Denis Grossen
Sartell
The Janagan Ramanathan column about Critical Race Theory in your paper April 7 is inaccurate and exposes the indoctrination of Sartell students.
CRT asserts racism is embedded in our legal system and policies. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, it is an approach to culture aimed at challenging power structures and criticizing society. It was developed in the 1970s by legal scholars to understand why the U.S. Civil Rights Movement had lost momentum. Inspired by Critical Legal Studies (an offshoot of Marxist-oriented Critical Theory), CRT asserts that race is not biologically based but a culturally invented category to oppress people of color.
Our Declaration of Independence states “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
That’s the opposite of Marxist theories that an all-powerful state is best to extract a country’s resources and separate people into oppressed/oppressors. Exceptionalism recognizes private property, rewards work, entrepreneurship and competition.
A theory that claims the colonies seceded from Britain to pursue slavery is false and aims to destroy our country. Slavery flourished in Africa and the Americas long before European explorers sailed the west coast of Africa, and it carried on after it ended on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1800s until at least the first half of the 20th Century on the east coast of Africa and the Middle East.
