With all due respect, Gen. Mark Milley is just wrong about critical race theory.
In a House Armed Services Committee meeting Wednesday, Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida asked Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin whether critical race theory should be taught in U.S. military academies. Austin responded to Waltz by saying that the military is neither embracing nor pushing the theory. The defense secretary added that an alleged seminar on “white rage” at West Point should not have occurred.
Gen. Milley more vocally defended the study of critical race theory, however. He told the committee that he believes that it is important for leaders to be “widely read.” He added, “I want to understand white rage, and I’m white.”
Watch: Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, just now on Critical Race Theory, ‘Wokeness’ & Jan. 6. “I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist. So what is wrong with understanding…the country which we are here to defend?” pic.twitter.com/KsRtOoWN0w
— James LaPorta (@JimLaPorta) June 23, 2021
Milley questioned why it was wrong for military cadets to study critical race theory. He said, “I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist. So, what is wrong with understanding … the country which we are here to defend?”
It seems the general believes that critical race theory is the abstract school of thought incubating in contemporary law schools. Simply put, he is wrong. Conservatives are not opposed to the theory’s voluntary promulgation. They are fighting the forceful, practical compulsion and bullying that it has engendered in schools at all levels.
Critical race theory is not just theory but practice. It is being applied across the country. K-12 students have been forced to undergo “woke” training, and some states are reevaluating their curricula to achieve “equity.” Corporations have become increasingly political, as their recent ignorant assaults on Georgia’s voting law demonstrated.
And these harmful practices have arrived in the U.S. Military Academy, also known as West Point. Documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon in April outline the school’s diversity and inclusion plan. One initiative was the creation of a “diversity and inclusion studies” minor, which includes courses such as the “Politics of Race, Gender, and Sexuality.”
Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo reported that one course at West Point, “Behavioral Science and Leadership,” now requires students to read “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction” and “A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory.”
We do not have to imagine what will happen to unit cohesion if these divisive lessons are promulgated. In a letter to Lt. Gen. Darryl Williams, West Point’s superintendent, Rep. Waltz discussed an alleged mandatory September 2020 assembly that touched upon “white privilege” and guilt. Some cadets, according to Waltz, believed the session bred “insult and resentment.”
The military faces multiple threats from foreign adversaries. It does not need internally generated “insult and resentment,” dissension, and division at a time when military preparedness should be of the utmost priority.
As Kaylee McGhee White wrote, some may view critical race theory as one concept in a marketplace of ideas. These individuals, like the general, are either misinformed or unaware of the theory’s concrete applications. The concrete practice of divisive ideas like critical race theory has no place in formative education and certainly not in our military.
