of white America on the whole question of racial equality. I think we have to see that vacillation has always existed. Ambivalence has always existed. And this, to me, is the so-called “white backlash.” It is merely a new name for an old phenomenon. I see the white backlash as a continuation of the same ambivalence and vacillation of white America on the whole question of racial justice that has existed since the founding of our nation.
I think the other thing that we must see at this time is that many of the people who supported us in Selma, in Birmingham, were really outraged about the extremist behavior toward Negroes, but they were not at that moment, and they are not now committed to genuine equality for Negroes. It’s much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to guarantee an annual income, for instance, to get rid of poverty for Negroes and all poor people. It’s much easier to integrate a bus than it is to make genuine integration a reality, quality education a reality in our schools. It’s much easier to integrate even a public park than it is to get rid of slums. I think we are in a new era, a new phase of the struggle, where we have moved from a struggle for decency, which characterized our struggle for 10 or 12 years, to a struggle for genuine equality. And THIS is where we’re getting the resistance, because there was never any intention to go this far. People were reacting to Bull Connor [Commissioner of Public Safety in Birmingham, Alabama] and to Jim Clark [sheriff of Dallas County, Alabama] rather than acting in good faith for the realization of genuine equality.”
Christopher Rufo seemed like a man looking for a cause. He found it in 2018 when he ran across anti-bias documents while running for a Seattle city council seat. He lost his race, but he gained a cause to advance his political career in other ways. He then started collecting curricula and slide shows for anti-racism seminars throughout Seattle, Washington. He interpreted the methods and bullet points from these workplace trainings as anti-white racist attacks.
The anti-racism seminars pointed him to books by anti-racism authors. Going further down the proverbial rabbit hole, the anti-racism authors, such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, led him to CRT and the works of its founders.
Rufo leaned heavily on CRT and its connections to more radical and leftist philosophical influences while ignoring influences of those more moderate or with more mainstream appeal, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, and others. He was convinced that CRT was radical and Marxist and therefore a poison on this good and moral capitalistic society. Rufo found a new battle in the continuing culture war between the political left and the political right.
Christopher Rufo launched a relentless propaganda campaign against CRT. Critical Race Theory became a catch phrase for every aspect of black-centered, anti-racist, and inclusive lessons within all school programs, including K-12.
Rufo was proud of his work and how quickly news outlets and politicians on the right caught on to his messaging. Because of this, he wasn’t shy about bragging about his methods. He wrote in a correspondence with Angie Wang of the New Yorker:
“We’ve needed new language for these issues. ‘Political correctness’ is a dated term and, more importantly, doesn’t apply anymore. It’s not that elites are enforcing a set of manners and cultural limits, they’re seeking to reengineer the foundation of human psychology and social institutions through the new politics of race, It’s much more invasive than mere ‘correctness,’ which is a mechanism of social control, but not the heart of what’s happening. The other frames are wrong, too: ‘cancel culture’ is a vacuous term and doesn’t translate into a political program; ‘woke’ is a good epithet, but it’s too broad, too terminal, too easily brushed aside. ‘Critical race theory’ is the perfect villain
Its connotations are all negative to most middle-class Americans, including racial minorities, who see the world as ‘creative’ rather than ‘critical,’ ‘individual’ rather than ‘racial,’ ‘practical’ rather than ‘theoretical.’ Strung together, the phrase ‘critical race theory’ connotes hostile, academic, divisive, race-obsessed, poisonous, elitist, anti-American.” Most perfect of all critical race theory is not ‘an externally applied pejorative.’ Instead, it’s the label the critical race theorists chose themselves.”
On X, Rufo made this post bragging about his work:
Rufo did a very good job with his propaganda, but he had given up the game on a public social media platform and to a writer in a media magazine. His ego is about as big as his goals, and he couldn’t help but take a bow and a victory lap. His work was done.
What now?
The issue with CRT was that it was a little bit too vague and too alien for most people. Rufo’s propaganda campaign worked, but not as well as he thought it would. CRT, as a sinister Marxist plot against white people and America, was replaced a couple of years ago by DEI. CRT is mainly about race. DEI can be about anything and everyone that doesn’t check all boxes for every privileged group in the various social hierarchical systems that exist in the United States. CRT is still looked at with suspicion by those on the political right, with school-aged children who may have gotten offended after a history lesson about chattel slavery in the United States. There were laws passed in many states to ban CRT in K-12 schools. However, there was no evidence that the course itself was being taught in K-12 schools. Rather, only certain ideas associated with CRT have made it to K-12 classrooms. Also, these bans are usually vague, with CRT being poorly defined.
Christopher Rufo got many people on the right side of the political spectrum to hate and fear a university and law school course that they don’t really understand through a constant propaganda campaign. He recognized that the obscurity of the course was its weakness from a public relations perspective. He also understood that emancipatory movements and initiatives were almost always followed by irrational reactionary backlash. He made a relatively unknown course and made it public enemy #1 for a period of four or five years.
