Days before the 2020 elections, a concerned parent from Bentonville, Arkansas, sent a disturbing email to the 1776 Project PAC. The email contained a class handout and classroom audio files recorded by his son, a student at Bentonville High School. The audio files contained two recordings of lectures and class discussions by Benjamin Ring, an English teacher at Bentonville, telling his class the definition, history, and virtues of critical race theory. 

Ring set aside days of his English III course to walk his students through critical race theory in detailed fashion—and the student, wishing to remain anonymous, was quick enough to hit “record.”

Throughout the lecture and discussion, Ring intones that critical race theory is a beneficial and positive thing, stating that “CRT can be useful, helping us become a better society.”

After receiving the email containing the fairly cut-and-dried evidence of critical race theory instruction, the 1776 Project PAC confronted the Bentonville School District about this material being taught in classrooms, sharing parts of the audio in a tweet on Nov. 6.

Axios jumped in on the controversy—where things took a wild turn. Axios reporter Worth Sparkman claimed that the 1776 Project PAC was lying, and that critical race theory wasn’t taught anywhere outside of post-graduate university law schools. Sparkman acknowledged receiving the audio and presentation proving CRT was taught at Bentonville before he ran his story.