What is the Controversy over CRT and Why is it Important to You as a Social Studies Educator?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or been in a self-imposed COVID lockdown for the past year-and-a-half), you have most assuredly heard the term Critical Race Theory, or CRT for short, being bandied about this past year. Depending on what station or website you’re looking at, however, you’re liable to get a vastly different account of what it actually is and what, if any, role it plays in education. If you read or listen to conservative news websites, CRT is being talked about as the next plague to descend upon our schools, the spread of which must be stopped at all costs. Meanwhile if you read or listen to the liberal media recount it, CRT is nothing more than an obscure legal theory that is most definitely not being taught to impressionable young children in our schools.  The truth lies somewhere in between.  

Countless media outlets and organizations ranging from such disparate entities as the American Bar Association, Smithsonian Magazine, and the Purdue OWL  have posted primers in the past year on what they believe CRT is or isn’t. The information contained in them varies widely in quality and content. This article will attempt to explain the nature of the controversy over what CRT is and how it applies to you as a social studies teacher. 

In its most basic form, CRT is a term coined by law professor Kimberle Crenshaw in the early 1980s to describe a set of principles that described a new way of analyzing how race and racism interact with politics, culture, and the law. Its adherents believe that the traditional approach to civil rights law (the push for legislation and faith in the legal system to enact justice) was inadequate to redress racial grievances. It recognizes that racism is “endemic to American life” and expresses skepticism toward traditional legal claims of “objectivity, color blindness, and meritocracy.” Some basic tenets of the movement include that 1) race is socially constructed, not biological in nature, 2) that the legal system supports the interests of those that created it (white men), 3) racism is the normal, ordinary experience of most Black Americans, and 4) that people of color are uniquely qualified to speak on behalf of their group on issues of racism through telling their stories of racism and oppression. As the movement grew in the 1990s, adherents began to identify an array of cultural and political institutions that had been tainted by racism. CRT proponents believe that racial subordination is “everywhere” and that it is a “structural aspect of all parts of American society.” The movement aimed to connect such structural racism to disparities between White and Black residents in all aspects of life, including health care, housing, education, and criminal justice. 

Although a number of professors became supporters, CRT toiled in relative obscurity outside the African American Studies departments on college campuses until the 2010’s. CRT theories then began to gain traction first with some journalists and then the general public in reaction to the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown in 2012 and 2014 respectively. Liberal media outlets began using terms like “systemic racism” and “White privilege” that had been floated by the then nascent Black Lives Matter movement to explain the perceived mistreatment of African Americans in policing and the criminal justice system. The terms later became part of the lexicon associated with racial justice protests after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis Police officer, Derek Chauvin, in 2020.

Members of the popular media also began espousing some of these ideals in their own published work. Ibrahm X. Kendi, a historian and Atlantic contributor, published How to Be an Anti-Racist in 2019. In that book, he defines racism as a societal rather than individual choice that stems from a marriage of racist policies and ideas that produce racial inequities. Thus, such systems give privileges to White people and disadvantage people of color.  To Kendi, in order for one to become antiracist requires a radical reorientation of our consciousness. People must first accept these truths and act accordingly to become truly antiracist. 

Other tenets of CRT hit the mainstream in 2019 with the release of the New York Times “1619 Project.” While not billed as a work promoting CRT, this large scale work did intend to rewrite the narrative about slavery in the U.S., its essential premise being that most elements of modern life are tainted with the vestiges of slavery including the income and wealth gap between Whites and Blacks, lack of universal health care, the cruelty of prison, andthe harshness of capitalism. This premise certainly owes its origins to CRT, and one major criticism of the Project is that it ignored scholarship of other historians who do not hold such views about the impact of slavery.  Not only did the 1619 Project garner nationwide attention for its bold claims but won its lead author, Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer for commentary. A school curriculum based around the project’s major writings and themes took shape and has since been rolled out in thousands of classrooms. 

Conservative backlash to CRT can be traced to journalist Christopher Rufo, who began criticizing its use in anti-racism seminars in July 2020. A large number of businesses had begun to conduct racial sensitivity and diversity trainings in reaction to the social justice protests earlier that summer.  Rufo detailed the common practice in these seminars of dividing up groups by race and having White participants talk about their White privilege and implicit bias. He noted that materials used by trainers cited to works written by CRT’s main proponents, Derek Bell and Kimberle Crenshaw. He then theorized that these seminar trainers were not just peddling a progressive view of race relations but promoting CRT ideology. Thus, Critical Race Theory became Rufo’s perfect villain.

