“Ninja Race Theory” v. Critical Race Theory

Arizona’s governor vetoes ban on Critical Race Theory

Photo by Abolfazl eslami on Unsplash. So far as I know, this is not what a real life Cyber Ninja looks like. It’s just a cool picture of someone dressed like a ninja. The actual Cyber Ninjas (whatever they look like) appear to have closed down operations and disappeared in a puff of smoke once 76 of their 77 claims of fraud proved false or misleading and they failed to find any errors that would change any election.

Arizona’s Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed a bill in Arizona that would have banned the teaching or use of “critical race theory” in public K-12 schools.

Arizona ought to be more famous as the origin of “Ninja Race Theory,” that is, the theory that if they paid Cyber Ninjas a few million dollars, the Ninjas might discover enough votes to change the results for the 2020 presidential race.

Photo by Raphaël Cubertafon on Unsplash. This is absolutely not what a Cyber Ninja looks like. And even if it was what a Cyber Ninja looks like, this character is a teenager and thus probably ineligible to vote. Cool disguise though.

Nearly all the proponents of “Ninja Race Theory” voted to impose a ban on “Critical Race Theory” in Arizona classrooms, even though they don’t know of any K-12 public schools in Arizona that actually teach CRT.

Why did Arizona Republicans decide to ban Critical Race Theory in K-12 public schools? Obviously, they thought this was a more pressing priority than upgrading their audit capabilities that failed in 2020 so catastrophically that they needed to call up the Ninjas to help.

How can Arizona tell if they fixed the “cannot count past X" problems in 2020? Maybe it’s a math problem. Maybe it’s a reading comprehension problem — words like “audit" might confuse some legislators (note: most of the time, one does not engage ninjas to audit). Basic laws like “one person, one vote” (also known as “democracy” or maybe, “democratic race theory”) might be hard to implement if someone doesn’t know how to read.

Kudos to Zane McNeill for reporting the actual story. But wouldn’t a battle between “Ninja Race Theory” and “Critical Race Theory” be more dramatic than straight journalism?