Critical Race Theory

 

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

-  John Adams, 2nd President of the United States

Critical race theory (CRT) is the hot topic on Fox News these days. As The Washington Post notes, Fox News has mentioned it almost 2000 times this year. It has become the latest right-wing bugbear, with Republicans saying it will destroy democracy by indoctrinating students who are exposed to it with racism and hatred for our country. The Wikipedia  entry notes that it has been around since the 1970s, primarily in academic circles, as a framework to “critically examine U.S, law as it intersects with issues of race in the U.S. and to challenge mainstream American liberal approaches to racial justice.” I seriously doubt there are any Republican politicians who can truly articulate what CRT is all about, except as a new way to whip up ideological fervor in their MAGA followers. 

I am neither an academic historian nor a legal expert. I do consider myself fairly well read on the issue of race, what it does and does not mean, and how it has affected this nation for 400 years. What follows are my thoughts regarding how we have come to this point in our history.

Let’s start in Virginia, at Old Point Comfort in 1619. That was 12 years after the English established a settlement at Jamestown, further up the James River. The English sought gold in 1607; they found Native Americans and no precious metals. The settlement went through famine, poor relations with the Natives, and turned to growing tobacco as a money crop (the history of addictive drugs is indeed long in America). In August 1619, 20 enslaved Africans were sold to the colonists. While the status of the Blacks is debated, laws in Virginia ensured they were slaves by the 1660s. As American history unspooled over the next 3 centuries, it became clear that whites regarded themselves as superior to people of color. Barriers to advancement for Blacks and Native Americans are legion and are engraved in the U.S. Constitution as well as state constitutions and all manner of laws. Blacks built the White House and the U.S. Capitol. Plantation slavery helped build modern capitalism and made the antebellum South rich. Despite emancipation and amendments to the Constitution making Blacks citizens, the advent of Jim Crow laws after Reconstruction continued to oppress Blacks in the South and elsewhere. Even after the civil rights movement after World War II, starting with integration of the military by President Harry Truman and going through the 1960s, Blacks and other people of color still found themselves at the bottom of society in America. 

The history we have been taught in public schools, though, often elides the problems of race and what it means. Race has been embedded in the legal, economic, social, political, and educational life of Americans, with the premise that what is good in America is all white. That is simply another manifestation of white supremacy -- that white people are better, smarter, abler than people with black or brown skin as a consequence of the melanin content of their skin. It is not only schools, however. Children pick up quickly from parents, siblings, other family, and friends verbal and nonverbal messages that something about those with darker skin makes them dangerous and inferior. Education always begins at home. 

This does not mean the overt racism we have seen over the last decade. Watch a video of a Trump rally if you want to see overt racism. The problem in my mind is the silent, embedded racism that does not need to be spoken or to wear white KKK garb or to be demonstrated by violence. It is the silent variety that is pervasive and denied and influences attitudes in a subconscious fashion that I am talking about. Children become adults and enter the workforce. They become builders and mechanics and teachers and doctors and salespeople. They will carry the silent virus of racism within which can bleed into their societal interactions without them even being aware. That is what CRT, in my opinion, should examine and explain and correct.

How to correct this? I am uncertain but it seems clear that an understanding of all of the facts about how our nation evolved is critical to move in the direction of correction. That requires education that presents those facts as part of the entire story of America. Schools need to teach the truth and not a sanitized mythology of how wonderful our predecessors were. Children need honest answers when they pose questions of their primary teachers, parents. Adults need continuing education in civics and history. We all need to think critically and talk and debate. It is far too easy today to slip into the comfort zone of ideology. For those on the left, not everything about whites in America’s past is bad. Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner and fathered children by Sally Hemings; he also wrote magnificently and, if his words were meant for white men of wealth in the 18th century, our battle continues to be applying them to all women and men. For all people. For those on the right, understanding the facts of history is not an indoctrination into socialism or communism. America will never again be the America of the past. Knowing the facts does not mean hate for this country. It means an acknowledgement that, like everything in life, America is not perfect. We will never make it perfect because what is important is the journey towards perfection. That journey in the complicated world of the 21st century requires every American be allowed to participate.

CRT reminds me today of the six blind men examining an elephant. It means something different to each of them. To me it is much simpler. Know the facts of American history, good and bad. Acknowledge that you personally were not there committing the bad stuff. Endeavor to understand each other not from a standpoint of supremacy but from a standpoint of equality and equity. And always remember the buried, embedded virus of racism. That virus is real and a danger to all of us.