Help me understand… Critical Race Theory

Just thought I should point out that Christians didn't conquer any lands or people in the Old Testament, because Christianity didn't exist at that point.  

Thank you! Yes, of course. 

I typed my very flippant reply in frustration and immediately wished I hadn’t. But I left it, meaning to add thoughts later and just never did. And since no one can remember everything I post, my reply doesn’t have context.

I’ve often mentioned I work for a Christian organization and have heard more than my share of Fox News talking points at staff meetings and during staff devotions - most recently through Joshua and Judges - with critical race theory and LGBTQ references tossed about. The fear and othering is strong among the older white conservative men I work with. I struggle putting any of it into words. 

Again, flippant and not even accurate, borne of frustration with the interpretation of CRT I experience with the Christians I am surrounded by. Thank you for pointing it out. 

I agree with a lot of this, but I am still confused on some points of the conversation that people are having.  

First, my understanding is that actual CRT is taught in college, not K-12 schools.  You seem to think it is important for people to understand the history of our country, so I am curious how you see that being taught in K-12 schools. 

Conservatives seem to have latched on to the idea that any teaching about racism in schools is wrong because it will make (primarily white) kids uncomfortable and will feel bad about themselves. But isn't there a middle ground between actively making people feel guilty (is that even as much a part of CRT as people think it is? Or is the guilt and feeling bad just part of knowing that history and necessary for growth? Does that make sense?) and ignoring it altogether?  

As the mom of biracial children, I don't want my kids to be made to feel oppressed, either.  Or for the divisions that white parents seem to think are inevitable to happen if CRT or racism is talked about in school.  My husband and I got into an argument about this the other day.  He seems to be of the mindset that it is better to ignore and move on than to "stir the pot" with the hopes that it will help to increase equality for all.  He won't talk about it too much because he doesn't like talking "politics" with me, but his point of view got me wondering what other Black people think about this topic?  All we are hearing are the opinions from White people--and they are the ones legislating.  I think we need to have more diversity in the voices that we are hearing and who is making the decisions.  

I would also recommend that everyone interested in this topic read Caste by Isabel Wilkerson.  That book helped me have a better understanding of not just the history of slavery but also the other forms of oppression in this country that white people are still benefiting from today.  I do think that there has been movement made in this area, but I worry that we are going backwards now.  @missjen that book may help you understand the statement that White people wont end racism until it benefits them.  

I think it's important to acknowledge that it's likely that none of us participating in this thread have studied critical race theory. Unless you're a lawyer or a sociologist, it is highly unlikely you've read and engaged with the various texts on the subject. (Reading one book does not make you an expert!) I've read bell hooks, but I'm not an expert on critical race theory. I've read some Kimberlé Crenshaw essays, but I'm not an expert on critical race theory.

So, my concern is that what I'm reading here, especially from folks who "oppose" the tenets of critical race theory, is based on someone else's uninformed opinions, not on the actual sources or work of the scholars themselves.

In terms of what is taught in schools, teaching about slavery, teaching about Jim Crow, teaching about redlining, bringing light to the fact that these things happened (and are still happening) in our country in various ways is not teaching that white people are inherently bad. It's teaching truth.

What should concern us all greatly is the passing of legislation banning the teaching of actual history in order to maintain a whitewashed curriculum. That is what should concern all of us - especially conservatives who supposedly want LESS government regulation. Because that smells like fascism to me.

A recent op-ed in Education Week is a great explanation of what's going on: www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-juneteenth-meets-anti-critical-race-theory-laws-where-do-teachers-go-from-here/2021/06

And ends with:
"The point of these laws is to scare teachers away from talking about hard history. The people passing these laws know that K-12 teachers aren’t teaching kids about critical race theory. Those that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo do not want students to know the truth."

You're right, none of us are experts or scholars on the subject. My opinions and understanding come from some reading, and a meeting I had with a 20 year CRT activist that I went to specifically to try to better understand. But I have not done a scholarly study on primary texts. But if this is supposed to be influencing our social systems, there has to be some accessible level of understanding of it. If it can't be understood, it probably isn't food for the masses.

Was it meant to be for the masses? It seems to me that the right has latched onto this issue because it gets people riled up. They don’t even fully understand what CRT is or isn’t yet are now experts who are convening in mobs at school board meetings across the county because tucker Carlson and Fox News (and their Fox News loving friends) tell them they should be scared and upset. But as posted above, the real consequence is that people are more divided and history classes will be even more whitewashed. And for what? Was there even any real threat the crt or anything similar was going to be taught in K-12 schools?

