Following a three-month hiatus, John Oliver returned Sunday for the Season 9 premiere of Last Week Tonight. Now that Bill Maher’s show has degenerated into the white-grievance culture-war hour, Oliver’s program has emerged as its HBO foil—a considered, research-based approach to the most infuriating news stories of the week.
The British comic kicked off the 240th episode of LWT by focusing first on the truckers’ vaccine mandate protests in Canada, and then on the right-wing media’s obsession over critical race theory, throwing to a clip of Ted Cruz wildly exclaiming, “Let me tell you right now: critical race theory is bigoted, it is a lie, and it is every bit as racist as the Klansman in white sheets.”
“I do not like that Ted Cruz man. I do not like him shouting Klan. I do not like him in a room. I do not like him in Cancun. I do not like him playing ball. I do not like his face at all. I wish he’d lose his cushy job. That man Ted Cruz is a fucking knob,” cracked Oliver.
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Sadly, a lot of people have been “listening to that noise” concerning critical race theory for the past year, and it’s led to turmoil at school-board meetings across the country, with angry white parents claiming that critical race theory is everything from a “Marxist plot” to brainwashing their kids into thinking that they’re racist.
“A lot of people are getting very mad about critical race theory right now, and instinctively, you probably know that it’s a manufactured panic; but the fact is, the fear around it is having real effects,” explained Oliver. “Last year, Glenn Youngkin won the governor’s race in Virginia after repeatedly promising that on his first day in office he’d ban CRT from being taught in schools; multiple states have passed laws outlawing the teaching of it; and Republicans are likely to make it a major focus of the midterms.”
Oliver then proceeded to define what critical race theory is, given that many of its detractors have no idea what it is, including Tucker Carlson, who openly admitted on his show, “I’ve never figured out what critical race theory is, to be totally honest, after a year of talking about it. They’re teaching that some races are morally superior to others—that some are inherently sinful, and some are inherently saintly, and that’s immoral to teach that because it’s wrong.”
Of course, that’s not what it is.
“It’s the name given to a body of legal scholarship that began in the 1970s that attempted to understand why racism and inequality persisted after the civil rights movement. The core idea is that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something that is embedded in legal systems and policies,” offered Oliver. “As for Tucker’s notion that it teaches some races are superior to others, or that parent’s claim that it teaches kids to hate America, none of that is remotely true.”
He then threw to Kimberlé Crenshaw, one of CRT’s leading scholars, who said, “Critical race theory just says, let’s pay attention to what has happened in this country, and how what has happened in this country is continuing to create differential outcomes, so we can become that country we say we are. So, critical race theory is not anti-patriotic; in fact, it is more patriotic than those who are opposed to it, because we believe in the 13th and the 14th and the 15th Amendment, we believe in the promises of equality, and we know we can’t get there if we can’t confront and talk honestly about inequality.”
“And to be clear,” added Oliver, “CRT is graduate-level legal theory, so unless your 5-year-old is currently pursuing a law degree, they’re not reading Kimberlé Crenshaw.”
Critics, however, have argued that the principles of CRT have somehow made their way into schools across the country. And the inventor of the controversy over critical race theory is none other than Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who’s made a number of appearances on Fox News arguing against it—and first made a name for himself by filing suit to prevent Seattle from imposing a small tax on the ultra-rich. Rufo cooked up a conspiracy theory positing that critical race theory “has pervaded every aspect of the federal government,” poses “an existential threat to the United States” and has “become the default ideology of the public education system,” and by the Trump administration’s own admission, Rufo’s appearances on Fox News influenced Trump to issue an executive order preventing federal agencies from having diversity training that addressed systemic racism (later rescinded under Biden).
As Oliver pointed out, Fox News mentioned critical race theory 4,707 times in 2021 alone.
“What Rufo has been cleverly doing is cherry-picking the worst examples that he can find of lessons in classrooms or training materials for teachers and saying, that is CRT,” explained Oliver. “And he’s openly admitted that he’s been engaged in a deliberate rebranding exercise, tweeting, ‘We have successfully frozen their brand—“critical race theory”—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions… The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’”
“And the thing is—it fucking worked,” the host continued. “Because whenever you hear CRT now, you are not hearing about the academic discipline; you’re hearing about a category so broad it encompasses both ‘the craziest thing in the newspaper’ and also, crucially, any conversation about race that someone does not want to have.”
But those on the right wing, including Rufo and the likes of Betsy DeVos, are actually using the CRT brouhaha to push their bigger agenda: school choice, or as Oliver called it, “letting parents take tax dollars afforded to the public schooling of their kid and use them at any school they’d like.” After all, Rufo himself came up through the Heritage Foundation—a conservative think tank that’s long pushed for school choice, and that’s pumped millions of dollars into the anti-CRT/pro-school choice movement.
Still, it appears the anti-CRT trolls are winning.
“Since January of last year, 37 states have introduced bills or taken other steps that would restrict teaching critical race theory or limit how teachers can discuss racism, and the justification for these has often been more than a little flimsy.”
Oliver then threw to a clip of Tennessee lawmaker, Republican Rep. John Ragan, who argued in the Tennessee House that he was pushing for his state’s anti-CRT bill by citing a supposed “email forwarded to me” from the parent of a 7-year-old girl. The little girl allegedly told her mother, “I’m ashamed that I’m white… Is there something wrong with me? Why am I hated so much?”
Well, reporters looked into the allegation and found that no parent had come forward to the principal, teachers, or district officials from the child in question’s school with that complaint, and that administrators weren’t even able to “pinpoint any student who might be upset, as well as lessons that could have been upsetting.”
The situation has gotten even more grim in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis is trying to push forward a “Stop WOKE Act” that would “give parents ‘private right of action’ to sue if they think their kids are being taught critical race theory.” Other school districts have attempted to ban a number of books preaching a diversity of thought under the guise of an anti-CRT push, and a school district in Oklahoma even tried to ban usage of the term “diversity.”
“For all the laws being passed to prevent discomfort or anguish on account of an individual’s race, whose discomfort, exactly, are we prioritizing here?” asked Oliver. “Because kids of color can tell you, they don’t get a choice to not talk about race and have it go away.”
