Critical Race Theory.

Ban Critical Race Theory Now | Opinion
MAX EDEN , RESEARCH FELLOW, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
ON 5/5/21 AT 11:00 AM EDT

The Debate

Critical Race Theory (CRT) indoctrination is already largely illegal under federal law. But states must now go further and protect all students from racial discrimination by asserting the power to enforce the principles of the Civil Rights Act.

Many parents might not yet understand what CRT is. The ideology has gone by a number of names in recent years: identity politics, intersectionality, wokeness. Academics have generated convoluted justifications and rationalizations for it; journalists have crafted stilted narratives to promote it. But at its core and in practice, CRT amounts to institutionalized racial hatred.

When Paul Rossi, a high school teacher at Manhattan's Grace Church School, objected to CRT at his school, the lead teacher admitted: "We're demonizing white people for being born." Robin DiAngelo, author of the bestselling White Fragility, argues that all whites are inherently racist. Bettina Love, an education professor, has written in Education Week that "white teachers need a particular type of therapy" to address their "white emotionalities" and to undo "whiteness" in education. Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of The New York Times' CRT-infused "1619 Project," has plainly stated that her project's deepest ambition is "to get white Americans to stop being white."

Anyone who doesn't immediately understand how morally abhorrent this all is need only swap the races and/or epithets used in these statements. Can you imagine if school leaders admitted that they were demonizing children for being born black? If bestselling authors insisted that all blacks are inherently vicious and must work on their Black Instability? If teacher magazines suggested that black teachers need therapy to address "black emotionalities?" If curriculum designers explained that their goal was to get black kids to stop being black?

There would be a nationwide moral outcry that there must be laws to bring these bigots to heel and protect our nation's children from their morally demented ideology. Indeed, there already has been such an outcry and such a law passed: the civil rights movement and the Civil Rights Act.

CRT, however, defines itself explicitly against traditional civil rights. According to Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, CRT is "unlike traditional civil rights discourse" in that it "questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism and neutral principles of constitutional law."

When most Americans think about the civil rights movement, they think of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream that his 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."

But Robin DiAngelo has declared that it is "dangerous" to say that you try to treat people equally, regardless of race. Teacher magazines like Educational Leadership insist that teachers must "challenge racial 'colorblindness.'" Teacher support books recommended by the Department of Education declare that when teachers try to be color-blind, they are actually creating an "unsafe environment" for students.

Indeed, Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist and arguably the most influential CRT public intellectual, has issued a clarion call on behalf of racial discrimination: "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."

In the context of education, this is a call for teachers to racially discriminate against white children as a supposed remedy for past racial discrimination against black children.

It's no wonder, then, that CRT practices are the mirror images of some historic practices that horrified us when we learned about them in school (or, for many older Americans, witnessed them firsthand).

For instance, in Evanston, Illinois, a school separated staff by race for training, offered racially segregated "affinity groups" for students and parents, told teachers to treat students differently based on race and publicly shamed white students based on their race.

This is all obviously illegal, and the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights had declared it, properly, to be so—that is, until the Biden administration officially suspended that decision, suggesting that all of this might be totally acceptable.

No one could possibly doubt that if a school district shamed black students based on their race, told teachers in writing to discipline black students more severely or offered "whites-only" professional development opportunities, that Biden's Office for Civil Rights would force them to stop.

Unfortunately, the Biden Department of Education has clearly gone "woke." When Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona was Connecticut's commissioner of education, he declared, "We need teachers behind this wave of our curriculum becoming more 'woke.'" When Deputy Education Secretary-nominee Cindy Marten was superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District, she oversaw training that told white teachers that they were "spirit murdering" black students. And last month, the Department of Education issued a proposed regulation for federal civics grants that name-checked the "1619 Project," Ibram X. Kendi and a book by education professors advocating against "colorblindness."

State-sanctioned racism is, of course, not a new phenomenon in America. It is only the group being intentionally victimized and the institutions endorsing (or even enforcing) racism that have changed.

Continued..........

