Critical Race Theory: A Controversial Yet Necessary Truth
by Rashan Swift and Roslyn Mickens
The phrase "Critical Race Theory" has been receiving a lot of media attention over the last few months and has become the subject of heated debates within many school districts, state houses and even Congress. Video recordings of tense meetings between School Boards and parents show how emotionally charged CRT can be for parents, students and teachers, regardless of their feelings about the often misunderstood concept.
Critical Race Theory, according to Wikipedia, is “a body of legal scholarship and an academic movement of civil-rights scholars and activists in the United States that seeks to critically examine U.S. law as it intersects with issues of race in the U.S. and to challenge mainstream American liberal approaches to racial justice.” Originally created in a 1989 workshop, Critical Race Theory is a means of looking at the world in terms of social practices and the justice system that governs society.
The six tenets of CRT are as follows:
1. Racism is normal and not an aberration in the United States.
2. Black people will achieve civil rights only when their interests converge with white interests. 3. Race is a social construct used to oppress melanated people.
4. Storytelling and counter storytelling is key for both sides.
5. Legal advances for melanated people tend to benefit the dominant white groups. The racial hierarchy remains intact.
6. Negative stereotypes are assigned to minority groups which benefit white people.
Critical Race theorists want the premise of counter storytelling to be reflected in public schools. According to Greg Huffman’s article “Twisted Sources: How Confederate propaganda ended up in the South’s schoolbooks” April 20191, upwards of 70 million students in the South were indoctrinated with the United Daughters of the Confederacy propaganda from 1889 until 1969. The ‘Lost Cause’ was the United Daughters of the Confederacy’s (UDC) propaganda to minimize the nefarious nature of slavery by depicting slave owners as benevolent and the enslaved people as ‘workers’, for example. The UDC had fundraisers and pressured lawmakers to erect statues of Southern Civil War generals in prominent spaces and parks throughout the South. These statues were erected mostly in the 1930’s: almost 80 years after the Civil War. These are the same statues that many people are demanding to have removed (some successfully) from town squares and city parks in 2021.
1 https://tinyurl.com/y35yfce3
While white students had segregated schools and minimal interactions with Black people in their daily lives, white teachers instilled ‘Lost Cause’ views using these textbooks to bolster, cement, and indoctrinate students with racist views. Racism became their religion. Racism is normal in the United States. After all, the first people brought to the shores of Virginia in 1619 were to work to improve the lifestyles of their white masters. This was established long before the country was established in 1776 through the Declaration of Independence of the United States from England. Something so deeply rooted in a forced hierarchical society is normal, not merit based, and cannot be deemed an aberration.
Race is a social construct as it was invented in the 1700’s by European Enlightenment philosophers, who instead of classifying people by ethnicity or location, used physical characteristics of skin and cranial structure. A person’s skin color was a means to quickly identify individuals to create and stratify a racial hierarchy. The Historical Foundations of Race provides more background to how race was constructed in the 1700’s2. Supporters of anti-racist teachings look to promote these lessons the same way the ‘Lost Cause’ educators indoctrinated their nefarious philosophy to millions of Southerners through the education system. And today, the education system has not righted itself from the imbalance of ‘Lost Cause’ doctrine. In schools, children receive little to no counter narrative to slavery from the vantage point of the Black Descendants of Freedmen. According to some Black scholars, CRT is a rehashing of Black history from the 1960’s popularized in progressive colleges and universities. Others believe it is past time to teach the facts about chattel slavery, the reasons that Reconstruction failed, the Black Codes, peonage (where Black people were kidnapped and forced to work to pay off imaginary debts [ ‘Slavery by Another Name’ by Douglas Blackmon], convict leasing, targeted neighborhoods for drugs and violence.
"Critical Race Theory is a legal perspective that argues that racism is normal, not aberrant, in U.S. society." Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings. Distinguished Professor and author
Conservative critics of Critical Race Theory believe that these types of lessons teach students to hate America and to be ashamed of their country instead of being patriotic and proud. They believe that CRT teaches students to be divided and that one group (white Americans) are inherently evil and oppressors. Non-whites are constantly struggling to overcome the oppression placed on them by whites. Supporters of Critical Race Theory and other anti-racist teaching curriculum say that CRT is not being taught in grade schools and high schools. It is an academic practice taught in graduate schools and to law students. They believe that the recent wave of anti-Critical Race Theory sentiment is just a trojan horse used by Conservatives to attack any teaching or evaluation of history and American society that addresses the role of racism in the creation and expansion of the United States of America.
School boards across the nation have elected to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory and several state legislatures are creating laws to prevent the teaching of CRT or anything related to it. Tennessee and Texas are among the latest states who have passed laws banning lessons deemed to be Critical Race Theory. Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis, has banned the inclusion of Critical Race Theory from the state's civics education programs and the Florida State Board of Education has banned Lessons that deal with Critical Race Theory and "The 1619 Project".
2 https://tinyurl.com/fb97vznt
“Florida civics curriculum will incorporate foundational concepts with the best materials, and it will expressly exclude unsanctioned narratives like Critical Race Theory and other unsubstantiated theories.” Governor DeSantis stated back in March while announcing the new statewide civics education program.
“Let me be clear, there is no room in our classrooms for things like Critical Race Theory. Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money....teaching children the theory”, DeSantis continued, was “trying to make people view each other based on race.”3
This past June the Cobb County School Board became the second in metro Atlanta to ban teaching Critical Race Theory and The New York Times’ 1619 Project in its schools. Its decision comes weeks after its neighbor to the north, Cherokee County, approved a similar resolution. The resolution to ban Critical Race Theory and The 1619 Project was introduced by board chairman Randy Scamihorn, who said he brought up the topic because educators allegedly said on social media they were using part of the theory in their classroom discussions.
