5 FAQs about CRT and WSJ’s answers

[jserraglio]

WALL STREET JOURNAL

POLITICS AND POLICY
Critical Race Theory: What It Means for America and Why It Has Sparked Debate

A concept developed by academics in the 1970s has triggered political debate and controversy in everything from school curricula to workforce trainings
References to critical race theory have become more prominent and controversial over the past year. Such references have been the subject of fights over school curricula at the state, local and federal level. There has also been debate over whether elements of critical race theory should be included in both public- and private-sector workforce training.
Here’s an explanation of the theory, and an overview of some of the debates that have referenced it.

What is it?
Critical race theory is an academic concept first developed by legal scholars in the early 1970s. It argues the legacy of white supremacy remains embedded in modern-day society through laws and institutions that were fundamental in shaping American society. Generally speaking, it rejects the idea that laws are inherently neutral, even if they are sometimes applied unevenly.
Its backers say that American society, framed by the Constitution, gives a leg up to white people—but that it could be made more equitable if more white people acknowledge societal advantages of having been born white.
“Critical race theory is a radical departure from the way in which the law analyzed constitutional and political issues,” said Luke Harris, an associate professor of American politics and Constitutional law at Vassar College in New York.
He said that early critical race theorists, such as the late Derrick Bell, started their work to examine “American political history through the role that the law played in developing, maintaining and pushing” racial discrepancies in U.S. society—challenging the notion that the law has been a means by which each citizen is treated the same. Mr. Bell became Harvard Law School’s first tenured Black professor in 1971 and is widely considered one of the founders of critical race theory.
Adherents generally agree that critical race theory includes a spectrum of thought by which scholars seek to spur public debate and action to address what they see as a legacy of white supremacy in America, according to Gary Peller, a law professor at Georgetown Law and a co-editor of “Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement,” a collection of writings on the subject.
Legal scholars who have disagreed with the theory argue that it is unprovable that race is institutionalized in the law, particularly where laws don’t mention race.
“In short, they reduce law to politics and politics to white supremacy. Their theory is a stark departure from what most Americans, of all races, believe,” wrote Jeffrey Pyle, a trial lawyer and adjunct professor at Boston College Law School, when he was a law student in the 1990s. His work from that time has been cited by opponents of critical race theory over the past year.
Dan Subotnik, a professor of law at Touro Law Center in New York, argues critical race theory fails to take into account how laws have changed over time. “It was good to put it on the table, and it raises lots of good questions,” he said. But, he added, “that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be a counterview that says that enormous changes have taken place in this society and continue to take place in this society, and a lot of people in both races support the changes that have been made,” such as the introduction antidiscrimination rules in housing and employment.

Why is it coming up now?
In the past year, particularly since the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, discussions about race have ignited fierce political debate, including around the extent to which racism is ingrained in modern America. That debate played out as Americans of all races poured into the streets, often under the banner of Black Lives Matter, to protest the killing of Mr. Floyd and others, such as Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman police fatally shot in Louisville, Ky., in March 2020. Many argued America has yet to come to terms with what they see as a racist history and society.
As demands for changes like diversity and inclusion in the workplace reverberated across popular culture and in American companies, and terms like “structural racism” and concepts such as “white privilege” were more heavily debated, some American academics like Mr. Subotnik said they saw themes of critical race theory shaping the debate in U.S. media.
On Google, interest in the search term “critical race theory” reached a record high in the past year, according to Google Trends, which analyses search data going back to 2004. Searches began to surge in September 2020, as the presidential election was entering its final months. President Donald Trump condemned critical race theory at a presidential debate that month.
On Sept. 1, conservative activist Christopher Rufo appeared on television to discuss his work against critical race theory. “What I’ve discovered is that critical race theory has become, in essence, the default ideology of the federal bureaucracy and is now being weaponized against the American people,” Mr. Rufo said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News. Mr. Trump’s chief of staff at the time called Mr. Rufo the morning after the TV program and asked him to share his findings, saying Mr. Trump had watched it, The Wall Street Journal previously reported citing a person familiar with the matter.
On Sept. 4, the White House Office of Management and Budget issued a memo instructing all federal agencies “to begin to identify all contracts or other agency spending related to any training on ‘critical race theory,’ ‘white privilege,’ or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests…that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or…that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil.” At the time, the Trump White House declined to comment on Mr. Rufo’s remarks or on the impetus for the OMB memo.

