Schools, businesses, and soon churches (if the Equality Act is passed) may find themselves being told by the government to teach the latest socialist talking points to its citizens and children under the guise of fixing issues stemming from inequality and American Slavery that was prominent before the U.S. Civil War.
Part of the problem with this is that it is policing speech, claiming that one point of view is correct, and the only thing that can be taught or said, because to say anything else is wrong.
The problem with your argument is that Critical Race Theory is presented at schools and workplace sessions as the TRUTH, not just an (unprovable) social science theory. And it would be very uncomfortable (if not career or social suicide) to question this theory in front of one’s bosses and peers.
That makes me think of Justice Jackson’s famous line, one of the most important points about freedom of speech: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”
The problem is compelled speech. To be compelled to assert belief in what you do not believe is a severe intrusion on individual free speech, and that seems to be what is happening in these workplace training sessions. Is there some way to present the insights of Critical Race Theory as ideas to be understood and weighed against other ideas and debated instead of compelling attendance at events where the ideas are dictated and participants are forced to attest to the dictated beliefs?
“As [Christopher] Rufo sees it, critical race theory is a revolutionary program that replaces the Marxist categories of the bourgeois and the proletariat with racial groups…”
This is exactly the problem. If a church was to tell their congregants that they believed in infant baptism and you disagree, you still have the ability to voice that disagreement or attend another church. If the government says that you have to voice something as an article of faith in order to work, shop, go to church, doesn’t that violate the fundamental rights to freedom of speech?
I think we’re about to find out.