The Case for CRT

If you’ve been paying attention to the so-called “Culture Wars” wing of today’s GOP, you have seen their arguments against teaching anything beyond the white-bread history that informed historiography in the United States throughout most of its history – including the years when many of these folks were in school.  They have used the term “Critical Race Theory” to capture all that they don’t like about what they call “wokeism” – which, so far as I can tell, is any idea that annoys them.

Just to make sure we’re on the same page here – here is a pretty standard dictionary definition of Critical Race Theory: “a set of ideas holding that racial bias is inherent in many parts of western society, especially in its legal and social institutions, on the basis of their having been primarily designed for and implemented by white people.”  This definition goes on to elaborate that since the 1980s, this theory has been used in discussions of US law and with reference to the experiences of African American people.  The people on the left who respond that “CRT is a law-school level course and isn’t taught in the public schools, you know-nothings on the other side,” are both right and wrong.  It’s not taught as a “theory” to be explored and tested in the lower grades.  But it does inform the way their teachers and the authors of their textbooks present elements of the past, so it’s useful to understand what it is – and what it isn’t. 

Critical Race Theory didn’t spring like Athena from the brow of Zeus; it is firmly grounded in the broader “Critical Theory” associated with a specific school of 20^th century German philosophy.  We don’t need to do a deep dive into that today; what’s important is that this philosophical approach seeks, not just to describe societies, but to dig deeper into the structures that shape the societies and the motivations of the people who created these structures.  Its focus is on how to make societies function better for everyone, not through changing individual attitudes, but by identifying the institutions that make societies perform in certain ways and then changing those institutions. 

There are all varieties of critical theories: critical gender theory, critical economic theory, critical literary theory, critical legal theory, critical social theory, critical theory of technology – you get the idea.

And let’s remember what a theory is: it’s an analytical framework within which we examine the world around us.  It’s a set of hypotheses and questions.  Critical Race Theory asks the question: “Is it possible to explain the persistence of racial division in America by looking at the political, economic, and social structures that have developed over the 400 years the country has existed?”  People who use this framework then ask questions about the things they see around them. “Could this explain the racial divisions we observe?” And because theories exist to identify cause and effect, the logical result of theory is a set of recommendations: “We have shown that factor X is the cause of racial disparity in education; let’s fix factor X.”

A good theory often reveals information that runs counter to the theory. This doesn’t mean it’s a bad theory; in fact, the counter-evidence often tightens the theory's theoretical reach.  That’s the role theory plays in intellectual arguments.  It’s not about answers – rather, it’s all about asking the right questions.  The answers you get depend on the questions you ask.  If you never ask the right questions, you’ll never solve problems.

The opponents of Critical Race Theory claim that this theory somehow blames all white people for racial divisions in America.  They say it identifies all white people as racists, and in the process makes white children in the schools feel bad about being white.  This is, in fact, the opposite of what Critical Race Theory suggests: that racial divisions in America exist precisely NOT because white people are racist today, but because the institutions that structure American society originated (in many cases) with people who had racists intentions when they created the institutions.  So long as we operate, unquestioningly, through these institutions, we continue the racist understandings of the people who created them.

It's not hard to identify the racist underpinnings of many of the documents and structures that form modern America.  The Constitution was ratified only because signers acceded to the Southern demands to allow slavery to remain unchallenged.  The entire process of westward expansion that shaped the first half of the 19^th century was organized around the idea of where slavery would and would not be allowed.  The Civil War was fundamentally about the future of slavery in the United States; later characterization of it as being about “states’ rights” was a gloss placed on it by people who had supported the Confederacy (and by their descendants).  The racist laws of Jim Crow America were couched in the idea of the personal freedom of the (white) power structure to continue to enjoy its dominance. 

This 2022 map shows how the anti-CRT forces have brought about changes across the country.  Not every state’s restrictions on teaching about race in classrooms or state agencies are equally draconic – but any state that had implemented any such restrictions has at least bought into the idea.

