“Critical Race Theory” — The term appropriated by white supremacists
You can’t hear or read the news without people screaming they don’t want Critical Race Theory (CRT) in their schools. This is not a problem because no one is interested in teaching legal theory in our K-12 schools.
The first time I ever heard of CRT was in my PhD program after attending K-12, and receiving a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. I was introduced to CRT because of the role systemic racism plays in education inequity. Education is only one part of the link. Systemic racism permeates our political, economic, and judicial system on a macro-level and then it trickles down through our local schools, prisons, and economic policies. Systemic racism is intended to suppress the political and economic advancement of non-whites, especially Black people. A continuum of unequal Black education has existed under Jim Crow, Brown v. Board of Education (the Supreme Court decision that ordered desegregated schools), and into the 21st century.
Inequity has been perpetuated by intentional residential segregation, school funding, racial bias, and the ‘school to prison pipeline.’ My research focuses on the historical efforts to maintain white supremacy through inequitable education by design. This research involves the adaptation of a CRT lens to uncover systemic racism across institutions. If there are any school-age children who have this academic knowledge, I would personally welcome their support on my research.
The following two paragraphs provide a very brief introduction to Critical Race Theory (it took me four years to truly understand CRT so don’t feel bad if the explanation isn’t black and white for you…)
Brown and Jackson (2013) trace CRT’s origins to a meeting of legal scholars of color in the summer of 1989 in Madison, Wisconsin. This group met in response to the convergence of conservative court rulings that undid the Court’s intent in Brown v. Board of Education. Richard Delgado defines CRT as “a collection of activists and scholars interested in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power.” (Delgado and Stefancic, 2016, p. 3). Included in this study are the issues of economics and equality. Delgado and Stefancic (2016) further define the basic tenets of CRT as 1) racism is an accepted part of everyday life, 2) race is a social construct resulting from a combination of social thought and relations, and 3) white supremacy serves a mental and economic purpose. They emphasize that white supremacy is related to materialism which reduces the incentive for whites to eradicate racism. CRT scholars focus on how white supremacy oppresses people of color in the U.S. and how this systemic racism can be changed. Academic studies have provided ample historical evidence supporting the premise that much of our U.S. policy has and is, shaped by racism on a deliberate or unconscious level.
CRT is a validated theory utilized to look at racial inequity in education as documented in: school integration and resegregation, the ‘achievement gap,’ and the ‘school to prison pipeline.’ Kimberlé Crenshaw, a founding leader in CRT, posits that multiple identities and not merely race, should be considered when examining social issues. She coined the phrase “intersectionality,” defined as “a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects. It’s not simply that there’s a race problem here, a gender problem here, and a class or LBGTQ problem there” (“Kimberlé Crenshaw on Intersectionality,” 2017).
Do you understand CRT now? Are you ready to teach CRT to school-age children? Have teachers told you that your child is excelling in their CRT class?
I would be willing to wager that at least 99% of the public population and elected politicians fighting CRT in schools, know less about the subject than you do after reading this piece. Even though CRT technically began as ‘Critical Legal Studies’ in law schools in the 1970s, lawyers in the legislature are unlikely to be well-versed, if versed at all, in CRT. No one was yelling about teaching ‘CLS’ in K-12 schools when many of these same legislators were in law school.
In an ironic twist, it’s not really CRT that is upsetting some people…it’s teaching ‘truth in history.’ There is no national standard for teaching history. Curriculum is determined on a state level, then processed at a district level, and interpreted by a teacher who has limited knowledge and bias in their perspective (this is true for all teachers, regardless of skin color or demographics).
When thinking of history in context, consider the vastness of the ocean with each person or event being the equivalent of a raindrop. When the raindrop hits the ocean, it becomes part of a larger entity that is ever changing based on tides, weather, and environmental factors. It is impossible for a raindrop to be accounted for or to be closely observed after it has made contact with the ocean. The drop of water has become part of something much bigger and quickly disperses once impact is made. If there could be different perspectives shared of the raindrop falling — they would be from the falling raindrop itself; witnesses to the raindrop making contact with the ocean; and the view from the ocean. Each of these entities would have widely varying perspectives of the raindrop hitting the water based on who is giving the accounting. The raindrop may feel heroic, witnesses may believe it lacked direction, and the ocean probably wouldn’t even acknowledge the raindrop’s existence or any contribution made from its mission. This is how history in construed over time.
“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.” John F. Kennedy
Like the raindrop falling into the ocean, history is interactive and quite complex. It is made up of various people, places, times, and perspectives. Depending on the storyteller and how often the story is told, one version becomes accepted as fact — even though it is only told with one perspective.
Voice and version presented comes from the powerful. Throughout time, history is traditionally told by the victor or the hegemony. Because the story comes from a voice of authority, their version is accepted, retold, and not questioned. Having power means having control of the narrative that is recorded and accepted as fact.
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell
When studying the Revolutionary War, we are taught that the Sons of Liberty were heroes. Regardless of their motivations, we are not taught that these men were also insurrectionists who were horribly cruel and violent. During the Stamp Act of 1765, a British stamp collector was attacked by a mob in his Virginia home where they vandalized his house, captured him, and then tarred and feathered him. To be tarred and feathered meant having hot, bubbling tar poured all over a (usually naked) body before the feathers are applied, causing horrible burns and maiming — sometimes even killing the victims.
