I got my knee on his neck, Ma! Take a pitcher!

“Critical race theory, an ugly ideology that divides people based on race, has crept into Idaho’s public school classrooms right under our noses. You’re ready to fight back, but you need the tools and knowledge to fight this left-wing indoctrination. The Idaho Freedom Foundation’s ‘Fighting Critical Race Theory in Idaho’ toolkit will equip you and your family to detect and defeat this noxious ideology in your local schools.”

Except it’s not and it hasn’t. It’s yet another farcical far-right imaginary bugaboo, another lie piled on a heap of lies created by an insidious cabal of office-seeking miscreants bent on rousing fears and imposing their own narrow racial, political and religious moral certitude on those of us who can’t imagine what they are railing about.

Those who think we owe obeisance are mistaken. Theirs have held positions of power, written the laws and been treated as superior in this nation for so long that they assume the status quo is divinely inspired and inviolable, set in stone. They take umbrage when “inferiors,” knees on neck, shout out, “this isn’t right!” and try to stand, to assert the inalienable fact that, “I am a citizen too, I am a human!”

Critical race theory is by definition the unbiased study of race, society and law in the United States, so as to examine and challenge mainstream American liberal approaches to racial justice. It is a college-level way to study racial bias in laws and institutions, such as the how and why of incarceration rates and how sentencing differs among racial groups in the United States. Why are those of this race treated worse than those of this?

“The word critical in its name is an academic term that refers to critical thinking, critical theory, and scholarly criticism, rather than criticizing or blaming people,” the Wikipedia entry reads.

Any elementary school student “exposed” to critical race theory likely heard it not in the classroom, but at home, not from a teacher, but from a parent. Likely embarrassed to see said parent railing irrationally at a school board meeting and screaming, “Ban CRT! My rights are being violated!”

Bad news, boys and girls … your right to free speech, to religion, public assembly, to bear arms and any and all the other rights enunciated in our constitution protect you from actions by the government but do not abrogate your responsibility as a citizen of the United States or exonerate you for what you say or do to your neighbors.

The rights conferred by the U.S. Constitution do not confer privilege on any class, religion, race, culture or any other difference that may separate us. Instead, it bids us to ever work to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

And lest you think mine or yours deserve favor, pay heed to the greatest and most truthful piece of writing in the brief annals of the history of our nation: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

A young girl, second or third grade, is said to have been asked recently about those decrying critical race theory.

“It seems those who want to deny it are those who most want to repeat it,” she is reported to have said.

On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Dr. King pointed this nation toward a more perfect union. On April 4, 1968, he was assassinated by a self-avowed white supremacist. On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama became the first man of color to be elected president of this nation.

It became clear with the inauguration of Donald Trump January 20, 2017, that hope of a more perfect union is still farther away than Medgar Evars or any who died for the cause of equality may have hoped. It is clear today that some men will still do anything to proclaim themselves supreme, thereby demonstrating their weakness.

Boys, if our kind is supreme, I hold out little hope for humanity. There has never been a time when critical race theory has been more needed than it is right now.