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Unless
you have been in a deeply comatose state, you have probably noticed
the profoundly intense battles that have occurred over the issue of
critical race theory. Hell, you can hardly pick up a local, state, or
national newspaper without seeing references to it. Read a magazine
or a blog, listen to podcasts from across the political spectrum, or
engage with social media or other similar entities and you'll note
that the topic is largely dominating public discourse.
The
truth is, it's become hard to keep up with the flurry of state bills
aimed at banning the teaching of what is often called "divisive
concepts," including the idea put forward by one Rhode
Island bill
that “the United States of America is fundamentally racist or
sexist.” The irony-challenged Mike Pence also tweeted,
“We will reject Critical Race Theory in our schools and public
institutions, and we will CANCEL Cancel Culture wherever it arises!”
Indeed
things have reached a fever pitch in some state legislatures. Some
states, such as Mississippi and Oklahoma, have enacted laws
prohibiting the teaching of such content, arguing that this kind of
literature teaches children to develop an augmenting hatred for their
nation and causes White children to feel bad about themselves.
Furthermore, the Washington
Post’s Dave Weigel pointed out
that
Glenn Youngkin, a candidate in Virginia’s Republican primary,
recently released four anti-critical-race theory videos in the space
of 24 hours.
This
is just one of the numerous defensive positions that have been echoed
by many on the political, social and cultural right. Charges of being
"anti-American", "racially divisive, and "hate-filled"
have been leveled at those who highlight issues of prejudice in
American society; some of the most fervent observers have also been
freely hurling terms like "Marxist" and "communist"
as insults. There is no question that emotions have been running
high. It appears that the conservative right believes that they have
found another issue in the so-called culture wars to entice their
largely bigoted, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic base of voters.
Right-wing Florida governor, Ron DeSantis is one of the leading
opponents of critical race theory.
These
(largely White) men and women who believe that the nation they have
grown up in has become infested with hordes of immigrants, overtaken
by non-White radicals, and saturated with gays and lesbians
advocating supposedly “perverted and unhealthy lifestyles”.
The values of allegedly self-hating White liberals and progressives
and radical non-Whites who rabidly embrace Black Lives Matter,
#MeToo, Antifa and other movements are in direct contrast to their
White supremacist ideals. Consequently, the situation has become a
battle royal of irrational emotions.
Critical
race theory recognizes
that systemic racism
is
part of American society and challenges the beliefs that allow it to
flourish. It is one of several approaches that examine White
supremacy; moreover, the model combats the nostalgic beliefs of those
who harbor the idea of a sedate America that was once innately fair
and confronts those who seek to promote and embrace a "let
bygones be bygones" message among the American public. It also
advocates the following:
Kimberlé
Williams Crenshaw, Professor of Law at Columbia and the University of
California, Los Angeles (UCLA), is one of the founding members of the
movement. Crenshaw and her fellow inaugurate scholars hosted a
workshop
on the critical race theory movement in 1989.
However, the idea behind it goes back much further to the work of
civil rights activists, such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Fannie Lou Hamer and
Pauli Murray. According to Critical
Race Theory: An Introduction,
some of the theory's earliest origins can be traced back to the
1970s, which is when lawyers, activists, and legal scholars realized
the advances made during the civil rights era of the 1960s had
stalled.
Crenshaw
was
among
a group of intellectuals, including Derrick Bell, Alan Freeman, and
Richard Delgado, who attended a conference in Wisconsin in 1989 that
focused on new strategies to combat racism. A few years later, in
1993, Delgado, Crenshaw, Mari Matsuda, and Charles R. Lawrence went
on to write Words
That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First
Amendment.
Some
critical race theorists also believe notions of racial identity are
the product of social thought and relations rather than biology. A
sense of urgency since the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor
and other African Americans last year by police officers led to a
national reckoning on race. Over the past 12 months, many Americans
have called for an examination of systemic racism—in part,
through education, such as the teaching of The
New York Times' 1619 Project
in schools. Authored by the journalist Nicole Hannah-Jones, the
Pulitzer-Prize-winning scheme re-examines American history from the
period surrounding August 1619, which is when the first slave ship
arrived on the country’s shores.
That
being said, Hannah-Jones's project has not been without its critics,
nor has it avoided controversy. Critical race theory has become the
latest bogeyman for many right-wingers. A number of conservative
cultural critics have been working morning, noon and night in an
attempt to discredit proponents of the movement. While some of these
antics have been amusing, other attacks have been disingenuous and
downright offensive. Part of the reason the right is putting so much
time and a seemingly herculean amount of effort into this endeavor is
because they are having a demonstrably difficult time cultivating
opposition to the vast majority of President Biden's agenda.
His
economic legislative spending is much more ambitious than Barack
Obama's; nevertheless, the Tea Party of 2021 remains much the same as
it did during its inception in 2009. Also notable is the fact that
many voters view Biden as more
moderate than Obama,
a misconception that critical race theory scholars would have no
trouble explaining. Republicans have consequently groused
about
how hard Biden is to demonize. They need a more frightening, enraging
villain to keep their people engaged; thus, they believe they have
found a suitably malevolent specter in the form of critical race
theory.
At
the moment, offering up a scapegoat appears to had had some temporary
effect in terms of fostering hostility, but the truth is that such
victories are likely to be Pyrrhic as opposed to substantial or long
term. White fragility, White supremacy and intellectual dishonesty
are vices that must and will always be challenged.
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