“Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.
“The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others.”
That’s how Education Week magazine defines the biggest educational controversy since kids started getting sex education in school. Essentially the problem they’re trying to address is that students really should be learning more about history than they are.
Of course, racists on the right have attacked it with all sorts of distortions. You’ll hear them say it’s supposed to make white children feel guilty or that it gives black people an excuse for their failures.
You don’t need me to tell you what they’re saying is mostly bullshit.
They’re afraid of kids learning the truth about all sorts of different historical things.
I went to school in Ohio through the first half of eighth grade. Then in January 1963 we moved to a former Confederate state that just a few years before had closed many of its public schools rather than integrate.
Mississippi? Alabama?
Nope, Virginia.
We were halfway through the centennial look back at the Civil War, and the eighth grade history textbooks didn’t even mention that the South had lost. As for all sorts of other things we have come to learn in the last 60 years, forget it.
I saw a list of things written by a man who teaches AP American History, and a look at that list says a lot about why critical race theory matters.
Jim Golden writes it’s no accident that:
— You learned about Helen Keller instead of W.E.B, DuBois.
— You learned about the Watts and L.A. Riots, but not Tulsa or Wilmington.
— You learned that George Washington’s dentures were made from wood, rather than the teeth from slaves.
— You learned about black ghettos, but not about Black Wall Street.
— You learned about the New Deal, but not “red lining.”
— You learned about Tommie Smith’s fist in the air at the 1968 Olympics, but not that he was sent home the next day and stripped of his medals while given a lifetime ban from the Olympics.
— You learned about “black crime,” but white criminals were never lumped together and discussed in terms of their race.
— You learned about “states rights” as the cause of the Civil War, but not that slavery was mentioned 80 times in the articles of secession.
Impressive, huh?
Golden says that privilege is having history rewritten so that you don’t have to acknowledge uncomfortable facts. Racism is perpetuated by people who refuse to learn or acknowledge this reality. You have a choice.
Well spoken, Mr. Golden.