Everything you should know about the controversial movement.
Across America, news sites, state legislatures, and school board meetings have recently been inflamed with controversy over whether or not schools should teach critical race theory. Most of this discussion on both sides of America’s bipartisan divide has taken place without a good definition of what critical race theory is, or coming to terms with what it means to teach critical race theory.
For my own part, I am tired of repeating similar explanations every time the topic comes up, and the topic isn’t going away any time soon… so here I am writing it down in one place for easy reference. Critical race theory is a movement. Specifically, it is a postmodern movement that rejects a vision of race-blind integration.
The movement’s scope of activity is not restricted to law school classrooms; it does reach into the K-12 classrooms and into the public at large outside of academics. The bans described as “critical race theory bans” do indeed target the movement’s activities in K-12 classrooms; they do so by description, rather than by a poorly-defined name.
Is critical race theory a theory?
The first thing to understand about critical race theory is that it is only a “theory” in a certain postmodern sense of the word. It is not an explanatory idea in the casual sense, such as a theory about why a toilet is running. It is not a testable and formalized hypothesis, such as the theory of gravity. It is not a general area of theoretical study, such as number theory or quantum theory.
It is instead first and foremost a movement — a community of activists with some shared goals and crudely similar perspectives. I am not saying this based on my own opinion; rather, the people who founded critical race theory openly described it as a movement:
This comprehensive movement in thought and life — created primarily, though not exclusively, by progressive individuals of color — compels us to confront critically the most explosive issue in America: the historical centrality and complicity of law in upholding white supremacy…
The above quote is the first half of the second sentence of the foreword to the 1995 book Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement. The introduction goes on to provide a concise description of the movement, saying that while it “differs in object, argument, accent, and emphasis, it is nevertheless unified by two common interests.”
To paraphrase, the two basic dogmas are a belief that equal protection and the rule of law are actually tools for maintaining white supremacy and racial oppression, while the second is the desire to cause change in the real world. These are expressed similarly in the more recent Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, a book whose third edition was out in 2012. It defines CRT as follows:
The critical race theory (CRT) movement is a collection of scholars and activists interested in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power.
It’s a very loose definition. This later book gives a larger list of basic dogmas, though noting carefully that not all members of the movement believe in all of them, most notably:
Racism is everywhere, including in supposedly race-neutral processes.
Racism is important to the well-being of the dominant group, i.e., white people, both in terms of material and psychological benefits.
Race is socially constructed in ways that serve the needs of the economy.
Minority individuals have a “presumed competence to speak about race and racism.”
Similar ideas can be found among many other activist movements, related to not only race, but also sex, sexuality, gender, ethnicity, and economic class. It is difficult to disentangle CRT from related activist movements with similar ideas and overlapping memberships. Many of these movements have been highly successful.
Since the basic dogmas of CRT have become more broadly popular than the label of the movement itself, it’s not easy to draw an objective distinction between “critical race theorists” and other activists who happen to agree with the above dogmas.
Conversely, self-identified critical race theorists may also belong to other similarly aligned movements that share some combination of goals, common ideologies, and intellectual inheritance. As a postmodern movement rather than a coherent ideological framework, critical race theory defies the use of precise and well-defined labels. We’ll circle back to this point later.
Where did critical race theory come from?
In the 1950s , 1960s, and 1970s, liberal activists fighting for racial equality won a string of major victories in the areas of law, policy, and public opinion. This included Supreme Court decisions (e.g. Brown v. Board of Education) and legislative acts (e.g., the 1964 Civil Rights Act). Discrimination on the basis of race became both illegal and unfashionable. The liberal integrationist credo was simple and powerful, and their vision of the future was clear. They believed fully in the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr:
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.
By the late 1970s, the pendulum had swung far enough against Jim Crow that courts were hearing cases on overly aggressive affirmative action programs. However, in spite of a truly massive shift in policy and attitudes, racial gaps in outcomes in education, criminal justice, the job market, income, and wealth persisted. Equality of opportunity might have been reached, but equality of outcome had definitely not.
The fact that racial gaps persisted gave fuel to arguments that integration and facially neutral (race blind) policy had failed, and lent credibility to the positions of the radicals who had always been skeptical of integration. Critical race theorists resurrected old arguments against race-blind policy and integration. They also created new ones.
In doing so, they drew inspiration, techniques, and terminology in a postmodern fashion from a variety of schools of thought, ranging from Marxism to literary analysis. Understanding the full heritage and roots of critical race theorists’ body of academic work is a complex undertaking; understanding the functional dogma of the CRT movement is not.
How has critical race theory grown?
Critical race theory is a political movement. Critical race theory is a hot topic right now because it has been a successful movement. It was arguably started in 1989, and grew rapidly. From 1989 to 2015, critical race theory went from a fringe movement to a major force. Since critical race theorists were activists interested in spreading their beliefs and enacting change, many went into education.
