The Conflict of Critical Race Theory

According to the great blue-check-marked accounts of Twitter, Terry McAuliffe sunk his chances against rival Glenn Youngkin for Governor of Virginia when he said in a September debate, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” This was offensive enough to the parents of Virginia that even some Democratic voters pulled the lever for the Republican candidate, ensuring him an underdog victory. The issue of parental involvement in school curriculums has indeed been contentious in Virginia, where parents are being labeled domestic terrorists for airing their concerns at school board meetings. But one phrase is shouted again and again, whipping up bitter partisan tensions: critical race theory. The question of whether critical race theory, or “CRT’’ as it’s known, should be taught in schools is one of great academic and political importance.  Unfortunately, both Democrats and Republicans have abused and toxified the use of the phrase beyond any realm of sensibility. This behavior stops us from having any real conversation about what is being taught in the classroom, giving us nothing but further polarization.

Unfortunately, both Democrats and Republicans have abused and toxified the use of the phrase beyond any realm of sensibility.

To understand CRT, we first have to understand what it is not. Many on the left would like us to believe that CRT is:

A. A useful idea to teach in schools 

B. So complicated and esoteric that it is not taught in schools

C. Simply curriculum that teaches about the United States’ history of racism and discrimination

D. As Nicole Wallace put it bluntly on MSNBC on Election Night, not real at all

E. All of the above

None of these definitions, which progressive commentators like to flip between during any given time slot, are correct. In contrast, many on the right would like to have you believe that CRT is:

    A. Teachers telling their students to hate the United States

    B. Teachers telling their students to hate white people

    C. Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”

    D.  A Jewish conspiracy 

    E. All of the above

None of these definitions, which parents like to scream about during school board meetings, are correct. So what is CRT?

As noted a number of months ago in the Journal, “CRT was defined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in the late 1980s to describe the intellectual movements that begin to emerge in the 1970s in the circles of activists and academics who felt that the work of the civil rights era was incomplete. By the early 1990s, CRT had become a full-fledged school of literary criticism—a way of reading not just literature and film in classrooms but also everything that we come into contact with in the world.”  What is understood as CRT has continued to evolve even to this day. In 1995, Scholars Gloria Ladson Billings and William F. Date described critical race theory as a  program for “making race the central construct for understanding inequality.” In other words, inequality exists, and racism, the ordinary state of affairs, is what causes it.   

Racism is everywhere, even when it is not evident. In Ibram X. Kendi’s  “How To Be An Antiracist,” Kendi argues that any policy in the United States that produces inequitable racial outcomes is racist, and legislation is needed desperately to reverse this evil. For example, if white students are more likely to score well on an SAT test because of their socioeconomic background, the SAT test must be racist, and therefore should be banned from college applications, lowering the standards of academia and sidelining the issues that created the socioeconomic differences in the first place. The theoretical texts of CRT are not typically taught in elementary or high school classrooms, but the ideas of CRT manifest in many ways, such as schools removing high-level and “gifted” courses because they’re not diverse enough (making sure nobody is granted access to them at all). Once the most extreme tenets of CRT are applied to curriculum, the result is often race essentialism, where characteristics of racial groups are weighed heavier than the character and capabilities of the individual. This has led to parent protest, with many suggesting that their children are being given different messages based on the amount of melanin in their skin.

The reactionary right is using CRT to sabotage teaching young people about slavery, Jim Crow, or massacres of Native Americans. The revolutionary left, if not outright endorsing CRT, is gaslighting the American public by telling us it isn’t being taught at all.

For the average American, this is a lot of information. So why sink into the weeds of academic legal and critical theory when it feels so much better to hear your favorite CNN anchor call all Youngkin voters agents of white supremacy, or to hear your favorite State Senator say the local second grade teacher’s lesson on the Harlem Renaissance is communist indoctrination? The reactionary right is using CRT to sabotage teaching young people about slavery, Jim Crow, or massacres of Native Americans. The revolutionary left, if not outright endorsing CRT, is gaslighting the American public by telling us it isn’t being taught at all. 

And it is being taught. Christopher Rufo, a conservative writer who many credit with starting the mainstream CRT debate, points to the website of the Virginia Department of Education, which recommends “Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education” for teachers. In 2015, public school teachers were encouraged by the McAuliffe administration to “embrace critical race theory,” with the goal of “re-engineering attitudes and belief systems,” and the Loudoun County School District (the epicenter of the CRT war) recently hired a consulting firm to “implement critical race theory.” Beyond this verifiable data, parents speak to their children at home, and are made aware of the fixation on race in the classroom by just glancing at their first or sixth grader’s homework. 

The evidence does nothing but further incense parents against Democrats, on account of being called bigoted and delusional for simply telling the truth. Editor of Newsweek Opinion Batya Ungar-Sargon recently wrote in “Common Sense with Bari Weiss” that “the ‘Critical Race Theory isn’t real’ meme is not about race. It’s not about politics. It’s not even a culture war, really. It’s about class. It’s about one class—a highly-educated chattering class—using highly specialized language to tell normal parents that they lack sufficient intellectual capacity and are imagining things because they’ve been brainwashed.” 

Consequently, these normal parents, many of whom consider themselves to be liberal and open-minded or have historically found themselves on the left of the center, have been persuaded into electing Republican candidates, some of whom will no doubt use parents’ legitimate grievances to launch a book-burning crusade on important curriculum (i.e. crucial works that teach about slavery and the history of racism) and secure their own positions of power. And therein lies the conflict of critical race theory—trapping those who actually know what it is in an endless state of frustration.

Blake Flayton is New Media Director and columnist at the Jewish Journal.