To the editor:

In your Nov. 5th paper, Elwood Watson, a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University, was concerned that folks out here in SW Kansas were clinging to false outrage over critical race theory. 

The way he framed his arguments, I was frankly surprised that more Tribunistas didn’t write Letters to the Editor.

The prof indicated “conservative cultural critics” were working overtime to “discredit proponents of the (CRT) movement.” Wait a minute. If CRT is based on history, how can it be a movement that is discredited?

He spends a lot of time listing how noisy school board meetings have become this issue, but he fails to indicate that most of this noise is in other states. The Tribune covers most things in Great Bend or Larned, and around here. I’ve not seen any coverage of rioting at school board meetings.

I rarely know what liberals truly think, so I doubt if Mr. Watson knows what conservatives think. But Watson goes on with his ritualistic opponent flagellation. “Conservatives believe they have found another issue in the so-called culture wars to entice their largely bigoted, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic base of voters with.”  

Mr. Watson, I’ve always thought that if you are putting an article in the Great Bend Tribune in the middle of Barton County, Kan., calling its readers “largely bigoted, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic base of voters” and that we “swarm like locusts” while targeting school districts – that sort of name-calling won’t convince us to adopt your viewpoint.

I learned that going to history and sociology classes in a small religious college. Not East Tennessee State University.

Ron Smith

Larned