The Buzz: Wisdom from Critical Race Theory Summer School

This week, I have had the immense privilege to take part in the African American Policy Forum’s Critical Race Theory Summer School program. The forum brings together activists, legal scholars and academics from many related fields in this critical moment to ask: How can we as practitioners effectively respond to polarization and backlash against critical race theory and related work? Here are some of the key insights offered so far by the brilliant speakers assembled for imperatives in moving forward in this work:

• We must move beyond the liberal response to “isms” of “we’re going to find these bad actors” – to instead make clear the ways isms are inherently systemic.
• We must reject the imagined idea that law is neutral. Law is a method of producing knowledge and power. It has historically been and continues to be used to uphold white supremacy and other forms of systemic oppression.

• We must move beyond “the answer to hate speech is more speech.” The capitalist “marketplace of ideas” concept suggests that better ideas will naturally spread farther; this assumes neutrality and is failing, precisely because not all perspectives have equal access to amplification, power, and influence. This passive disparity, and active silencing of marginalized experiences, history, and perspectives is what we must draw attention to at this juncture.
• We must reject the false “Lost Cause” narrative, which was constructed following the Civil war to suggest that the war was generally about “states rights” and that slaveholders were benevolent. Primary source documents penned by confederate leaders themselves easily disprove this claim by stating clearly that the confederacy was devoted to white supremacy and the institution of slavery as natural and a “moral truth.”
• We must reject the narrative that affirmative action is “reverse discrimination” – it is in fact “diminished overrepresentation” of white people in institutions. Challenge the cultural assumption that massive overrepresentation of white people is neutral.
• We must learn to embrace and share power. As authoritarian forces have increasingly claimed power, those of us committed to equity have in many ways shied away from it. We must learn to get close to and comfortable with power, and use it equitably.
• We must mobilize and build coalitions across communities fighting for justice – racial justice, environmental justice, voter access, academic freedom, and many more – as this is a united battle, and the only way we will win is together. With numbers, we can win.

• We must refine our language. Many of us have been trained as “linguistic marathoners” when what we need in this moment is clear, succinct communication – catchy slogans to rival phrases like “welfare queens” that have been effectively utilized by politicians and commentators to advance grievances and seed panic among white communities.
• We must reject the false equivalency between free speech and academic freedom. Academic freedom is intended to protect researchers from external pressures (from the state, and from private interests). Current colorblindness and “viewpoint diversity” laws being advanced are authoritarian – allowing political interests and the state to intervene in what information is shared in academic spaces.

Yesterday, Kimberlé Crenshaw left us with a charge: It is going to take an all-hand-on-deck effort to fight this fight – and we cannot afford not to fight it.