What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is It Under Attack?
Education Week
By Stephen Sawchuk — May 18, 2021
...Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.
The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others.
A good example is when, in the 1930s, government officials literally drew lines around areas deemed poor financial risks, often explicitly due to the racial composition of inhabitants. Banks subsequently refused to offer mortgages to Black people in those areas….
critical race theory (article)
Encyclopedia Britannica
 |
| Derrick Bell |
By Gabriella Borter
REUTERS
September 22, 2021
…Critical race theory (CRT) is an approach to studying U.S. policies and institutions that is most often taught in law schools. Its foundations date back to the 1970s, when law professors including Harvard Law School’s Derrick Bell began exploring how race and racism have shaped American law and society.
The theory rests on the premise that racial bias - intentional or not - is baked into U.S. laws and institutions. Black Americans, for example, are incarcerated at much higher rates than any other racial group, and the theory invites scrutiny of the criminal justice system's role in that.
An often-cited illustration is America's War on Drugs. The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act established harsher penalties for possession of crack cocaine than those for powder cocaine; Black Americans are more likely to be convicted of the former and whites the latter. Within four years, average federal drug sentences for Black offenders were 49% higher than those handed out to white offenders, according to the American Civil Liberties Union....
.
The spread of critical race theory in schools has sparked controversies across the country
By Sam Dorman | Fox News
What exactly is critical race theory? The answer to that question appears to have eluded many, as controversies over racial diversity trainings and curricula have swept the nation's schools in recent months.
Often compared by critics to actual racism, CRT is a school of thought that generally focuses on how power structures and institutions impact racial minorities. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the first annual CRT workshop took place in 1989 but its origins go back as far as the mid-20th century with the development of a more general precursor known as critical theory.
Advocates of these ideas view the world through the lens of power relationships and societal structures rather than individuals. The movement itself came in reaction to the perceived failures of classical liberalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. Race, according to this view, is a relatively recent social construct that is weaponized by dominant groups to oppress others.
Part of the problem defining CRT is that its contours are so vague….
 |
| Kimberlé Crenshaw, Kendall Thomas, Patricia Williams |
Columbia Law School professors explain this method of research for legal scholars and how it’s being misunderstood.
Columbia News
July 01, 2021
…Critical race theory was a movement that initially started at Harvard under Professor Derrick Bell in the 1980s. It evolved in reaction to critical legal studies, which came about in the 70s and dissected the idea that law was just and neutral. Over time, the movement grew among legal scholars, mostly of color, at law schools across the country, including at UCLA, where [Kimberlé] Crenshaw lectured on critical race theory, civil rights, and constitutional law, and later at Columbia, where she was appointed a full professor in 1995, alongside [Patricia] Williams, a former student, research assistant, and lifelong mentee of Bell’s, and who is now professor of law emerita.
Although the scholarship differs in emphasis and discipline, it is united by an interest in understanding and rectifying the ways in which a regime of white supremacy and its subordination of people of color in America has had an impact on the relationship between social structure and professed ideals such as “the rule of law” and “equal protection.”
Put simply, according to Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality, which refers to how different forms of discrimination (such as sexism and racism) can overlap and compound each other, critical race theory is a way to talk openly about how America’s history has had an effect on our society and institutions today….
By: Gregory Pardlo
Pen America
November 8, 2021
…The popular (among some) objection is that CRT teaches children and young people that America is racist at its core. This is true. That is, America is indeed racist at its core. And it is a dishonest—not to mention illogical—rhetorical move to make that assertion mean “all white Americans are racist,” which is what CRT-baiters would have us believe is the hidden agenda. Equally dishonest is the effort to have the words “racist” and “racism” describe only the willful and overt racial hatred expressed by a conscious actor. Defining racism like this prevents us from examining the ways that laws, policies, practices and institutional cultures might bear the imprint of earlier generations’ racial attitudes and beliefs. Defining racism in this limited way precludes the possibility that an institution can act on its own, independently from its individual constituents, which, of course, is the very thing institutions are designed to do….
6 comments:
Do what you preach. Simple! Students know all of these, but you professors don’t show it…… all talk no action.
Gregory Pardlo has a terrific short essay, "Notes on Critical Race Theory," his contribution to PEN America's new report "Educational Gag Orders: Legislative Restrictions on the Freedom to Read, Learn, and Teach."
This is how it begins: "When my wife and I were dating back in the early aughts, apropos of a now-forgotten conversation, she alleged that most women she knew had experienced some form of sexual assault while in college. I was incredulous. 'You’re exaggerating,' I said. 'You’re just trying to stir up controversy.' A decade or so later, I found myself in a conversation with a white friend. 'I don’t think I know any black men who haven’t had a racially charged interaction with a cop,' I told him. When he accused me of exaggerating, of trying to stir up controversy, I was reminded of that earlier conversation with my wife. The symmetry was disturbing and, I was convinced, not at all coincidental. It was no coincidence, for example, that I only noticed the pattern when considering these two occasions from a distance of time and context. Neither was it a coincidence that in both conversations one of us was reluctant to acknowledge that such anecdotes could reflect reality given, I suspect, that no such patterns had been detected by the respective institutions..."
https://pen.org/notes-on-critical-race-theory/
Projection…… just treat everyone fairly and respect people’s rights….then you wouldn’t have to waste your time on this CRT crap!
1. Statistically the odds of three people chosen at random all being Black is less than 4/100 of 1%, So, why were these specific people chosen when we know in advance with near certainty what their 'opinion' will be? Why not Thomas Sowell or other Black academics who see the world differently from these three? Because the purpose was to 'white wash' CRT and misrepresent its nature;
2. Let's speak clearly. CRT is a restatement of Karl Marx' 'Capital vs Labor' theory only capital is now called White, and Labor - the oppressed, helpless victems in Marx' Germanic mind - is now termed 'People of Color'. In a single clear sentence, then, CRT is a version of Marx' socialism in which White (males) are to blame for all the major problems in the world and everything they created [Declaration of Independence, Constitution, U.S., etc.) must therefore be destroyed, and the Non-White People of Color are at all times the helpless, weak entitled Oppressed.
The reality is that a theory that our 3 'experts' - none of whom can escape thinking outside their own skin tone - say eliminates racism, in actuality looks at everything solely and always as a result of your skin color! Oh, my; where is Dr. King when we really need him?
@8:51
Sorry, that is not CRT.
You’re concerned about CRT more than school shootings ! !
Post a Comment