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It's important to remember that Critical Race Theory is not just about race. That's only 1/3 of the name. It's CRITICAL Race THEORY.

Here's Wikipedia's definition of critical theory: "Critical theory (also capitalized as Critical Theory)[1] is an approach to social philosophy that focuses on reflective assessment and critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challenge power structures."

Necessarily, any critical theory is going to ruffle feathers. This is true for feminist, Marxist, and queer theory in addition to CRT. Hell, it's true for seemingly innocuous literary theory like Reader-Response Criticism.

I think a lot of lefties have good intentions when they defend CRT, but they inherently misunderstand it because, in their eagerness to act on their moral compass, they neglect to actually learn CRT. So they resort to articles that attempt to explain, but only scratch the surface or misrepresent it (even with good intentions). Although CRT certainly does overlap quite a bit with "teaching the history of racism," CRT is more than that. To diminish CRT to simply teaching objective truth is to ignore the actual theorists and their ideas.

As an example of something from CRT that challenges power structures, we can look at the idea of interest convergence. I'm simplifying this, but interest convergence is the idea that Black people's lives in America only get systemically better when their interests converge with the interests of White people.

In a 1980 essay (linked below in full for curious readers), Derrick Bell argues that the 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision, which unanimously struck down segregation and forced the desegregation of schools*, only happened because it is what most benefited White society. It's an interesting read, thought dense at times.

Bell's three main points in arguing this are, briefly:

1. The US was waging a global public relations war with the Soviet Union, and second/third world countries recognized the hypocrisy of exporting American democracy and capitalism abroad while oppressing Black folks domestically. Desegregating would help us fight the commies.
2. In 1948, Truman desegregated the military. Black veterans who fought in WWII and the Korean War risked their lives abroad returned to the US were confronted with the reality that they fought for a country that doesn't want them. Add onto this the rampant violence that Blacks faced (Emmett Till was killed only the year after Brown was decided) and the communist sympathies among the civil rights movement, and you can imagine how astute Whites in power read these tea leaves.
3. White folks in power at the time began arguing that in order for the South to better industrialize and improve their economy, segregation needed to go.

There is a footnoted version of this essay in the first book I linked above, but you can read the essay without footnotes here (I didn't reread this essay to ensure accuracy, but I skimmed it and it seems to be the full essay): https://www.hartfordschools.org/files/Equity%20Page/Interest_Convergence_by_Bell.pdf

*American schools are not and never were desegregated. Surprise!

As another example of CRT not simply teaching fact, we can consider the idea of challenging perceived objectivity and providing alternative narratives. In the United States, racism is often hard to combat because of how systemic it is (which is CRT's primary goal--tackling the systemic nature of racism). The Tulsa Massacre is a good example of this. The White people in power tried to cover/clean it up. It wasn't until 2021 that Congress heard testimony from survivors.

Systemically, the United States relies on official documentation to ascertain truth. But what happens when the people creating and maintaining that official documentation are racist? The result is a situation in which Black people are depicted negatively by data (e.g., arrest records) and must defend themselves with personal narratives that simply cannot be backed up by official documentation (e.g., personal accounts of racial profiling, such as "driving while Black"...or, perhaps more accurately, "doing x while Black").

I think this is a big deal, because when we teach, we look for scientific data. But the oral tradition, to which personal narratives and family lore belong, is excluded from that. So CRT also challenges how we ascertain truth as a society, not just what the truth is.

Finally, I'll share a short story that Derrick Bell wrote. It is science fiction, not historical. It imagines the future and a world in which aliens have made contact with us. What does racism look like in that world, according to Critical Race Theory?

"The Space Traders:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6-n9axdiOs
Text: https://whgbetc.com/the-space-traders.pdf

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PotD Paradiso
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