I haven’t blogged in a while, but I hope to write more. I think I’ve been afraid of writing anything recently.
This piece in Politico caught my eye. Gary Peller teaches constitutional law at Georgetown University Law Center and writes about how his obscure legal speciality became wildly popular (mostly for negative reasons) overnight. States are banning or attempting to ban teaching “what they call ‘critical race theory.'”
One paragraph stands out:
CRT, in the real world, describes the diverse work of a small group of scholars who write about the shortcomings of conventional civil rights approaches to understanding and transforming racial power in American society. It’s a complex critique that wouldn’t fit easily into a K-12 curriculum. Even law students find the ideas challenging; we ourselves struggle to put it in understandable terms. We embrace no simple or orthodox set of principles, so no one can really be “trained” in CRT. And if teachers were able to teach such analytically difficult ideas to public school students, it should be a cause for wild celebration, not denunciation.
In overviewing the history of CRT, Peller notes that after the civil rights movement of the 1960s, racism was simplistically understood “in terms of bad individuals who carry around racist ideas. The “redneck” Southern sheriff became the consensus villain for mainstream America.”
Following this, Peller points out the power of the lens that critical race theory provides:
But such a simplistic analysis of racial power meant that there was never a national reckoning with the subtle and systemic effects of American apartheid, as they marked schools and workplaces over multiple generations. And if racism means identifying bad actors, as the conventional image holds, then whites are understandably anxious that renewed attention to all these forms of institutionalized racial power means that they will be blamed and shamed.
There are so many ways that racism manifests itself. Critical race theory is a social critique by academics. It helps identify the ways in which simple answers don’t address the reality experienced by people in real life.
I first read about Critical Race Theory in Drew Hart’s Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism. He outlines the questions that CRT asks:
- What is the meaning of race in a society?
- How is society organized by race?
- What are the origins of racism, and how does it operate in and affect our daily lives?”
These are really important questions. And I don’t think they should be shied away from or banned.
In my mind, for those who fear critical race theory – and its extremely academic origins – are those who also fear marxist economic critique. I know that’s not helpful comparison for the American, but marxist economic critiques provide an excellent critique to capitalist systems!
If we aren’t willing to question our systems and ways of living, how will we improve the systems and lives we have? Surely we should seek out the strongest critiques possible?
In Canada, we must ask the questions that CRT raises and not look at Americans with disgust. We can ask these questions in reference to persons of colour but we certainly must ask these questions in relation to and with indigenous people.
Sorry if this piece wasn’t long or detailed, I just wanted to get something ‘out there.’
Jordan Duerrstein 