This is acknowledged in Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, which says:
Although CRT began as a movement within certain academic circles mostly tied to law, it has rapidly spread beyond that discipline. Today, many in the field of education consider themselves critical race theorists who use CRT’s ideas to understand issues of school discipline and hierarchy, tracking, affirmative action, high-stakes testing, controversies over curriculum and history, and alternative and charter schools.
That statement dates from nine years ago. CRT began with a set of academics working in law and “related areas” (most notably various sociology subfields). CRT has spread to other areas, particularly education, and its presence in education schools has continued to grow. Ideas that came either from or through the movement are now mainstream among education faculty and among teachers who graduated recently from education schools. K-12 students are not taught to perform scholarship of the type that CRT is known for, but they are sometimes taught in ways that are informed by CRT and in line with the movement’s goals.
The 1619 Project, White Fragility, How to Be an Antiracist, and COVID-19
Before 2018, the critical race theory movement had a fairly low and ambiguous profile outside of education and social science. Controversies related to ideas embraced by the movement had already become commonplace, such as the debate over a newly fashionable redefinition of the word “racism,” but most coverage of these controversies did not connect them with the CRT movement.
This changed because the ideas of critical race theory moved out of the classroom and onto the best-seller circuit. This notably included White Fragility, by Robin DiAngelo; The 1619 Project, headed by Nicole Hannah-Jones; and How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram Kendi. Those three works had incredible public reach.
When you follow the citations to find the origin of the ideas of those works and authors, as many critics did, they lead back to critical race theory. Those three authors are aligned with the basic dogmas of critical race theory, and the body of work that they cite places them firmly in the fabric of the movement by association.
To the degree that we can define what critical race theory is at all, these works were popular and mainstream expressions of the movement’s ideology, packaged for popular consumption. In the case of the 1619 Project, for consumption in the K-12 classroom. Whether or not those authors identify themselves as critical race theorists is a different question — and, ultimately, not a relevant one.
In addition to the explosive debut of major best-selling works promoting critical race theory to the public, many parents were suddenly introduced to the contents of their kids’ classrooms through COVID-19. Remote teaching brought the classroom within earshot of parents — and many parents who overheard critical race pedagogy in action did not like what they heard.
Is critical race theory being banned from the classroom?
The short answer is yes, but many of the controversial “critical race theory bans” that are being passed or proposed by state legislatures and school boards do not mention critical race theory. Instead, they target the most broadly undesirable aspects of critical race theory, such as the ways that the movement advocates for differential treatment by race.
North Carolina’s proposed “anti-CRT” bill is a good example of this. It does not ban teaching critical race theory by name, but bans promoting eight types of beliefs that can be associated with the movement or specific members of the movement:
One race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex.
An individual, solely by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.
An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex.
An individual’s moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex.
An individual, solely by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.
Any individual, solely by virtue of his or her race or sex, should feel discomfort.
That the belief that the United States is a meritocracy is an inherently racist or sexist belief.
That the United States was created by members of a particular race or sex for the purpose of oppressing members of another race or sex, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress.
North Carolina’s proposed CRT ban, like most, would not ban teachers from teaching anything that could reasonably be construed as a fact in the traditional sense of the word. It does effectively ban promoting the CRT movement, however.
Most critical race theory bans are worded similarly broadly. North Carolina’s proposed ban would also apply to promoting white supremacist beliefs in the classroom. I have not seen any CRT ban that would not also apply to teaching the ideal of white supremacy.
The bans are not all the same. Some target higher education; some target K-12 education; some target both. Some are exceptionally broad and may have unintended consequences. For example, the Florida ban, in addition to targeting “divisive ideologies,” extends to teachers promoting any of their own opinions in the classroom. In pursuit of an effective critical race theory ban, Florida has also theoretically banned everything from Marxism to Trumpism.
Recap
The most important thing to remember is that critical race theory is a movement. As a movement organized around a few basic common principles, CRT is neither obscure, advanced, nor difficult to understand. It is not an area of scholarship, a testable hypothesis, or a specific intellectual framework, but a community of activists who happen to use “theory” in a fairly unusual sense of the word. It’s an active and growing movement, and it spread from law schools to education schools a long time ago.
The main difficulty in defining CRT is distinguishing it from similarly aligned movements with overlapping membership. For example, the major controversial works on racism and “anti-racism” in the last few years are closely linked to CRT in terms of their ideas and scholarship and are engaged in activism aligned with the goals of the CRT movement, but the authors of those works are not always identified as critical race theorists. It’s also hard to talk meaningfully about what it means to “teach CRT” in the classroom because it’s hard to talk meaningfully about what it means to “teach” a movement.
That said, many members of the movement aim to change how education takes place and what is taught in K-12 classrooms. The fuzzy definitional question of where the boundaries of the movement lie are mostly moot in the debate over public policy. While so-called “CRT bans” restrict promoting the movement or its ideology in the classroom, they usually do not target CRT by name. Instead, they target the promotion of particular ideas common within the movement. They usually are worded broadly enough to also ban the promotion of many other movements but vary significantly.
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