 

By the 1960s, it had become undeniably clear that some states would not apply the protections of the 14th Amendment to all of their citizens. Because of that, Congress gave the federal government express authority to enforce the principle of equal protection. But today, it is becoming clear that, when it comes to education, the federal government is not exercising its authority to protect all students. Therefore, it is time for state legislatures to step forward and ensure that the Civil Rights Act is vigorously enforced.

Critics of proposed state laws addressing CRT in schools contend that these proposals constitute "censorship." While the details of these proposed laws vary—and matter greatly—this charge is, by and large, bogus.


No teacher today is free to say things like "black students are ignorant and therefore I decenter, disrupt and dismantle blackness in the classroom." Such rank bigotry is (properly) illegal under the Civil Rights Act. Only by abandoning Enlightenment rationalism and the avowed neutral principles of the rule of law—as CRT affirmatively encourages its adherents to do—could one argue that stopping what is obviously "illegal discrimination" when applied to one race becomes "un-American censorship" when another race is the target instead.

Anyone arguing in good faith against state laws addressing CRT in schools must argue against what these proposed laws actually say. For example, Idaho's recently passed bill to ban CRT in the classroom declares that no educational institution "shall direct or otherwise compel students to personally affirm" that "any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color or national origin is inherently superior or inferior [and/or] that individuals should be adversely treated on the basis of their sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color or national origin." Therefore, the Idaho law's critics must argue that schools actually should tell students that certain races are inherently superior or inferior, and that individuals should be treated differently based on their race.

This, as we have seen, may well be what leading CRT activists actually believe. But it is not what everyday critics of such laws typically contend. They'll make arguments about censorship or the First Amendment, or claim that these laws will hurt efforts "intended" to address racism.


But we, as a nation, must not address the legacy of institutional racism by institutionalizing a new form of racism in our schools. As the federal government appears to have abandoned its duty to protect all students from racial discrimination, state legislatures must step forward and accept the responsibility of enforcing the Civil Rights Act by banning CRT indoctrination in public schools.

 

The Republican Push to Ban Critical Race Theory Reveals an Ugly Truth | Opinion
MARCUS JOHNSON , POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND POLITICAL SCIENCE PHD STUDENT
ON 5/5/21 AT 11:00 AM EDT



This month, the state of Idaho's legislature moved to ban public schools and universities from teaching critical race theory. It was not the first time Republicans moved to ban CRT—a framework for understanding the way race has impacted our history and continues to impact our present. Last year, former President Trump issued an executive order banning federal agencies from trainings that include content related to the topic. Recently, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis insisted that, "There is no room in classrooms for things like critical race theory." And other school districts in red states are quickly moving to join Idaho.

But this push to ban CRT is deeply misguided.

Critical race theory was developed by legal scholars and academics including Derrick Bell, Robert Cover, and Kimberlé Crenshaw. Its major premise is that the American political system was initially designed to benefit whites at the expense of other racial groups. Political actors at the time of the country's founding and in the decades since created institutions which perpetuated an ideology that empowered whites and discriminated against minorities. These actions created political and economic disparities which are still present throughout society today.

For example, political decisions made in the United States prevented Black people writ large from being able to develop wealth and political influence. Analysis from the Pew Research Center found that in 2013, the median net worth of Black families was only $11,000—compared to $141,900 for white families. There remain persistent racial gaps in life expectancy and in educational outcomes. Even in today's job market, academic research indicates that Black people with the same credentials as whites get fewer job opportunities. Perhaps most strikingly, a Black American who commits the same crime as a white American is often sentenced to a longer prison term.


These are facts. Indeed, many of them are undisputed, even by many of critical race theory's critics. So why the Republican opposition to the theory? Why the need to ban it?

It's not like critical race theory has crowded out their views. Plenty of conservative interpretations of events are taught in schools. Many public schools in the South are taught that the Civil War was about states' rights, not slavery. There is also the popular view of American exceptionalism: the idea that America is "uniquely virtuous" with political, economic, and social systems that are simply supposed to dominate the global order. This view is not only a fundamental piece the education of many American students, but for decades it ruled our foreign policy.

In fact, for its entire history, it has been white men who have crafted the mainstream narrative of how America's history and present should be understood. That is changing, and the old narratives of America are being challenged—in large part due to scholars like those who have formulated and spread critical race theory. In other words, critical race theory's popularity is a sign that people other than white men are getting to interpret American history, for the first time.

