That Time I Asked Chris Rufo a Question

Let me ask you a hypothetical question. Say you’re minding your own business, and out of the blue you’re asked by the site Open to Debate (previously known as Intelligence Squared) if you’d be willing to be a reporter and ask a question during the following topic: Should Certain Books Ever Be Banned in School? Oh, and during a recording you will be asking Chris Rufo a question. Chris Rufo, by the way, is the conservative activist who invented the whole “Critical Race Theory” debate so popular with the right-wing at this particular moment in time. The New York Times actually wrote a little piece about him called How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory.

Do you do it?

Well. Obviously yes. It’s a helluva thing and you’ve no previous experience in this area, but you’re curious. You give it a go.

None of this is hypothetical, of course. It’s what happened to me last month and it was eye-opening to say the least. Before I give you my run-down on the experience I can provide for you the entire discussion as posted by Open to Debate here:

All of this was entirely new to me. I follow politics, of course, but I’ve never had to apply that knowledge in any meaningful way before. And while I was aware of the typical tricks and dodges a person might do to avoid a straightforward question, I’d never had those techniques used directly on me before. Eye opening? You don’t know the half of it.

Going into this discussion, my primary job was, as I understood it, to come up with a question for both of the panelists. I planned out two possible questions beforehand, but decided I’d leave myself open to asking something entirely different if the debate skewed in one way or another. In the end, I went with my original question, but tapered it a little.

You see, as I’ve mentioned before, Chris Rufo is the guy who put the term “Critical Race Theory” into the current lexicon. The term existed before he encountered it, but he’s one of the people responsible for making it a household phrase. Yet as he debated Yascha Mounk I noticed that race was NOT something he wanted to bring up. Never mind that this was a debate about the banning of books and titles involving a critical view of how white people have treated other races have been consistently banned around the country. All Chris wanted to talk about were LGBTQIA+ and sex issues. From this, I could only assume that on this show he’d determined that this was the safest ground for him to stand on. Repugnant ground, sure, but by continually discussing specific titles that Yascha wasn’t familiar with, he could feel like he was doing well.

Of course, it would have made a lot more sense for Chris to have had this discussion with someone intimately familiar with the books being discussed. I was a bit disappointed with the fact that while Yascha was able to speak in general terms, Chris would make factual errors that passed without comment time and again.

And then it was my chance to ask him a question.

Calling Chris out directly on the factual errors was tempting but to what end? Instead, I decided to turn the conversation back to a subject that Chris really should have been familiar with: Critical Race Theory. I figured the best course of action was to ask both him and Yascha what a Worst Case Scenario would be for such books not being banned vs. being banned. You can hear the results of that question specifically here:

You see what he did there, right?

Not having much to go on, Chris pulled a pretty classic dodge. Once again, he did NOT want to get into a discussion of race. Read into that what you may. Instead, he listened to where I was based out of (Evanston) and redirected his entire answer to talk about . . . pronouns? Honestly it was a bit garbled but the gist of it is that the worst case scenario of not banning books for kids is . . . top surgery?

Now this was nowhere near the question I asked him, a fact that Yascha (fortunately) pointed out. I wasn’t sure how much back and forth I was allowed to have with Chris. This was one of those situations where you think about it later and come up with the perfect comeback long after the fact. What I should have said in response was, “That’s an interesting dodge and odd mention of my town. Now could you answer my question about Critical Race Theory, please?” But, of course, I didn’t. Still, the very eliding of my question made Yascha’s response look good in comparison, and that was nice.

So what have we learned? Were I asked to contribute in a similar way in the future, I’d hold my ground a little firmer and not be quite so baffled by such a right field answer to a straightforward question. I’m glad I did this, absolutely I am. But if anything similar comes up again, I hope I have a chance to respond, even if I’m just the one pitching the questions.

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