Add Homeschooling To List Of Things The Left Says Is Racist

A leftist professor wants you to know that you’re partaking in racism if you homeschool your kids, the latest aspect of American culture that the Left has now declared racist.

On Thursday, MSNBC ran a column arguing that people who partake in homeschooling are actually helping to end public school and re-segregate society — even if they’re doing it unknowingly.

MSNBC tweeted, “It may seem harmless, but the insidious racism of the American religious right’s obsession with homeschooling speaks volumes,” while linking to the article written by University of Pennsylvania Professor Anthea Butler.

Butler claims that actor Kirk Cameron is continuing a racist legacy through his new homeschooling documentary that encourages parents to take their kids out of government-run schools because of poor education and attempts to indoctrinate students through Critical Race Theory and radical gender ideology lessons in many school districts across America.

Butler argues that because a man named Rousas Rushdoony, a Christian preacher, was instrumental in the fundamentalist movement that allegedly was against forced integration and supported homeschooling as a way to segregate the population, then Cameron, too, is advancing that goal.

That argument is not exactly new. In 2017, writer David French directly rebuked the idea that Rushdoony had anything to do with most Evangelical Christians’ decision to keep their child out of public school. French noted that leftists associate Christians and pro-school choice Americans with men like Rushdoony because they cannot defend failing public education.

“Faced with the difficult task of defending a failing system and limiting parental choice, all too many defenders of government schools fall back on name-calling, conspiracy theories, and their own anti-Christian bigotries,” French wrote. “But they can cite Rushdoony all they want. It doesn’t make him relevant. It doesn’t make public schools better. And it certainly doesn’t invalidate the good and decent effort to use greater competition to improve education for everyone — white and black alike.”

Indeed, Butler falls into that line of argument. “Cameron’s documentary promoting homeschooling is not an aberration; it is part of a larger project about dismantling the public education system in the United States,” Butler argued in her column. The professor further claimed that some homeschooling materials today appear to be inspired by Rushdoony, but she does not make any direct link between the man nor cite specific books used by Cameron.

Butler, who also served as the co-chair of Catholics for Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign, acknowledges that homeschooling is on the rise, including among black Americans and other minorities.

To that extent, she warns that “parents unfamiliar with the existing networks of homeschooling run the danger of being drawn into Christian conservative networks and theocratic teaching.” 

Butler never explains how current homeschooling promotes racism besides the fact that folks like Cameron don’t express fealty to progressive talking points. At best, her main point is that some fringe man from back in the day may or may not have inspired materials that could possibly be used in your homeschooling group.

It is not the first time a leftist has used that tactic. They often find minor evidence that racist individuals partake in somewhat similar behavior — albeit for different purposes — and use that smear to condemn entire virtues, hobbies, and beliefs.

Keep in mind that progressives have also argued that you are participating in racism if you take staying physically fit seriously, believe in Christianity, believe in rationality and hard work, believe men can’t be women, believe in strong borders, display the American flag, or oppose Critical Race Theory.

Now, homeschooling can be added to that list as well.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.