At its core, the argument about critical race theory is a debate about power, part of a much larger debate about who has power in American society and which voices deserve to be heard. America has for nearly all of its history been politically dominated by white men. White men wrote the Constitution, they developed the early political institutions, and they crafted the worldview and political narrative from which America was understood.


Women and minorities did not get the opportunity to influence America's politics for over a century after its founding. For the overwhelming majority of American history, there was no question of whose voices mattered and who wrote the history books.

But in an increasingly diverse society with a rising multicultural class, there are more and more voices who are challenging existing power structures. And that is ultimately what this debate over critical race theory is: It's about who gets to define what it means to be American, who gets to define how U.S. institutions work.

And that's what the discomfort with the theory amounts to: It is a threat to those who have always had the power to define us as a country. They are now losing the power to shape that narrative, and the people gaining it—finally—are people of color.

Critics of CRT often allege that its proponents hate America, or they claim that CRT portrays all white people as evil. They allege that the theory encourages segregation, indoctrination, or Marxism. None of these claims are true: Critical race theory is not about hating white people or America. It is about acknowledging the structural and institutional biases purposefully created by the Founders, codified into the Constitution, and then perpetuated by future generations.


And critical race theorists believe that America can change; it's why they are advocating for reforming institutions, to ameliorate biases and make the country more equal. These theorists don't hate America; they want to make it a much more egalitarian version of what it currently is.

But their optimism is not shared by their Republican opponents. I fully expect more Republican-led state governments to follow Idaho's lead and move to ban public schools from teaching critical race theory. And in so doing, they are harming students and preventing them from understanding how many of their fellow Americans understand contemporary racial disparities and our national history.

Most students have heard the mainstream narrative about the founding of the United States, slavery, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement. But many students have not been given the opportunity to hear how scholars of color perceive and interpret these events. Doing so is not indoctrination, as CRT opponents allege; teaching students that there are many different interpretations of events shows them how to be critical thinkers. It gives them the chance to compare and contrast different perspectives, which is key for high level learning.


Banning critical race theory shuts students off from these diverse perspectives and is akin to saying there is only one way to understand American history.

America has already changed drastically from the Founders' original vision. Are we going to keep holding on to the old perspectives of the past, perspectives that held minorities and women in contempt? Or are we going to move on to embrace the worldview of the future? People opposing critical race theory and proposing to ban it are simply on the wrong side of history.

But there is also a great irony in Republicans of all people jumping on the bandwagon to ban critical race theory. All the hoopla over CRT has led conservatives to abandon a supposedly core tenet of their ideology: small government. And it's led them to abandon a newfound attachment to free speech, one they've been championing recently in the form of incessant criticism of Big Tech and cancel culture.

Conservatives have long argued that the government is supposed to stay out of the affairs of regular citizens. And more recently, they have become obsessed with the perception that free speech is under attack from Big Tech platforms and liberal media and publishing houses. Republicans like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz routinely call out cancel culture, mocking liberals for policing speech and decrying the power of Big Tech to deplatform views they don't like.

But what do you call banning critical race theory from schools?

It's not just ironic. There are potential First Amendment issues at stake. After all, if Twitter decides it doesn't want Trump on its platform, that's a private company making a decision. But the government stepping in and barring a historic worldview because Republicans don't like it is a form of real, actual government censorship.

No doubt the courts will weigh in on the Constitutional question. But those who decry critical race theory's impact in the classroom would do well to ask why they are so threatened by people of color being allowed to have their say, a welcome change after a long history of inequality. They might not like what they find.

Marcus Johnson is a PhD student at American University who studies how political institutions impact the racial wealth gap.

 

I think the 1619 project and CRT are a bit wacky and not needed Just teach history and don't opinionize it.

I think a lot of this stuff is kind of mean spirited and is just kind of a payback and money grab capitalizing on white guilt and outrage.

I have to agree that if this stuff was taught about inherrentness with any other race they would be called racist.

Now I am all for not sugar coating the History of America but I think CRT is a bridge too far, with that said the argument against used a lot of red herrings and things that I felt were not related to CRT.

 

Yes that's wrong.