According to Chairman Scamihorn, critical race theory is a Marxist concept that pits one group of people against another. “It’s revisionist history and history should be thorough”.4
"CRT is not a diversity and inclusion “training” but a practice of interrogating the role of race and racism in society that emerged in the legal academy and spread to other fields of scholarship.” Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw—who coined the term “CRT”—notes that CRT is not a noun, but a verb. “It cannot be confined to a static and narrow definition, but is considered to be an evolving and malleable practice. It critiques how the social construction of race and institutionalized racism perpetuate a racial caste system that relegates people of color to the bottom tiers. CRT also recognizes that race intersects with other identities, including sexuality, gender identity, and others. CRT recognizes that racism is not a bygone relic of the past. Instead, it acknowledges that the legacy of slavery, segregation, and the imposition of second-class citizenship on Black Americans and other people of color continue to permeate the social fabric of this nation."5
So what ignited these recent attacks against this often misunderstood concept? Some say they were prompted and encouraged originally in response to the New York Times’ "The 1619 Project", which attempts to view America's history by focusing on the impacts consequences of slavery and other institutions that continue to effect the lives of Black Americans today. The project's assertion that the arrival of enslaved Africans in the British colonies in North America was a significant event and marker in the development of the colonies and later the United States has stoked the ire of conservative critics who have sought to undermine the findings of the project.
In September of 2020, then President Trump announced the creation of the "1776 commission" to reinstate "patriotism" in American schools, as an obvious response to "The 1619 Project". Mr. Trump
3 https://nypost.com/2021/03/18/desantis-blocks-critical-race-theory-from-florida-classrooms/
4https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/cobb-county-school-board-bans-teaching-critical-race-theory/WSPF6NAVZJC2PNPBAPD7SCXOXE/
5https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/civil-rights-reimagining-policing/a-less on-on-critical-race-theory/
signed an executive order "establishing a national commission to promote patriotic education" which has since been rescinded by current President, Joe Biden, on January 26th, 2021.
“I’m rescinding the previous administration’s harmful ban on diversity and sensitivity training and abolish[ing] the offensive, counterfactual 1776 Commission. Unity and healing must begin with understanding and truth. Not ignorance and lies,” Biden said at the White House.
Much of the credit for this hostile and aggressive response to Critical Race Theory must go to writer, filmmaker and conservative activist Christopher Rufo. Since his September 20th appearance on the Fox News show “Tucker Carlson Tonight”, Rufo has become the public face of the anti-Critical Race Theory movement. He has been influential in some of the anti-CRT bills that Republicans have crafted, with lawmakers taking advice directly from Rufo.
“Its connotations are all negative to most middle-class Americans, including racial minorities, who see the world as ‘creative’ rather than ‘critical,’ ‘individual’ rather than ‘racial,’ ‘practical’ rather than ‘theoretical.’ Strung together, the phrase ‘critical race theory’ connotes hostile, academic, divisive, race-obsessed, poisonous, elitist, anti-American.”6
In recent months, conservatives and systemic racism deniers have used a particular quote by Dr. Martin Luther King's to condemn "Critical Race Theory".
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
This is an intentional and disturbing perversion of Dr. King's “I Have A Dream” speech in an attempt to justify the banning of any CRT curriculum. It is much easier for those who have enjoyed certain privileges to want to promote the color blind portion without addressing the inequities caused by policies that were designed to discriminate by race and color. They want to believe that not seeing color today fixes these problems. But supporters of this view are being dishonest. Just saying that you don't see color or judge someone by their race (noble as it may be) does not address the historic inequities which still exist presently. Dr. King himself would take issue with using his speech to promote this colorblind point of view. In Dr. King's last book, "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?" published in 1967, he illustrates:
"Ever since the birth of our nation, white America has had a schizophrenic personality on the question of race. She has been torn between selves—a self in which she proudly professed the great principles of democracy and a self in which she sadly practiced the antithesis of democracy. This tragic duality has produced a strange indecisiveness and ambivalence toward the Negro, causing America to take a step backward simultaneously with every step forward on the question of racial justice, to be at once attracted to the Negro and repelled by him, to love and to hate him. There has never been a solid, unified and determined thrust to make justice a reality for Afro-Americans.”
As a result of the push for anti-racist teaching (often confused for Critical Race Theory) to be introduced and taught in schools, many white parents view this as a problem for their children. They believe their children will be taught to feel shame or “white guilt” for the injustices they have
6https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/how-a-conservative-activist-invented-the-conflict-over-critical-race-theor y
perpetuated against Black and Indigenous people in order to secure their status within the racial hierarchy. They may also fear that by being exposed to anti-racist teachings, their children will grow up aware of the inequities around them and may feel inclined to use their abilities to call out racism and injustice where they see it thus removing them from the top of the racial hierarchy. They are afraid that their children may become what they despise the most - active anti-racists and woke social justice warriors. Meanwhile, proponents of Critical Race Theory and anti-racist teaching demand a fair and truthful narrative replace the bias and often fictitious information spewed from ‘Lost Cause’ indoctrination. This racist propaganda that the Daughters of the Confederacy was able to be published in textbooks for 80 years with no counter narrative. These advocates want to support their focus on teaching facts over feelings. After all, no one was concerned about the feelings of Black children when they were being told how slavery and their oppression was not so bad according to their revisionist doctrine. Pushing a counterbalance to this fiction is necessary. How else can educators right the wrongs of the miseducation of the nation and its children?
