The whole purpose of Critical Race Theory is to provide Americans with a way to understand the legacy of racism, even though those stories sometimes hurt. All of this revisionist woke curriculum; you are not going to do this to our children. Teachers across the country are caught in the middle of the latest flashpoint in America's culture war. Critical Race Theory.
So what exactly is it, and why is there a push to ban it in schools? Critical Race Theory is a body of ideas and a set of approaches to understanding the history and the presence of American society that looks at how racial unfairness has been woven into the fabric of our institutions. In other words, Critical Race Theory, or CRT for short, is a legal academic framework centered on the idea that racism is systemic.
It first started to coalesce in the 1970s when Black, Hispanic, and Asian legal scholars were researching the persistence of inequality, despite the landmark legal victories of the Civil Rights era. The legal scholars undertook a set of analyses and investigations aimed at trying to make sense of the puzzling persistence of racism in our legal system, in our political system, in our economy.
CRT has been studied in fields like sociology, economics, and political science. It's been used to examine housing and educational segregation, unconscious bias, and criminal-justice reform. Contrary to what often critics portray as judging people intrinsically as being racist or not or holding people responsible for, you know, slavery in the past, it is actually to open up a conversation of how we all inherit and live in a society sort of beyond our choosing, right?
We didn't choose where we were born or what racial group we were part of. And yet, we have this common history. How do we understand that history? What does it mean for us? Those are the sorts of questions that Critical Race Theorists were trying to grapple with. The racial reckoning spurred by the police killing of George Floyd brought the decades-old framework back into the spotlight as some schools sought to implement reforms that better address race in classrooms.
We think the thing that Critical Race Theory would add to that conversation is that we not sort of confine that horrific example to Derek Chauvin, but to think about how, well, there were other law-enforcement officers present, including officers of color, who stood idly by. And so that pushes us to think about, you know, this phenomenon as not simply one of racism by Whites against Blacks, right? We mean, it makes us think more critically, more engaged, more seriously around, "Well, why do these practices happen?"
The push against CRT gained steam under former President Trump when he directed federal agencies to end any diversity training related to Critical Race Theory. Though ultimately blocked on First Amendment grounds and rescinded by President Biden, the fight over CRT at the state level is still in full effect. The focus on CRT is a way to latch on to a concept that very few people sort of really understand, which sounds kind of scary perhaps to someone not trained in what it means and latch on to that as a kind of football in this ongoing fight over the future of this country about racism.
As of mid-June 2021, 21 states have introduced bills attempting to restrict the teaching of Critical Race Theory and/or impose limits on how race is discussed inside the classroom. And those limits are often vague. In Texas, for instance, House Bill 3979 says teachers must explore current events from multiple positions without giving "deference to any one perspective." aIn Texas, for instance, House Bill 3979 says teachers must explore current events from multiple positions without giving "deference to any one perspective." and the instructors, educators, especially at the K-12 level, will not go there and will not run the risk of upsetting parents or being misunderstood or drawing the ire of lawmakers.
There's language in this bill, like, "Teachers need to present a balanced perspective on current events," for instance. You know, they have to do their due diligence to present multiple viewpoints. But what happens if they're talking about an issue in the classroom and they try to present multiple viewpoints, but, you know, that student comes home and tells their parents about the lesson that day, and the parent thinks, "They didn't do a good enough job of presenting this viewpoint." So who decides when the teacher has done an adequate job of presenting multiple perspectives on an issue?
It saddens me and disappoints me that instead of really embracing this opportunity to confront our nation's past and to tell authentic and more accurate narratives about experiences, you know, diverse people in this country, that we're looking to sweep it under the rug. We're looking to erase it even further from our memories.
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