How is the debate affecting schools?
Much of the debate in recent months has focused on whether critical race theory should be taught in schools. As of May, at least three states had enacted bills that would prohibit or restrict teaching based on principles that the bills’ sponsors describe as dealing with critical race theory and at least 13 other states had considered such legislation, according to a National Council of State Legislatures memo from the same month on the subject. The bills vary widely, and some apply to both K-12 schools and higher-education institutions. Last week, Florida’s State Board of Education approved rules prohibiting schools from teaching “theories that distort historical events,” specifically including critical race theory. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, this week signed a bill that bans certain teachings, such as that one race is inherently racist, but the measure doesn’t define critical race theory. Mr. Abbott in a statement said the bill “is a strong move to abolish critical race theory in Texas, but more must be done.”
Statutes that require teaching the history of marginalized communities—such as Native Americans and Black people—have been widespread for decades, according to an NCSL memo on the subject from May. “By and large, these standards do not reflect ideas associated with critical race theory. Rather, commonplace state requirements for multicultural education, Black history and ethnic studies emphasize teaching about certain historical events or the contributions of certain groups alongside other social studies requirements,” the memo said.
Some states in the past few years have incorporated or considered incorporating concepts that could be seen as associated with critical race theory into their education standards, according to the NCSL. There has been debate about whether newer teachings, which vary from state to state, are more in line with critical race theory or the traditional multicultural history that has been in schools for decades. And the NCSL notes that instruction tends to vary from within districts and schools, all the way down to individual classrooms.

What do adherents of critical race theory say about how racism exists today?
Many academics who back critical race theory argue that white supremacy lives on through the legal system and institutions such as governments that draw power from the law. But that doesn’t mean all individual white people are racist, they say, arguing that a core element of critical race theory is that racism is so ingrained in society that it may transcend individualized behavior. For example, they argue, the net effect of Jim Crow laws and legalized slavery can still be felt today.
Some argue the debate around critical race theory over the past year has deviated from its core legal argument.
“Critical race theory argues that individuals aren’t bad because they’re white,” said Eric Ward, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a Montgomery, Ala.-based nonprofit. “What it argues is that there are systems that have evolved over time that create disparity based off of race.”
Still, opponents argue the public discourse casts those who disagree as racist. “It comes out in phrases like ‘silence is violence,’ ” Mr. Subotnik said.
Mr. Harris said that critical race theory proponents don’t contend that “race is the only thing that’s important. We just think that race, as with class, as with gender and as with sexual orientation, has to be a core concern,” he said.

Where do the major political parties stand on it?
Many Republicans deride critical race theory as divisive, and argue that Democrats who advocate policies specifically geared toward curbing racial discrepancies in the economy and other parts of society are embracing it.
“This critical race theory, ostensibly it’s supposed to help people who look like me,” Winsome Sears, the GOP nominee for lieutenant governor in Virginia, said at a campaign event last month. Ms. Sears, who is Black, said America offers opportunities to all who work hard. “We’re worried about teaching reading, writing, and racism instead of reading, writing and arithmetic,” she said.
Democrats, generally, haven’t used the term critical race theory in their political messaging, nor do they use the phrase itself as a rallying cry for liberals; they accuse conservatives of seeking to stir divisions by accusing Democrats of being wholehearted supporters of the theory. The term doesn’t appear in the Democrats’ official 2020 platform crafted for the November election. The document makes several mentions of systemic racism. “Democrats will root out structural and systemic racism in our economy and our society, and reform our criminal justice system from top to bottom, because we believe Black lives matter,” the party’s platform reads.
Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking on Good Morning America in April, said she didn’t believe America is a racist country. “But we also do have to speak truth about the history of racism in our country and its existence today,” Ms. Harris said. “It does not help to heal our country, to unify us as a people, to ignore the reality of that.”

[maestrob]

Like much from the WSJ, the article ends with a conclusion that softly and cleverly supports the Republican viewpoint.

In fact, many white Americans are still VERY racist, as we progress down the path towards better mutual understanding and acceptance.

There are just too many that are willing to disenfranchise those that they perceive as supporting Democrats, and those are voters of color. In fact, though, many Latino men (for one example) hold very conservative values.

Things are a lot more complicated than Republicans at the state level actually think they are.

[Rach3]

The Right wants to pretend racism ended with the Civil War , just as they also spread the another big lie that Trump won in 2020.

From AxiosAm today:


Elementary school teachers, administrators and college professors are facing fines, physical threats, and fear of firing because of an organized push from the right to remove classroom discussions of systemic racism, Axios race and justice reporter Russell Contreras writes.

Why it matters: Moves to ban critical race theory are raising free speech concerns amid an absence of consistent teaching parameters.
What's happening: So far, 21 states have introduced proposals to limit lessons about racism and history.

Between the lines: Critical race theory, developed in the 1970s, holds that racism is ingrained in our society, and that policies and practices in areas from law to education to banking contribute to persistent inequalities.

