Hirsi Ali: We must define the difference between critical thinking and critical race theory
Ayaan Hirsi Ali speaks out on Fox Nation's 'Tucker Carlson Today'
Somali-Dutch scholar and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali strongly criticized the increasing presence of critical race theory and racial politics in the United States, commenting that as a Black woman, the United States is the best nation in the world for minority rights on the part of both race and gender.
Ali, who was the victim of the regional custom of genital mutilation and later became a women rights activist speaking out against such customs; after her father shepherded her family out of Somalia, said on Fox Nation's "Tucker Carlson Today" that those who preach division and theories of inequality do not recognize America's unique standing as a beacon for the oppressed — rather than a feature of oppression.
"That’s what’s so great about America is that a lot of these things have actually been achieved; equality between men and women, it’s the best place in the world to be female, it’s the best place in the world to be Black, it’s the best place in the world to be gay, trans, whatever you want to be," she told host Tucker Carlson.
"That is America. What do we do with all those achievements if you still want to keep an organization going and still wants to get money from donors."
Ali said that institutions like to "invent" new problems that don't otherwise exist, or at least not to the drastic extent they are advertised to be.
"If you still want to keep the organization going and still want to get money from donors, you start to invent new stories and new problems. And you come up with things like Islamophobia," said Ali, who was born Muslim but later became an atheist.
She added that one example is the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center, which claims to identify hate groups and hateful individuals – which had put her and former radical Islamist Maajid Nawaz – who went on to found an organization called Quilliam dedicated to counter-extremism and empowerment of moderate theism – on a suspicious "list."
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"The SPLC … put us on a list which looked a bit like a hit list, I have to say. Because if you are on that list, you make it very easy for those people who may not constantly be making their own lists to go after you," she said.
"So in many ways, they're sinister, they're wrong, they're corrupt, and the corruption is trying to take people's money, vulnerable people's money to pretend that they're fighting for something that they actually are not fighting for."
Ali told Carlson that it is important for people to organize instead to counter things like critical race theory with critical thinking.
"[That is when] you take what you have and you see what is not right and try to correct that -- you use words like reform. Or you’re talking about critical race theory or critical justice theory and you’re being inculcated into an ideology, into a doctrine, into an orthodoxy. That’s where we are at now," she continued, adding that Americans may be at last recognizing the nefarious nature of critical race theory and "invented" problems.
"You have people from the left, people from the right, you have people from the center who are waking up to this thing and we’re at that stage now. Where it’s like wait a second, what’s going on here?"
As for the concerns of those preaching critical race theory, Ali told Carlson that freedom of expression and religion and equality of race and gender were embodied in the Constitution from the founding of this nation; which she said helped lead enslaved people at the time to eventually fight for their freedom later codified explicitly in the 13th Amendment; ratified in 1865.
"When Black people in America were subjected to slavery and all sorts of humiliation, they were able to wave those documents to fight for their dignity, their equality, their freedom -- That’s a unique thing -- that’s what I try to tell Americans: You don’t have that in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia or even any of those European countries: It’s unique to America."
"Now, we’re being told, ‘ditch that and make your skin color the source of all truth, equality, dignity and whatever gives meaning to it’."
"My skin color has always been the most superficial thing for me about anything."
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