Tennessee State Representative Justin Jones (D-Nashville, pictured above, left) was among the 40 speakers at the Critical Race Theory Summer School 2024 event held at Vanderbilt University in Nashville from July 28 until August 2.
Jones is one of the three members who controversially became known as the Tennessee Three for their role in a pro-gun control riot last year, and Nashville Scene reported he “helped bring the event to Vanderbilt” when it began in 2020.
Ahead of the event, its organizer Kimberle Crenshaw, a professor at Columbia University and University of Los California, Los Angeles professor, acknowledged a “backlash” to “racial justice” and CRT in a video advertising tickets.
“We started this in the middle of the summer of reckoning,” said Crenshaw, referencing the 2020 civil unrest that followed the death of George Floyd.
Crenshaw said Critical Race Theory Summer School was part of “recognizing that critical concepts, like structural racism and implicit bias and intersectionality were all part of the mobilization that we saw in 50 states across the country, demanding accountability.”
She then stated, “now we are at a point where the backlash against 2020, the backlash against racial justice, has taken the form of suppressing our right to learn, our right to know, our books.”
A ticket sales page for the event suggests many of its speakers offered arguments to use against political efforts which oppose their agenda.
The event organizers claimed efforts to curtail affirmative action and parents exerting control over reading materials in school libraries are part of a push by “conservative extremists” who want to push “racial and social justice advances” back “over seven decades.”
It is further claimed the “‘war on woke’ is really a war on Black knowledge, history, and other marginalized community,” and warned that “colorblind liberalism laid the groundwork for the current backlash by de-emphasizing the importance of race and racism in American life.”
Speakers also apparently provided a defense of the controversial Diversity, Equity and Inclusion practices, which were blamed after disgraced Harvard University President Claudine Gay was ousted amid plagiarism and antisemitism scandals.
According to the ticket sales page, those who attended the summer school learned “[h]ow those attacking CRT and DEI initiatives ultimately seek to turn back the clock on a century of civil rights advances and represent a broader attack on public education on public institutions.
Speakers also argued that “attacks on racial equality” are tied to an “assault on LGBTQ+ rights and liberties, and women’s reproductive freedom.”
Event organizers also mentioned Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation collection of white papers falsely attributed to former President Donald Trump’s campaign for the White House.
They claimed the Critical Race Theory Summer School attendees would understand “the ultimately goal of the anti-woke movement, which is to destroy the prospect of multiracial democracy through its vision in Project 2025.”
Polling conducted earlier this year found the majority of voters would prefer schools focus on traditional subjects including math, reading and science, and are generally opposed to instructions about CRT.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Rep. Justin Jones at CRT Summer School” by African American Policy Forum.
State Rep, Justin Jones openly called my State Rep., Dr. Sabi Kumar, “the brown face of white supremacy”. This he did from the podium in the Capitol, a vile racist epithet. To my knowledge he’s never apologized for his flagrant racist attack. This is one of the very numerous examples by radical leftists of the communist counsel of Saul Alinsky, “accuse others of what you do, while you’re doing it.”
send this carpetbagger back to Compton Ca already – damn
Vandy died several years ago. All that is left is a stinking carcass.
THIS JUST DEMONSTRATES HOW SYSTEMIC DEI IS IN OUR FORMER MASTERFUL UNIVERSITY. NOW WOKE AS HELL. I QUIT GETTING ANY HEALTHCARE IN ANY OF THEIR CLINICS , ETC., bc they have abandoned the
“DO NO HARM” oath for medical professionals. Just look at the Coventry School Shooter as an perfect example. Her parents should sue them for millions. They lost their daughter to the crazy woke incompetence that is Vanderbilt today.
Vanderbilt no longer delivers the brightes & the best in the world. They now provide propaganda & jobs based on whether a person is a colored person, or a crazy Trans or Climate Nut. NO WHITE PEOPLE ALLOWED.
They’re probably still providing minors with gender altering drugs & surgeries, even though we have a State law making it a crime.
Vanderbilt ethics & standards are in the sewer. I WLwouldnt send my worst enemy to that so-called university.
Now we need a law banning the teaching of CRT (Critical Race Theory), DEI ( Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & ESG (Enviornmental Social Governace) all very communist ideologies. Why does Justin Jones promote this EXTREME RACIST PROPAGANDA?
I DARE SOMEONE TO ASK HIM WHATS IN IT FOR HIM?
This, a mop in his hand or delivering Papa Johns are the only ways Jones would ever get into Vanderbilt.
I assume Tim Wise is behind this race huckster event.
The Bible clearly states that in the end times evil will be called good!
We are there!