From the right: Filmmaker Christopher Rufo, who helped popularize the issue, tells The Washington Post he "basically took [a] body of criticism" about diversity and other training, "paired it with breaking news stories ... and made it ... a salient political issue with a clear villain."

[Rach3]

An insightful article about CRT:

https://lyz.substack.com/p/what-the-hel ... urce=email

[maestrob]

Brilliant.

That article made me into a subscriber. Thanks!

All these anti-CRT statutes should be challenged as unconstitutional.

[jserraglio]

The attack by the right on Critical Race Theory is a veiled form of race baiting, like the birther crusades against Barack Obama and Kamala Harris, the attacks on the BLM movement, and the latest voter suppression laws in Texas and Georgia.

[Rach3]

For some telling historical context, I suggest reading the chapter " Laws " from Thomas Jefferson's "Notes on the State of Virginia." I have decided not to quote any of Jefferson's disgusting comments here.

[maestrob]

For some telling historical context, I suggest reading the chapter " Laws " from Thomas Jefferson's "Notes on the State of Virginia." I have decided not to quote any of Jefferson's disgusting comments here.

I'll do that as soon as I can get a copy.

[Rach3]

For some telling historical context, I suggest reading the chapter " Laws " from Thomas Jefferson's "Notes on the State of Virginia." I have decided not to quote any of Jefferson's disgusting comments here.

Also,Eugene Robinson decimates the Fox and GOP's smear campaign:

Eugene Robinson, WAPO, June 29

Republicans’ hissy fit over critical race theory is nothing more than an attempt to rally the party’s overwhelmingly White base by denying documented history and uncomfortable truth.
This manufactured controversy has nothing to do with actual critical race theory, which, frankly, is the dry and arcane stuff of graduate school seminars. It is all about alarming White voters into believing that they are somehow threatened if our educational system makes any meaningful attempt to teach the facts of the nation’s long struggle with race.

The Republican state legislators falling over themselves to decide how history can and cannot be taught in schools — and blowhards such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who warn that children are being taught “every White person is a racist” — know exactly what they’re doing. They seek to create a crisis where none exists in hopes of driving up GOP turnout in next year’s midterm elections.

It’s a cynical ploy. But a party willing to pretend — even now — that Donald Trump might somehow have won an election he lost clearly embraces cynicism as its core identity.

It is unclear whether the GOP’s focus on denying the reality of our racial history will have any impact at the ballot box. Schoolchildren will suffer, however, because teachers will be forced to keep them ignorant of relevant facts and perspectives. And all Americans will suffer if Republicans succeed in squelching the long-overdue reckoning with race that many of us believe the nation sorely needs.

GOP politicians have especially taken aim at the New York Times’s 1619 Project, which provocatively explored the relationship of slavery to the nation’s founding. Perhaps this is because many Republicans already see the Times as a nest of villainous “elites.” Perhaps it’s because the 1619 Project was led by a Black woman, Nikole Hannah-Jones, whom Republican strategists believe they can demonize. Or perhaps it’s because the project tells so much truth.

Was slavery key to the colonial economy at the time of the Declaration of Independence? Clearly it was, and one of the many charges the declaration leveled against King George III is that he “has excited domestic insurrections amongst us” — seen by historians as referring to a proclamation in Virginia offering freedom to slaves who joined the British army. The declaration also slams the king for his passive support of the “merciless Indian Savages” who resisted the White settlers’ efforts to move westward and take more of the Indians’ land.

Was slavery written into the Constitution? The word itself does not appear, but the Constitution never would have been ratified without the famous compromise that allowed states to count only three-fifths of their enslaved populations for the purposes of apportioning seats in the House of Representatives. The charter specifies that “free Persons” and indentured servants be counted in full, leaving only slaves to constitute the “all other Persons” who are subject to the three-fifths limitation.

Was slavery just a Southern phenomenon? Not at all. Slavery wasn’t outlawed in New York until 1827, and the last 16 enslaved Black men and women in New Jersey didn’t obtain their freedom until 1865. Moreover, the entire young nation benefited economically from the plantation-style slavery practiced in the South, which gave the mills of New England raw material to work with and the nascent banking center of Wall Street a thriving enterprise to finance.

Didn’t the Civil War and the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments deal once and for all with the problem of racial oppression in this country? Of course not. Reconstruction was cut short, and the states were allowed to establish a system of Jim Crow segregation that endured for nearly a century. Black Americans were systematically robbed of land and wages, denied access to capital, confined to substandard housing, and denied educational opportunities. When some Black communities overcame these obstacles — as in Tulsa, Atlanta and a host of other cities — White mobs burned and smashed those communities out of existence.

