In the 1980s, Governor Tom Kean Sr. advocated ‘the politics of inclusion’ and his son, Senator Tom Kean Jr. is now New Jersey’s leading Republican advocate for ‘critical race theory’ education
Republican state Senator Thomas H. Kean Jr. is hoping to navigate a Tea Party-tough conservative primary that is increasing in complexity with his liberal “It’s My Party, Too” approach that includes sponsoring New Jersey’s most ambitious critical race theory law.
Tom Kean Jr. is New Jersey’s leading Republican advocate for ‘critical race theory’ education as a member of a controversial commission in the state Department of Education that many in the GOP see as a bureaucracy advocating a ‘hate America’ approach to history.
“What we’re trying in the United States to do, a multi-racial democracy, a constitutional government that’s rare in history,” said Victor Davis Hanson, a professor emeritus of Classics at California State University, Fresno; the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in classics and military history at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution; and visiting professor at Hillsdale College. “Six thousand years of civilization, it almost never happens, and it only happened in the West in the last 2,500 years.”
Hanson is the author of hundreds of articles, book reviews, scholarly papers, and newspaper editorials on matters ranging from ancient Greek, agrarian and military history to foreign affairs, domestic politics, and contemporary culture.
He has written or edited 17 books, and stands as one of America’s most vocal opponents of critical race theory.
Kean serves on The Amistad Commission, a state-level bureaucracy that educates citizens and students about the history associated with the African slave trade, slavery in America, and the vestiges of slavery in this country.
The Amistad Commission is probably best described as New Jersey’s iteration of critical race theory.
The Senator from Westfield also sponsored legislation that appropriates money to reward teachers for providing instruction on the African slave trade, slavery in America, the depth of impact such depravity and evil has had in our society, along with the triumphs of African-Americans plus their significant contributions to this country.
The intention was to share news about accomplishments of African-Americans in overcoming these obstacles to contribute to the development of this country.
Opponents fear that Kean’s liberal brand of historical revisionism admonishes all White people for being oppressors while classifying all Black people as hopelessly oppressed victims.
Such concerns have spurred school boards and state legislatures from Tennessee to Idaho to ban these liberal teachings about racism in classrooms.
For News host Tucker Carlson attributes Samuel Cartwright, who he described as a bigot, who in 1851 “came up with a fairly sophisticated scientific explanation for why so many slaves were running away.”
“Cartwright was a practitioner of something called scientific racism,” said Carlson, who added: “Scientific racism is deeper than simple prejudice. It is the use to science to justify the dominance of one group over another group. Scientific racism has a history as long as science, simply because the impulse to dominate is inherent to human nature.”
“The point is, scientific racism never actually went away. It’s still with us. No one talks about drapetomania anymore,” said Carlson. “Instead, our medical professionals and law professors and military leaders and politicians and cable news hosts have identified a new disorder they claim explains everything bad. It’s called whiteness.”
“In the universities, it has become an article of faith that, were it not for the indelible stain of whiteness, America could be a utopia,” said Carlson. “Only whiteness stands in the way. That’s why we must abolish it.”
Kean not only voted for all five bills creating and expanding the commission, he sponsored one of those laws and serves as a member of the agency that is implementing critical race theory indoctrination in the state by requiring all New Jersey elementary and secondary schools to incorporate African-American history into their social studies curriculum.
Critical race theory supporters wanted to introduce African-American history into the K-12 curriculum and expand general awareness about the residual impact of slavery and other discrimination, even in modern life.
With Tom Kean Jr. pushing ‘critical race theory’ the GOP now has a polar opposite to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has been peddling the white supremacist conspiracy called “white replacement theory.” It’s a decades-old piece of neo-Nazi trash that claims there is a liberal plot to reduce the white population and replace them with what Tucker has called “obedient people from faraway countries.”
“What’s happening in our schools and our military and our government is both simple and easy to recognize,” said Carlson. “It’s not critical race theory, it is racism. Not ‘neo-racism’ or ‘reverse racism.’ Those are meaningless terms. It is race hate. It is peddled by the people in charge in the hope that it will make them more powerful. That’s all it is.”
The Republican Party’s war against “race-based ideologies” — code for theories and practices that examine the racism in American history and institutions — started only about a year ago when Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Russell Vought, at then-President Donald Trump’s behest, released a memo instructing federal agencies to identify any critical race theory and white privilege training within their departmental training plans.
According to that memo, the administration’s mission was to stop funding any and all programming that suggests the “United States is an inherently racist or evil country or that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil.”
Kean is the ex-Governor’s son who sponsored New Jersey’s most ambitious critical race theory law, which was enacted by Democratic Governor Phil Murphy.
Christine Whitman’s insider’s view of the corrosive effects—on the Republican Party and the country as a whole—of the rise of zealous conservatism.
When Stephanie James Harris PhD tells the story, “the New Jersey Amistad Bill, and the subsequently created Amistad Commission, shifted the mandated educational landscape in regard to the teaching of social studies in the state of New Jersey—by legislative edict and enforcement, within every class in the state.”
“Through a century of debates, reforms, and legislations, there has been a demand to include the contributions, achievements, and perspectives of people of the African Diaspora that deconstruct the European narrative of history,” said Dr. Harris, who works for Tom Kean Jr. as executive director of the Amistad Commission in the state Department of Education.
Gov. Phil Murphy signed legislation to strengthen the state’s mandate that African American history be infused into New Jersey school curricula throughout the year.
Legislation approved in 2002 created the Amistad Commission — named for the ship famously commandeered by African slaves — to study, develop and promote programming that would incorporate African American history into the public education system year-round. But 17 years later, many schools have not fully implemented a program.
The New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) said it supports the expansion and explained how the teacher’s union wants “to ensure that the history of slavery and the contributions of African Americans to our country are taught in every public school in New Jersey. “
“NJEA is committed to promoting racial and social justice in our schools and our state,” said a statement on the organization’s website. “We support this legislation to transition the Amistad Commission into the Department of Education, and urge the Legislature to ensure the commission maintains its independence through this transition and in the future.”
At the 2020 White House Conference on American History, Trump went all-in on “defend[ing] the legacy of America’s founding, the virtue of America’s heroes, and the nobility of the American character,” taking time to denounce the New York Times’s 1619 project that focused on the lasting impact of slavery in America; historian Howard Zinn, who wrote about history from the perspective of the oppressed; and critical race theory.
“They’ve lumped everything together: critical race theory, the 1619 project, whiteness studies, talking about white privilege,” said critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw, a UCLA and Columbia University law professor. “What they have in common is they are discourses that refuse to participate in the lie that America has triumphantly overcome its racist history, that everything is behind us. None of these projects accept that it’s all behind us.”
changes the current law to distinguish the Amistad Commission from the Department of Education and requires funding for the commission to be in a separate line item of the state’s budget.
The bill also includes language recognizing the omission or misrepresentation of African American history in public schools since the founding of the nation, and to mandate that boards of education require curricula to include instruction infused through all courses.
Two-thirds of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they want Trump continue to be a major political figure for many years to come, including 44% who say they would like him to run for president in 2024, according to a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted Sept. 13 to 19.
About one-in-five Republicans (22%) say that while they would like Trump to continue to be a major political figure in the United States, they would prefer he use his stature to support another presidential candidate who shares his views in the 2024 election rather than run for office himself.
About a third of Republicans (32%) say they would not like Trump to remain a national political figure for many years to come.