OK, so what is Critical Race Theory? And why do right-wingers cringe at it like movie vampires shrinking from crucifixes? Why do right-wing cartoonists depict CRT as an alligator threatening youngsters in a kiddie pool, or as a mad Marxist waving a hammer and sickle in the classroom?
The concept has come to the forefront in the 2020s, but the basic idea has been around since the 1970s. Regardless of political leanings, a lot of people do not understand what it really means. Ergo, we really need to do our homework on the true meaning of CRT before we draw laughably ignorant editorial cartoons or cry wolf in essays and letters to the editor.
CRT is not intended to make whites ashamed of how they have treated – and continue to treat – people of color. It is intended to make all people aware of the systemic racism that is deeply rooted in many of our nation’s institutions, including law enforcement, the courts, health care and finances. Its purpose is to reveal how whites both benefit and suffer from the oppression of Blacks, Latinx, Asians and First Nations/Native Americans. We cannot root out the evil of racism unless we know where it lurks and how it got there.
Scholars are concerned that the United States has become “color blind,” pretending that one’s skin color has nothing to do with one’s socio-economic status. People pretend that we have achieved Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of a society where people are judged not by the color of their skin but the content of their character. Unfortunately, pretending that we have become a truly non-racist society doesn’t mean we are truly non-racist. Closing one’s eyes to the elephant in the room doesn’t make it go away.
In her book The Sum of Us Heather McGhee points out how racism hurts white people as well as its targets. When they smelled integration, whites were willing to not just cut off their noses to spite their faces, but cut off their entire heads to spite their noses. For example, when swimming pools were integrated, rather than let white and Black kids swim together, the committees that ran the pools filled them in. Private pool clubs, which could discriminate, charged fees that put their facilities out of the reach of disadvantaged white families as well as nearly all Black households.
Conservatives claim that stating our nation was founded on oppression and racism is unpatriotic. Balderdash! Is it unpatriotic to point out the truth? It is unpatriotic to encourage moral and social progress? Is it unpatriotic to seek solutions to the country’s woes? What could possibly be more patriotic than trying to solve problems that have plagued your country for generations?
You’ve probably heard the old saw that, for every 100 people who are hacking at the branches of evil, there is only one attacking the roots. If we want to eliminate racism, as well as other forms of prejudice, we need to stop hacking at the branches and go after the root causes. We need to face up to the inconvenient truth that bigotry pervades our society. We need to confront the racism within us all. We need to accept that ignoring racism, that pretending we are “color-blind,” merely allows it to not only survive but also thrive.
Those who fear CRT, who knee-jerk label it pernicious or subversive, are either ignorant of how racism weakens our society, or shamelessly racist. What is wrong with them? Maybe, as conservatives, they are too happy with how things stand and don’t want them to change. They are glad that straight white rich men are Large and In Charge, and don’t want this country to be any other way. They don’t want to share power with anybody who is “different.” They don’t want anyone rocking the boat. Our boat is one that needs to be rocked – hard.
Further information: https://www.thoughtco.com/critical-race-theory-4685094#
https://news.columbia.edu/news/what-critical-race-theory-and-why-everyone-talking-about-it-0
https://people.howstuffworks.com/critical-race-theory-news.htm
7 Responses to “SOUND OFF! 8/7/2021 Critical Race Theory”
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“CRT is not intended to make whites ashamed of how they have treated – and continue to treat – people of color.” Of course it isn’t, since that would be counter-productive. Shame is pretty generally counter-productive, not so much in changing behavior (it can be used that way) but certainly in changing outlook and understanding. But … the people who are the most afraid of that are the ones whom the shoe fits.
There’s a sying that “If someone says they don’t see color, that means that, to them, you are invisible.” I wasn’t able to quickly find the source of that, but I’m not sure it needs one. It’s valid anyway.
And of course there is a lot of fear of “science” and “big words,” so the words “critical” and “theory” may actually even be scarier to racists than the word “race.”
And Democrats are not off the hook. We above all must guard against racial color blindness which leads to shooting ourselves in the foot. For instance, I don’t believe it’s racist to say that, with all votes fairly counted (a HUGE “if” through no fault of yours, Freya) Stacey Abrams could win Georgia in a landslide. But there is no way she is going to be carrying Michigan, or Pennsylvania, or Missouri any time soon. That’s a racist fact, but it isn’t racist to say it. It’s, sadly, true. And in order to stop shooting outselves, we must face truth.
The article you shared in your daily list about Vanilla Isis (originally in Salon, byline Chauncey de Vega) is terribly pertinent here. Thank you for it, and for this.
“If we want to eliminate racism, as well as other forms of prejudice….” IF, is the operative word. What is wrong with the knee-jerkers, is just as you say, they do not want change, they want the control they see slipping away from them. When some idiot republican congressman said, years ago, that we were in a “colorblind” place, he was bull shitting, trying to minimize and avoid the truth, and put it back under the carpet.
The GQP has simply latched onto the CRT s the newest thing with which to try to strike fear into the hearts of their sheep.
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Highlighting the sins of our past does little to progress the country, or help us today. Americans being ignorant of their own sins, or history is an American past time. Racism cannot be erased through the legislative process. Even when this country is a non-white majority country racism will not disappear. With all this talk about how minorities have been discriminated against it’s sad the Native American has been totally disregarded. There will always be one group of people trying to put down another group of people, that is part of the American character. Racism is not going away soon no matter what we do. That doesn’t mean we should stop trying to make peoples lives better.
As I understood it, the right lashed onto Critical Race Theory while not understanding one iota of it, but also not understanding that it was only meant to be taught in college and university. But a discussion on this is moot; what really is the problem is that the Right doesn’t want children to see how bad some parts of American history really is and how that still reverberates in current times.
The Right wants to rewrite history so they can carry on admiring their Southern Civil War heroes without being called a racist. Don’t take the bait and start a discussion on CRT; start a discussion that everyone has the right to be taught an unbiased history 0f their country, warts and all.
100% agreed. Easier said than, done, though, when those parrot-sheep hybrods get a phrase into their heads.
Thanks Freya–apparently they want to ensure their children, and all those in GOP controlled states pushing these laws, receive an education preventing them from developing the analytical and other thinking and cultural skills employers require in today’s world.
I just like to think of critical race theory as “the truth”….thank you