Critical Race Theory (CRT). What it is and what it’s not. And how to stand up to people using it to make false and dangerous claims.
The 1970s
In the 1970s, a small group of legal scholars and professors developed a framework called Critical Race Theory. They created it to examine the impact of systemic racism on the legal field. There was nothing controversial about this in the 1970s.
The 80-year period of legalized, racial segregation and discrimination that we call Jim Crow, had only just begun to be dismantled with laws like the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The Next Decades
Over the next several decades, scholars from other fields, like housing, government, education, and the environment, began to use this framework to examine the impact of systemic racism on their institutions. Some professors of African American history today just started to hear the term Critical Race Theory for the first time in 2020.
That’s because, after the death of George Floyd, millions of white Americans wanted to understand systemic racism. And that was deeply troubling to people on the political right. So much so that one well-connected, racist person, took the term Critical Race Theory and began to conflate it with everything from equity to restorative practice to culturally relevant teaching.
How Critical Race Theory Is Used Now
Critical Race Theory is used by Republican politicians and their white, evangelical cultural Christian billionaire backers to attack anything remotely related to racism, racial injustice, or our nation’s long history of learning about it.
For example, if a book has been written by a non-white author or has non-white characters in it, then rest assured there will be white people’s eyeballs looking very closely to determine if that book should be banned or not in school libraries. That is just one example of the white man’s definition of CRT.
How To Counter Its Misuse
To counter people who believe in Critical Race Theory and its misuse is to simply insist that people stand for the teaching of our history in its entirety.
We will never reach people arguing about what CRT is or is not. The best way is to demand that we teach our nation’s history in its entirety. Know that the people on the far right will continue to fight with their misguided use of CRT.
More on CRT.