“The Work” of Woke Journalism
WaPo's Karen Attiah Deliberately Misidentifies Anti-CRT Person of Color as "White" to Discredit Her
By J. Mark Ousley
OKLAHOMA CITY — During and after the Oklahoma State Department of Education meeting on July 12, 2021, Washington Post Columnist Karen Attiah showed exactly how “the work” of Critical Race Theory in practice is designed to moralize and justify race and gender based viewpoint discrimination in America’s public schools, universities, and institutions.
Attiah made clear to anyone paying attention that she and the activist journalist movement she represents are far more concerned with pushing a biased, ideological narrative, than determining fact and reporting truth. And to our collective detriment, activist journalists like Attiah are determined to use “the work” to raze any semblance fact, objective truth, and unity in American society.
That morning, certified teacher and person of color Leah Hull, was one of five teachers who stood opposed to the narrative racially assigned to her by the media elite. For her courage, Leah and her fellow female colleagues were subjected to a repurposed, yet classically constructed brand of racial discrimination at the hands of Karen Attiah and The Washington Post.
Leah and her fellow teachers quickly found themselves falsely represented to a national audience on Twitter and in The Washington Post, and their courage and resistance in the face of active racial discrimination deserves some of that sanitary daylight designed to keep our democracy alive in the face of journalistic darkness.
As Ms. Attiah detailed in her column, “The occasion was consideration of item 8(b) on the Oklahoma Board of Education’s meeting agenda: emergency rules for implementing a bill passed in May by the Republican-controlled state legislature, limiting what students in the state can be taught on race and gender.” And it is in the last stanza of this statement where Ms. Attiah abandons objective fact and verifiable truth, in favor CRT style counter-storytelling, never to return.
In fact, Ms. Attiah links to an article from The Oklahoman that explicitly contradicts her claim that the Oklahoma law and subsequent rules limit what factual historical events can be taught in regard to race, and racism.
What the Oklahoma law actually prohibits is the discrimination of “the work” required of teachers by DEI offices and officers in K-12 public schools, and in no way limits the teaching of objective historical facts or events. The law explicitly functions as an Oklahoma Education Civil Rights Act, by baring DEI offices and officers from requiring teachers to subject students to the same viewpoint based racial discrimination of “the work” that Karen Attiah was about to publicly unleash on Leah Hull and her fellow teachers.
“The Work” is a DEI enforced method of action that requires teachers moralize, imbed, and integrate racial discrimination in “everything that [teachers] do” according to Stephanie Williams, Norman Oklahoma Public School’s Director of DEI, in her mandatory “Teaching for Equity” training, last Spring:“… imbedding and integrating this work in everything that you do is so critical.”
As a direct descendant of Slaves and Native Americans, Leah Hull knew that she would be an unexpected voice of opposition to “the work” required by CRT in practice, and she was prepared for the possible negative blowback that such a deviation of viewpoint could incite. But despite her prescient apprehensions, at 10:42 AM (take note of the time, it is important), Leah approached the lectern to take her five minutes in front of the State Board of Education in support of the rules, and in opposition to the active discrimination required by “the work” of CRT/Antiracist/DEI in K-12 schools.
Standing less than two feet away from Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah (who was seated out of sight of the only visible stationary camera in the room meant to record the proceedings for the public, and out of the gaze of the local and national press cameras behind her) Leah made her case against CRT passionately and effectively:
“CRT is at odds with basic, logical thought…Separation based upon ethnicity fuels the ideology. Identity factors such as race, gender, and sex determine outcomes. Subjective narratives and equity emerge. Objective truth, meritocracy and equality fall to the wayside.”
It would not take long for Leah’s words to ring true.
Leah finished speaking at 10:48 AM. In the recording, Karen Attiah can be seen typing furiously on her phone before, during, and after Leah’s speech - presumably taking notes of what Leah was saying. But that presumption would quickly prove to be unjustifiably charitable.
At 10:50 AM, just 2-3 minutes after Leah finished speaking, Karen Attiah Tweeted the following:
And in that Tweet claiming that all those supporting the law against “the work” appear to be white women, took care to correctly identify the race of the lone speaker supporting the “the work” of CRT/DEI as black. When looking at the timeline of Attiah’s Tweets, it becomes all too clear that Ms. Attiah was deliberately misidentifying Leah Hull as one of a group of “white women” in a racist attempt to try and discredit her anti-CRT message.
Hours later, after being called out for her false statement on Twitter, Ms. Attiah was forced to correct her purposely misleading statement.
Considering that the foundational premise of Attiah’s DEI based activist “journalism” is centered around the need to recognize race in all interactions (race essentialism), why would Attiah purposely misidentify Leah as “white?”
The answer can be found in Karen’s blatant use of that word “white” as a racist pejorative throughout her 786-word article. Karen uses the word six times throughout, and always with a negative, if not outwardly evil connotation. Karen sets this segregationist tone in the first paragraph of her column by labeling the opposition to CRT as an example of “white supremacy.”
Attiah’s words and actions exemplify the active race-based viewpoint discrimination required by DEI and taken from Ibram X. Kendi in his book, “How To Be An Antiracist,” a book that has become foundational to offices of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion all over the country.
Attiah’s message is clear: anyone who dissents to her anti-factual, activist narrative “appears to be white” and is therefore a “white supremacist,” regardless of the color of their skin. Ms. Attiah’s attempt to use Kendi’s CRT derived brand of repurposed racial discrimination is the primary mechanism of “the work” mandated by CRT/Antiracist/DEI based trainings.
But lest you think that this is an isolated incident, on August 18th, 2021, The LA Times published a column by Jean Guerreo, with the headline, “Larry Elder is the Black face of white supremacy. You’ve been warned.” Here, Guerreo and the copy editors of the LA Times follow in Attiah’s footsteps by using the blatant racial discrimination of “the work” to try and discredit more conservative minded people of color, like California Gubernatorial Candidate Larry Elder and Leah Hull.
Through CRT inspired, verifiably false storytelling, Karen becomes an all too appropriate moniker for both the award-winning Washington Post columnist and her counter-part at the LA Times. Both demand their readership, and American public schools, governments, and institutions blindly adopt and promote objectively false interpretations of history, even recent history, in an attempt to moralize and justify the race-based viewpoint discrimination of “the work” against any person who disagrees.
Make no mistake, “the work” of Critical Race Theory in practice is still being promoted and covertly practiced by DEI offices and officers all over Oklahoma and the country. And this DEI required method of race-based viewpoint discrimination - discrimination exemplified for all to see by Karen Attiah and The Washington Post - is nothing more than an attempt to reimplement social Jim Crow 1.0, and the Oklahoma Education Civil Rights Act now stands to protect our children from it.