What's so wrong with being 'woke'?
Edward F. Palm  Guest Opinion  As a retired Marine officer turned academic, Ive long maintained we need military officers whose mental and moral horizons transcend the institutions they serve and who remains aloof from the partisan politics of the day. I was heartened to learn we have such an officer in chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley. On June 23, Milley was attacked at a congressional hearing over the teaching of critical race theory to Army cadets at West Point. I do think its important for those of us in uniform to be open-minded and to be widely read, Milley stated. I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military  of being woke or something else because were studying some theories that are out there.  To study a theory is not to present it as dogma akin to the precepts of the old Baltimore Catechism the Catholic school children of my day had to memorize and parrot back verbatim. I presume West Point cadets are free to debate and question the relevance of critical race theory to improving race relations in the Army and in our society at large. The opposite of woke is to be oblivious or insensate. To my mind, that describes the state of the conservatives railing against critical race theory. Im reminded of what those discomfited by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s were won't to say: Our colored  the polite term back then  "were fine until these outside agitators got to them. No, they were not fine. And they are not fine still. I am further reminded of the paranoid people who used to worry that fluoridated water might be a communist plot to weaken our minds. Now such people are decrying critical race theory as a communist plot to indoctrinate our children and to exacerbate division within our society. That is because the leading proponent of critical race theory, law professor Kimberl Crenshaw, is a self-described Marxist, and critical race theory does focus on class divisions within our society. What some dont understand is that to be an academic Marxist is not to be a communist. Communism is an imperfect, totalitarian application of the political theories of Marx and Lenin. Academic Marxists merely believe our history, politics and artistic expression can best be understood and illuminated in terms of socioeconomic class competition and conflict. And anyone who believes America to be a classless society is living in the apocryphal Never Never Land of American exceptionalism. The irony is that critical race theory in its entirety was never going to be taught in our elementary and high schools. Republicans are weaponizing critical race theory to stifle discussions of race relations and to promote so-called patriotic education, which overlooks or seeks to mitigate the troubling aspects of history  slavery, for instance. That is indoctrination, not education. For my part, I applaud the general for establishing that the much-maligned military mind can be, and should be, an open mind. Edward Palm is a former enlisted Marine and a Vietnam veteran. Palm retired from the Marine Corps as a major and went on to an academic career. He can be contacted at majorpalm@gmail.com