Modern Americans live in a society shaped by this history.  People often don’t even recognize how their current world has been shaped by the historical sea they are swimming in.  Fish don’t “know” that they’re in the water. What CRT does is help people identify the elements of society that encourage racial division.  That’s all.  What people do with that knowledge is up to them.

So why is it important for children to learn about CRT – that is, about the role that systemic racism (not individual racism) has shaped the society they’re growing up in?  Let’s assume that as children move into middle school and high school, they will encounter statistics about income and educational levels in the United States.  They will observe a pattern – that African-Americans make up a disproportionate percentage of people at the lower end of these scales.

These are federal economic statistics from 2021.  A person who has never been taught about how institutions and laws in the United States were rigged against minorities for centuries might conclude that there’s something fundamentally inferior about African Americans and Hispanics.  If they were as “good” as white people, they wouldn’t be poor.  Right?

Statistics about education levels are a little slippery – there are a lot of variables in play – but this chart captures the overall picture:  whites and Asian Americans have higher education and earnings level, while Blacks and Latinos fall behind. Without an understanding of how we got to this place, students would logically conclude that minorities are just not as smart or accomplished as white people. You wouldn’t know about segregated or subpar schools in minority communities; you wouldn’t know about implicit bias in standardized tests; you wouldn’t know about the historic and  systematic exclusion of minorities from higher education — including legacy admission of offspring of alumni (the most pervasive — and generally accepted — “affirmative action” program in the country.)

One compelling aspect of this graph is the decline in life expectancy across all populations.  This was driven by COVID, drug overdoses, and a variety of other health issues.  But I want to draw your attention to the racial disparities this chart shows.  African-Americans live shorter lives than white Americans.  CRT suggests that we ought to look at the correlation between poverty and shorter life expectancy, education levels and shorter life expectancy, and institutional bias among health care providers.  Without some knowledge of CRT, You wouldn’t know about the misallocation of healthcare resources, research and clinical trials using only white populations, misdiagnoses of blacks by white medical professionals, deliberate placement of environmentally hazardous facilities in minority communities, the impact of for-profit hospitals and nursing homes, and the like. The only conclusion you could draw was that Blacks are physically inferior to other groups in America. 

 Now, here’s the crux of what I am arguing today.  If students are going to graduate from school and lead productive lives, they will encounter both the statistical and experiential reality of these statistics.  They will perceive racial disparities – both economic and educational – all around them.  How will they react to this world they find themselves in?

If young people have been armed with CRT – that is, with an awareness that much of the economic and educational disparity they observe has been driven by institutions through which their society operates – and for the existence of which they are not responsible – they will come to understand that social change occurs through political action to change the society’s institutions. 

• I grew up in Jim Crow Virginia, with red-lined suburbs and segregated schools.  I never questioned why the black community a mile away from my neighborhood featured substandard housing.  I never questioned why I never saw black children in the movie theaters or restaurants my family patronized.  I never questioned why there weren’t any black children in my elementary, middle, or high school classrooms.  I wasn’t aware of the water.  If I had not learned about the institutional structures that perpetuated inequality, I would have assumed that the African-Americans who lived nearby were poor and uneducated by choice, not by circumstance.  CRT didn’t exist while I was growing up; I developed an understanding of what was going on through my parents, my education, and my peers. I was lucky.

If, however, these same young people have been allowed to remain blissfully unaware of the systemic racism of American institutions, they are likely to conclude that minorities in America are lazy, unmotivated, happy to be poor, uneducated, and sick – for all intents and purposes, that minorities in America have brought their status on themselves.  Students who are not taught through the lens of CRT are MORE likely to support racist policies and become racists themselves because they are left to their own observations to understand their world. They’ll believe in white supremacy, and oppose any efforts that address inequity.  That inequity, they will believe, is somehow “natural.”

The only way to begin America’s racial healing is to encourage people to recognize that we have all inherited institutions – the Electoral College, the structure of the US Senate, banking and financial regulations, education policies, housing policies, and on and on and on – that were created by people who either were themselves racists or didn’t mind kowtowing to the racist whims of other people.  We can do better than that.  CRT provides a framework for that to happen.