To be frank with you, neither I nor any of my GFs (many of whom are black) including their spouses have even talked about this. We’ve had many get-togethers already since May and not a single person has brought it up. No one in my family and my circle is paying attention to this. Black parents I know aren’t even aware of this manufactured controversy. Could it be just white parents, in general, in certain districts becoming hysterical over this lie?

I’m not sure. When someone posted a thread about people being loud at school board meetings, I had no idea it was as big of an issue last Fox and Facebook as it is. The other day, there was an article in our local paper about a group of parents who attended the school board meeting because they are upset about a recent equity audit and it sounds like they are bringing up the same issues as what is happening elsewhere.

I’ve reached out to one parent that is in charge of a Facebook group (which now has about 650 members) who are against the equity plan (even though I don’t think they really know what that entails). She said that they “aren’t racist and don’t condone racism but they believe the equity firm that the district used believes in ideas similar to Critical Race Theorists like Ibram Kindi, who propose discrimination if it makes the oppressed feel better.” She said that in another district having an equity officer caused people to leave the district because it led to further racial divides. When i heard about the group , I mentioned it to my Dh. He said he is in the group. Our discussion stemmed from there.

I don’t know what to say. I function and interact every day in the real world, not the Twitter world and not the Facebook world, conversing with a lot of black people, other minorities, and white people. Nobody seems to be perturbed. Everybody just seems to be happy we’re back to normal for the most part after over a year of COVID. Truly. In fact, no one is even talking about it. I doubt they’re even aware of it!

This brouhaha is actually a head-scratcher for me. This reminded me of the mass panic caused by Orson Welles’ radio broadcast of the fictional War of the Worlds. Masses actually believed we were being invaded by Martians.

Like I said, CRT is a complex legal theory that’s never even been tested and sufficiently peer-reviewed, and that’s all it is – a theory. Someone named Christopher Rufo started this lie about gov’t employees and schoolchildren being indoctrinated with CRT, and aided by Fox, it has become this full-blown hysterical squabble. This whole thing is a fabrication.

There is no “woke” mob using children as pawns in some leftist experiment. White children are not being taught to hate themselves and black children are not being taught to regard themselves as victims. There are many teachers on this message board so I would imagine if this was indeed being taught in their schools they would have already said so.

When schoolchildren are taught in history or social studies about the actual causes of the Civil War, the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement, diversity, slavery, etc, that’s just what it is—history and social studies, not CRT. When employees attend diversity training and race sensitivity classes or seminars, that’s all they are—diversity training, not CRT.

I don’t know if this will help at all, but maybe show this to DH: How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory

Thank you for sharing.  I always feel like the US is just some crazy messed up place with that we do/think/teach in regards to history.  It helps to know how other countries go about teaching their history.

I have no knowledge of this person... I found it a reasonable read, not too "legal" talking.

Opinion | I've Been a Critical Race Theorist for 30 Years. Our Opponents Are Just Proving Our Point For Us.
Seemingly overnight, my obscure legal specialty became a national lightning rod. What would CRT say about that?

Gary Peller is teaches constitutional law at Georgetown University Law Center. He is a contributor to and co-editor of Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement.

As a law professor closely associated with the critical race theory movement for more than 30 years, I am astonished. Most academic work never gets noticed at all, and ours is being publicly vilified, even banned. While we wrote footnotes and taught our classes, did our ideas become the new orthodoxy in American society and the foundation of K-12 education, as our critics claim.

www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/06/30/critical-race-theory-lightning-rod-opinion-497046

America. One step forward. .75 to 1.5 steps back.

Always.

What I'm seeing is people are objecting to this type of thing happening in schools and the workplace:




And this letter from a teacher:


Dear Joe (copies to Head of School, Board Trustees, & English Department Colleagues), I became a teacher at Dwight-Englewood because, as a parent, I loved how the school both nurtured and challenged my own children. Today, I am resigning from a job I love because D-E has changed in ways that undermine its mission and prevent me from holding true to my conscience as an educator. I believe that D-E is failing our students.