After Rufo appeared on Tucker Carlson to sound the alarm about CRT in September of 2020, President Trump acted almost immediately in response. He outlawed the use of diversity training in the federal government that contained references to White privilege, systemic racism and other elements of CRT.  He also formed a commission to refute the 1619 Project’s thesis that many modern institutions and practices owe their roots to slavery. Not coincidentally, the Commission issued Its 1776 Report condemning the 1619 Project on MLK Day, 2021.  Also in 2021, five states including Idaho and Texas passed laws banning the teaching of either the 1619 Project and/or CRT in public schools. 

So that brings us to the current controversy–is CRT being taught in schools?  The answer depends on whom you ask.  In the eyes of Rufo and his conservtive allies, the answer is unequivocally yes.  They believe that the teaching of the 1619 Project (for those schools that use it) is inculcating children in the doctrines of CRT.  As stated before, the Project at least owes its ideological underpinnings to the CRT school of thought. Some school districts across the country, particularly elite private schools in the Northeast and California and inner city public schools with large minority populations, have begun conducting racism workshops designed in much the same vein as those Rufo complained of in 2020. Students are separated by racial group and topics of White privilege and implicit bias are discussed. In 2020, a bill went before the California legislature that would have made it a graduation requirement to take a class in ethnic studies. A few schools have even wholeheartedly bought into Kendi’s premise and dedicated themselves to becoming anti-racist institutions. 

Conversely, these steps do not constitute the teaching of CRT to the NEA and other liberal education advocates. To the contrary, they have been labeled as simply an attempt to provide an anti-racist education to students and educate them about the horrors of slavery or the effects of racsim. To them, this denial of teaching CRT is truthful because there are no lessons being conducted about CRT directly.      

Thus, part of the problem in defining what critical race theory is or is not depends on the label being applied.  Conservatives use CRT broadly to refer not just to the teaching of Bell and Crenshaw about interpretations of civil rights law but to any type of diversity training or educational program that involves the use of the terms implicit bias, White privilege, or systemic racism to imply racism is a societal-wide issue rather than an individual choice.  By contrast, Progressives have cleverly dubbed their efforts at societal reorientation as “anti-racism” and do not consider their efforts to include the teaching of CRT. 

Conservatives ire more correctly should be directed at anti-racism propaganda than CRT, but from a conservative perspective, it is hard to garner much public support for a wholesale condemnation of something labeled as such. It would open up such critics to charges of being racist themselves.  Hence, conservatives needed another term for their boogeyman, and they chose to target the much more nebulous and ominous sounding “Critical Race Theory.”  

So where does that leave us as educators? I would urge social studies teachers (and school administrators) to continue engaging students and teachers in discussions of race, slavery, and civil rights but be careful about how we do it. Much as I do not feel it is my place to tell you what side of the issue you should come down on, the same can be said of our instruction to students.  

One point needs to be made on the issue.  While the disparities between Whites and Blacks in wealth, healthcare access, criminal prosecution and incarceration rates, and the like are facts, the reasons behind these disparities are not.  Terms like systemic racism, White privilege, and implicit bias are simply one set of theories about why these disparities exist; they are not facts. While ultimately the antiracist or CRT school of thought may be proven right, there is currently a healthy debate about their truth and accuracy being undertaken in academic circles (a topic I will blog about more in the coming weeks). Thus, we should treat them as such and not talk about them in absolute terms (favorably or unfavorably). 

Forbes’ Ilana Redstone cautions schools and workplaces about such one-sided use of CRT and its tenets:

Critical Race Theory is a social science theory—a tool to understand the world around us. As a theory, its related ideas about race, identity, power, and fairness constitute one possible way to see the world. As with any social science theory, but particularly one this controversial, its ideas should be placed in context. Placing the ideas in context requires presenting contrasting viewpoints—for instance, perspectives that do not automatically assert that racialized explanations and solutions should be the primary lens for viewing the world. Importantly, these contrasting viewpoints are to be presented on moral footing that’s equal to CRT’s. The upshot is this: The problem is that CRT and its related ideas form a closed system. It’s a perspective that leaves no space for anyone, no matter how well-intentioned, to see the world differently. When presented as the singular valid worldview, it isn’t a productive way to engage with students, groups, or with one another. 

As such, I consider it academic malpractice to teach only one side of the debate. At the same time, I think it a gross overreaction to ban the teachings of the 1619 Project or other anti-racist teachings outright.  We should be having an open discussion in our classrooms about the topic. In the sage words of Brown professor, Glenn Loury, if you don’t like its tenets, “don’t ban the teaching of CRT, refute it.”