These are all undisputed facts. This is the history that has, until now, been ignored or played down. Teachers who expose their students to such truths are not being “woke” or convincing impressionable young minds that the nation is “irredeemably racist,” as Cruz has alleged. They are performing an essential task of education: contextually explaining where we’ve been so that we can understand where we are and where we need to go.

This nation can be redeemed — but not without first acknowledging the need for redemption. The Republican Party is trying to prohibit that acknowledgment, and is doing so for short-term political gain. The flap over critical race theory is just another scam from a party that believes in nothing except the unprincipled pursuit of power.

[maestrob]

Eugene Robinson has had a long and distinguished career as a commentator and columnist that I have long admired. This is but another in a long line of spot-on observations about how things are right now.

Thanks for posting.

[maestrob]

If Only There Were a Viral Video of Our Jim Crow Education System

May 21, 2021
By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist


We in the commentariat have leapt at covering police violence against Black citizens since George Floyd’s murder a year ago, but I don’t think we’ve been as good at responding to other inequities that cost a far greater number of lives.


Even if Floyd hadn’t been murdered, he still very likely would have died prematurely because of his race.

There would have been no headlines, no protests, no speeches. But the average Black man in America lives about five fewer years than the average white man. A newborn Black boy in Washington, D.C., has a shorter life expectancy than a newborn boy in India.

One of the challenges for those of us in journalism is to do a better job highlighting these inequities that don’t come with a viral video.

Since Floyd’s death, we’ve focused on racial inequities in the criminal justice system, and it has been easy for liberal white Americans — my tribe — to feel indignant and righteous while blaming others. But in some areas, such as an unjust education system, we are part of the problem.

At the very time that America was having a racial reckoning about criminal justice, Democratic states were closing in-person schooling in ways that particularly harmed nonwhite students. Race gaps increased, according to research by McKinsey & Company, and a Federal Reserve study suggests that higher dropout rates for marginalized students will have long-term consequences.

More broadly, we in the United States embrace a public education system based on local financing that ensures that poor kids go to poor schools and rich kids to rich schools.

Yes, it’s a “public” school system with “free” education. So anyone who can afford a typical home in Palo Alto, Calif., costing $3.2 million, can then send children to superb schools. And less than 2 percent of Palo Alto’s population is Black.

Rucker Johnson, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, has found that since 1988, American public schools have become more racially segregated. Roughly 15 percent of Black and Hispanic students attend so-called apartheid schools with fewer than 1 percent white students.

In 1973, the Supreme Court came a whisker from overturning this system of unequal school funding, in the case of Rodriguez v. San Antonio Independent School District. Lower courts had ruled that profoundly unequal school funding violated the Constitution, but by a 5-to-4 vote the justices disagreed.

This was the Brown v. Board of Education case that went the other way. If a single justice had switched, America would today be a fairer and more equitable nation.

Educated white Americans are now repulsed at the thought of systems of separate and unequal drinking fountains for Black Americans but seem comfortable with a Jim Crow financing system resulting in unequal schools for Black children — even though schools are far more consequential than water fountains.

Perhaps that’s because we and our children have a stake in this unequal system. Similarly, we accept that elite universities offer legacy preferences that amount to affirmative action for highly privileged children, with bonus consideration for big donors. This is one reason some universities have more students from the richest 1 percent than from the poorest 60 percent.

Likewise, wealthy white Americans benefit from single-family zoning laws in the suburbs around those fine “public” schools. The effect of this zoning is to freeze out low-income families and keep neighborhoods more segregated.

Then there’s our skewed tax system: The I.R.S. is more likely to audit impoverished Americans who use the earned-income tax credit and typically earn less than $20,000 than it is to audit people earning $400,000. The county in the United States with the highest audit rate, according to ProPublica, is Humphreys County, Miss., which is impoverished and three-quarters Black.

So how do we address these root inequities?

We don’t have perfect solutions, but many programs promote opportunity and reduce race gaps over time. The time to start is early childhood, with home visiting, quality child care and pre-K. Baby bonds can reduce wealth gaps, and child tax credits cut child poverty. Job training and a higher minimum wage can help families. Many of these elements are in President Biden’s three-part proposal to invest in America and Americans, with the goal of reducing child poverty in America by half.

One paradox is that while liberals often advocate such measures as ways to reduce racial inequality, polling suggests that this framing actually reduces public support. The best way to win support for these progressive policies, research suggests, is to frame them as reducing class gaps, not race gaps.

Back in the early 2000s, white Americans sometimes said in polls that antiwhite bias was a bigger problem than anti-Black bias. That was delusional, and the tumult following the Floyd case increased the share of whites who acknowledge that discrimination persists.

So the Floyd case may represent a milestone of progress in criminal justice. Now can America leverage this recognition of unfairness and inequity into other spheres, such as our still segregated education system?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/21/opin ... pe=Article