Over the past few years, the school has embraced an ideology that is damaging to our students’ intellectual and emotional growth and destroying any chance at creating a true community among our diverse population. I reject the hostile culture of conformity and fear that has taken hold of our school.  The school’s ideology requires students to see themselves not as individuals, but as representatives of a group, forcing them to adopt the status of privilege or victimhood. They must locate themselves within the oppressor or oppressed group, or some intersectional middle where they must reckon with being part-oppressor and part-victim. This theory of power hierarchies is only one way of seeing the world, and yet it pervades D-E as the singular way of seeing the world.  As a result, students arrive in my classroom accepting this theory as fact:  People born with less melanin in their skin are oppressors, and people born with more melanin in their skin are oppressed. Men are oppressors, women are oppressed, and so on. This is the dominant and divisive ideology that is guiding our adolescent students.

In my classroom, I see up close how this orthodoxy hinders students’ ability to read, write, and think. I teach students who recoil from a poem because it was written by a man. I teach students who approach texts in search of the oppressor. I teach students who see inequities in texts that have nothing to do with power. Students have internalized the message that this is the way we read and think about the world, and as a result, they fixate on power and group identity. This fixation has stunted their ability to observe and engage with the full fabric of human experience in our literature. 

In my professional opinion, the school is failing to encourage healthy habits of mind, essential for growth, such as intellectual curiosity, humility, honesty, reason, and the capacity to question ideas and consider multiple perspectives. In our school, the opportunity to hear competing ideas is practically non-existent. How can students, who accept a single ideology as fact, learn to practice intellectual curiosity or humility or consider a competing idea they’ve never encountered? How can students develop higher order thinking if they are limited to seeing the world only through the lens of group identity and power? 

Sadly, the school is leading many to become true believers and outspoken purveyors of a regressive and illiberal orthodoxy. Understandably, these students have found comfort in their moral certainty, and so they have become rigid and closed-minded, unable or unwilling to consider alternative perspectives. These young students have no idea that the school has placed ideological blinders on them. 

Of course, not all students are true believers. Many pretend to agree because of pressure to conform. I’ve heard from students who want to ask a question but stop for fear of offending someone. I have heard from students who don’t participate in discussions for fear of being ostracized. One student did not want to develop her personal essay — about an experience she had in another country — for fear that it might mean that she was, without even realizing it, racist. In her fear, she actually stopped herself from thinking. This is the very definition of self-censorship. 

I care deeply about our students and our school, and so over the years, I have tried to introduce positive and constructive alternative views. My efforts have fallen on deaf ears. In 2019, I shared with you my negative experiences among hostile and doctrinaire colleagues. You expressed dismay, but I did not hear any follow up from you or other administrators.

Since then, the stifling conformity has only intensified. Last fall, two administrators informed faculty that certain viewpoints simply would not be tolerated during our new “race explicit” conversations with our new “anti-racist” work. They said that no one would be allowed to question the orthodoxy regarding “systemic racism.” The message was clear, and the faculty went silent in response. 

The reality is that fear pervades the faculty. On at least two separate occasions in 2017 and 2018, our Head of School, standing at the front of Hajjar Auditorium, told the entire faculty that he would fire us all if he could so that he could replace us all with people of color. This year, administrators continue to assert  D-E’s policy that we are hiring “for diversity.” D-E has become a workplace that is hostile toward educators based solely on their immutable traits. During a recent faculty meeting, teachers were segregated by skin color. Teachers who had light skin were placed into a “white caucus” group and asked to “remember” that we are “White” and “to take responsibility for [our] power and privilege.” D-E’s racial segregation of educators, aimed at leading us to rethink of ourselves as oppressors, was regressive and demeaning to us as individuals with our own moral compass and human agency. Will the school force racial segregation on our students next?

I reject D-E’s essentialist, racialist thinking about myself, my colleagues, and my students. As a humanist educator, I strive to create an inclusive classroom by embracing the dignity and unique personality of each and every student; I want to empower all students with the skills and habits of mind that they need to fulfill their potential as learners and human beings. Neither the color of my skin nor the “group identity” assigned to me by D-E dictates my humanist beliefs or my work as an educator. Being told that it does is offensive and wrong, and it violates my dignity as a human being. My conscience does not have a color.

D-E claims that we teach students how to think, not what to think. But sadly, that is just no longer true. I hope administrators and board members awaken in time to prevent this misguided and absolutist ideology from hollowing out D-E, as it has already hollowed out so many other institutions.


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These are the type of issues that some parents and teachers are objecting to and it is being dismissed here as simply having the name wrong and only objecting to being taught the details of racism in history.
I hope this gives you another perspective and you weigh it along with what ever else other people are saying about it.