Critical Race Theory – Say What?

 

In the last few months there has been a flurry of activity, both in the media and in public policy debates, around the practice known as Critical Race Theory. Conservatives have lashed out at it, claiming it is some kind of socialist conspiracy to indoctrinate our children, and that it is behind the movement towards equity, diversity and inclusion in our schools.

First, some clarity about CRT. CRT is not a condemnation of any group of people as racist nor is it an attack on the fundamental beliefs of our democratic society. Rather it is an attempt to grasp how racism has been embedded in the institutions of our society – the legal system, public policy, education, and the very structure of our economy. It seeks to understand the basis of racial inequality in order to work toward racial justice.

These understandings are hardly new. In the 1960s and 70s, those of us involved in the Civil Rights Movement had come to understand that racism and white supremacy were not simply the attitudes and actions of individuals, but a system of institutional oppression and inequality that kept people of color in a subordinate position in society. In order to achieve racial justice, we argued that the system had to be changed.

Starting in the 1970s a new narrative emerged which claimed that the end of Jim Crow segregation brought about by the Civil Rights Movement had led to a “colorblind” society and opened up opportunity for all. The corollary was that the failure of communities of color to make progress was due to their own deficiencies and not to systemic racism. The War on Poverty, whose programs had benefitted poor whites as well as blacks, was replaced by the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, which devastated Black communities (and along with them, many poor white communities).

Despite the continuing effects of systemic racism, Blacks continued to make some economic progress (in areas like home ownership and education) in the post-Civil Right Movement period, but these gains were wiped out by the housing crash of 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Today, while many whites may reject overt prejudice and claim to be colorblind, the institutions of our society have continued to reinforce the systemic racism that goes back further than even 1619. Any objective analysis has to conclude that people of color are still very much the victims of “a long train of abuses and usurpations”, from treatment by the police, to lack of educational opportunities and access to health care, to a lack of generational wealth which could be used to buy a home or start a business.

Just a few startling statistics: the average Black college graduate makes less than the average white high school graduate; a Black male has a better chance of ending up in prison than he does of going to college; the average wealth of a white family is more than 10 times that of a Black family. This reality of systemic racism is well known to people of color – witness the works of Black authors like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michelle Alexander - but up until recently has been largely ignored by whites and the media.

Why is this causing such an uproar now? Because, as a result of the massive protests of last summer, educational institutions and some media, among others, are re-evaluating their understanding of racism and their approach to our history and focusing on including voices in our history that have been marginalized in the past. In a sense, we are seeing what Dr. Barber has called a Third Reconstruction, with a revival of the mass movement for equity.

What does this have to do with CRT? Nothing and everything. You don’t need an academic theory to acknowledge systemic racism. All you need to do is take off the blinders and open your eyes. But, unfortunately, some members of our society who benefit, or think they benefit, from a system that keeps people of color down, don’t want us to see the light.