In Boston, a local stamp director had his effigy burned in the streets with threats of violence and death if he did not resign. When he refused, the Sons of Liberty burned down his office building and other buildings. They were trying to intimidate colonists from cooperating with English rule and to incite rebellion among common Americans against England. The British troops who fired upon an unruly mob in Boston had been pelted with rocks and ice-balls before they shot into the crowds. They were acquitted of murder by an American jury after being defended from the charge (by no less than John Adams).
This thuggery is typical behavior for a revolution but only stories of heroism are usually told over time. Even the account of the 1773 Boston Tea Party after a meeting led in Faneuil Hall by Sam Adams, has been called into questioned. One myth is that the ships boarded by the Sons of Liberty (the Beaver, the Dartmouth and the Eleanor) were British but they were built and owned by Americans and two of the ships were primarily whaling vessels. Additionally, the 340 chests of tea destroyed were private property belonging to the East India Company (estimated worth at $2 million in today’s currency) and did not even belong to the King. More ironically, the tea was Chinese, not Indian. There was not a new tea tax but an existing one that was not lifted with other taxes. The Boston Tea Party did not directly start the American Revolution but encouraged the British Parliament to deal harsher with rebellious American behavior which then encouraged more rebellion. Many of the Founding Fathers, including George Washington, opposed the destruction of private property in protests (history.com). The Boston Tea Party story wasn’t recorded in writing until 1834, over 60 years later, because the truth made the these so-called heroes look like vandals. Historians of their day didn’t want to make the Sons of Liberty look bad, even in the name of American Revolution.
Considering that property destruction was viewed as too sensitive to record by historians, imagine what more serious crimes have gone unrecorded to whitewash history. This is exactly why the Constitutional Convention was held in private, with no published notes of the actual debates within the Convention until unofficial notes were printed years later. The Founding Fathers were afraid the public couldn’t handle the sometimes-ugly truth of what went into and came out of the Constitution’s writing. Our prevailing U.S. history has been told by white, mostly European men, who have edited out uncomfortable facts to protect the narrative and their power structure.
Our nation’s history has a common theme of atrocities committed against people of all backgrounds, ethnic groups, religions, and genders. Genocide against the Indigenous people wiped out millions of people in the name of European settlers’ desire for property, commerce, and expansion. The Atlantic Slave Trade brought approximately 12.5 million slaves from Africa with 10.7 million surviving the trip to America between 1526 and 1867. Each of these slaves had a life and a story. Most of that history was lost through the separation of family, loss of identity, age, death, and lack of their voices being recorded. In 1790, almost 20% of the population were slaves whose history was not considered worthy of recording. White men who killed Native Americans or owned slaves enjoyed hero status and did not want this social positioning tainted with the horrible truth of their own cruelty and savagery. Even in World War II, we fought genocide abroad while locking tens of thousands of Asian Americans in prison camps at home — an event rarely discussed in school classrooms. History is told in the eyes of the powerful who maintain myths to keep their power.
“When part of a person’s vision is disrupted, they start seeing the world differently within seconds.” Scientific American
Now, in the 21st century, we are becoming increasingly aware that our history lessons have been incomplete — like a jigsaw puzzle with large portions missing. We see the overall narrative but not the details, uncomfortable truths, or moral ambiguities in the narrative. This is done for convenience, programming, and to prevent the threat that these truths may challenge white supremacy. Because these myths are told generation after generation, we accept the incomplete narrative as a complete picture. This phenomenon, known as “filling in,” is when people are given incomplete information and they automatically fill in the missing details. “An optical illusion of broken lines can become continuous if the break falls in the blind spot” (Scientific American).
These missing pieces of history belong primarily to the marginalized — people of color, the poor, and the victimized (religious, gender, sexuality). Those people screaming about CRT are really trying to say they (and by implication, white folks in general) don’t want to know the truth and that children can’t handle learning the truth. For these opponents, truth in history would be the equivalent of spilling the beans about Santa Claus.
The reality is that children grow up and learn the truth about Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and the Easter bunny…and they can process and handle the truth versus fantasy. Children are strong and resilient with open minds and open hearts. It is the adults who want to continue to live in a fantasy world where everything is bright and not so coincidentally, white.
What are these screaming people really afraid of? They believe historical truth threatens their power and privilege. They want to continue to believe in Santa Claus because who doesn’t love Santa. For those who still believe, I hope that Santa brings them enlightenment for Christmas.
(For those looking for books on CRT, these are considered the crucial texts… they are not coming to a K-12 school near you but they are available on Amazon: Critical Race Theory: An Introduction and Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement)
Cited references:
Brown, Kevin and Darrell D. Jackson (2013), The history and conceptual elements of critical race theory, in Handbook of critical race theory in education (pp. 9–22) M. Lynn & A. Dixson (Eds.), Abingdon: Routledge.
Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2016). Critical race theory. New Delhi, India: Dev Publishers and Distributers.
Kimberlé Crenshaw on Intersectionality, More than Two Decades Later. (2017, June). Retrieved from https://www.law.columbia.edu/pt-br/news/2017/06/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-adapts-in-a blink/#:~:text=A%20similar%20phenomenon%20called%20%22filling,falls%20in%20the%20blind%20spot.
