The Buzz: The Truth About Critical Race Theory

It is appalling to me that Critical Race theory (CRT) is being demonized as some nefarious ideology designed to spread lies about race and racism in America and corrupt the minds of innocent children. I contend that those who are attacking CRT are grossly mischaracterizing what it is in a coordinated attempt to stop the renewed efforts since George Floyd’s murder to address systemic racism in this country.

CRT is getting a lot of attention from politicians, talk show hosts and the news media in general. I think that most people who are talking about it don’t even really know what CRT really is — its history or purpose. It is seen as such a threat that 16 states have introduced legislation to ban CRT in education, including K-12 and at the college level. These bills also seek to ban diversity training in government. Conservative politicians in the past few months have used CRT as one of their key talking points, denouncing it as Marxist, racist bigotry. Senator Ted Cruz, recently spouted that CRT is every bit as racist as the Klansmen.

Let’s not be fooled: those who oppose CRT really do not want the truth to be told about our sordid racial history. As more contemporary scholars like Nikole Hannah Jones (The 1619 Project) and Ibram X Kendi (author of How to Be an Anti-Racist and Stamped from the Beginning) gain popularity by telling the untold stories of racism in in this country, there is also a groundswell of opposition. This is nothing new, though. Since reconstruction, attempts to create true equity for Black people and to live up to what our constitution espouses, have been successfully thwarted by white supremacist systems from Jim Crow laws and ongoing voter suppression, to redlining in housing and legal discrimination in employment …the list goes on. During the sixties, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s teachings were attacked by many white people including those in highest levels of government (e.g. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover). Of course, Dr. King was ultimately assassinated for non-violently protesting for justice.

So, what is CRT anyway? Kimberle Crenshaw, Black woman scholar, attorney and Executive Director of the African American Policy Forum is credited with coining the term Critical Race Theory in the late 1980s to begin to understand why laws were not working as intended to create equity for Black and other indigenous people. She was on a segment of MSNBC’s ReidOut  earlier this week. She very simply demystified CRT as “not a thing but rather a way to look at a thing.” She said, “It is a way to study the enduring racial inequities in this country and ask the question ‘why?’”

The opposers of CRT are using their platforms to take back power they feel they lost from the racial reckoning movement that gained momentum last year. They think that if they are successful at widely demonizing CRT, it will kill the new movement for racial justice. Fox news, for example has mentioned CRT in negative terms 1,300 times in the past three months.

Here are 10 truths about Critical Race Theory that those of us who are anti-racists, allies and power brokers need to share as widely as possible.

1. CRT is a particular body of scholarship originally intended to understand the impact of laws on racial equity.
2. CRT’s earliest origins date back to the 1970s, when some lawyers, activists and legal scholars realized the advances of the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s had stalled, and they sought to understand why.
3. CRT argues that racism is an everyday experience for most people of color, and it examines the systems that sustain it.
4. CRT teaches that we live in a racialized world with systems that advantage white people and disadvantage people of color.
5. CRT does not advance racist theories as alleged by the critics.
6. CRT, as originally defined, is not being taught in k-12 settings. It is a course taught in some law schools and other graduate programs.
7. CRT is not Marxism.
8. CRT does not teach that all white people are racists.
9. CRT does not teach that the rule of law does not exist as the detractors espouse. It teaches that the rule of law has not been fair or just for Black people and other marginalized groups.
10. Any attempt to acknowledge our nation’s history of racism in any way has historically been deemed unpatriotic and anti-American. CRT is the latest scapegoat.

In essence, CRT is about calling out systemic racism and critically examining its roots so that we can dismantle it and live up to our constitution that “guarantees” liberty and justice for all. It is “critical” that we continue to tell the truth about race in the country. I know that the popular refrain is speak truth to power, but I am reversing that and asking us to speak our power for truth. Use your power to debunk the lies about CRT. We need more voices to tell the truth about CRT.