So says Barrington Martin II, the man who tried to unseat the late John Lewis from Congress in the primary of Lewis’ final re-election bid. Martin plans to run again for the GA-05 seat, hoping to bring his blend of progressive economics and pro-Second Amendment beliefs to challenge the status quo. However, the 33-year-old black special-needs educator has had enough of the progressive Critical Race Theory educational project.

As Martin writes in Newsweek, other black parents are equally fed up with defeatism and beginning to speak out:

Race has always been the crown jewel used by Democrats to galvanize Black support. The Democrats constantly and consistently remind Black Americans that race is a barrier to their progress, and that they are the answer to this problem. …

Critical race theory is the latest iteration of this vicious cycle. Worse, it adds in an element of divisiveness that sets our kids up for failure. Black children will learn to resent white children based on history viewed through a racial lens, and white children will learn to dislike who they are or be resentful of being told their skin color makes them inherently tyrannical.

Last week, a concerned mother, Keisha King, demolished CRT during a Florida school board meeting, arguing that CRT is racist.

“Telling my child or any child that they are in a permanent oppressed status in America because they are black is racist, and saying that white people are automatically above me, my children, or any child is racist as well,” King righteously pointed out. “This is not something that we can stand for in our country.”

Martin also points to this viral broadside from last week to support his thesis that black parents have gotten fed up with CRT. “We’re teaching kids to hate each other,” Ty Smith declared, and called this direction of education “sickening”:

Watch this parent absolutely obliterate Critical Race Theory at an Illinois school board meeting:

“How do I have two medical degrees if I’m sitting here oppressed?” pic.twitter.com/gmCRJaphXt

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) June 17, 2021

“Well, how did I get where I am right now if some white man kept me down?” Smith asked the crowd. “How am I now directing over folks that look just like you guys in this room right now? How? What kept me down? What oppressed me?”

He referred to Critical Race Theory as “a lie.”

“Of this, the reason why black folks can’t get ahead because of white folks? Are you kidding me? This is what we’ve come to?” he asked. “I can’t believe we even talking about this right now.”

No one can dismiss Martin as a Republican or a crypto-conservative, his support for gun ownership notwithstanding. Atlanta’s 11 Alive described him as an “insurgent-left candidate” in last year’s primary, whose platform consisted of universal healthcare and universal income — what Martin calls a “people’s bailout.” He wants the current entitlement programs replaced with a real cradle-to-grave socialist fundament. (He also wants to legalize marijuana, which ten years ago might have been radical but is now in the mainstream, even if not terribly popular among traditional conservatives.)

In other words, Martin is in a position to know what other black parents think, as is Ty Smith, who told the Chicago school board that CRT isn’t selling at all among them. But Martin also points out that something else isn’t selling among them either, and he points out why:

But it’s not just Democrats. The GOP are also complicit, because even though they don’t support CRT, they are going about rejecting it in the wrong way, as they do with anything regarding race. Instead of making a clear case for why they are not racists, explaining how the smears are false, they seem to just ignore them, or hurl their own insults back. …

But the GOP never takes the time to defend itself from these attacks. Republicans don’t spend the time in our communities to show why they are the better political party to support. Therefore, the cycle of empty Democratic support continues, and Black Americans suffer.

This was one of my main themes in my book Going Red five years ago. Thanks to a chance encounter with North Carolina radio host Pudgy Miller at an Americans for Prosperity event in May 2015, I connected with black conservatives in nearly every county I researched. They all told me precisely the same thing as Martin writes here — that Republicans have failed to show up, let alone engage. Instead, Republicans by and large lecture with 30,000-foot sloganeering from the sidelines, abandoning them to the Democrats and defeatism. Six years later, Republicans still haven’t shown up, and now have trouble pushing back against CRT with any authority or authenticity because of it.

This fight would be a perfect opportunity for conservatives to join these communities and engage. People in those communities are thirsting for alternatives, or at least some choices. Instead, all they have is one political party that seems more interested in selling despair than hope. That’s on Democrats, but Republicans own some of that as well.