Among many other issues discussed regarding schools, Critical Race Theory has become a focus for resistance to the “woke indoctrination” occurring in our educational institutions.
As time has passed, I have observed many news anchors, TV show hosts, and politicians offer different takes on Critical Race Theory’s national implications and what the spread of its ideas would mean for our youth. Fewer people, however, can define it outright.
I was one of those people. So when I first heard it on the news, I immediately turned to Google. It was there I found out it’s a legal theory that states racism was embedded in legal systems and policies (perhaps not always explicitly, but with a tendency to utilize seemingly non-racist policies that would have racist outcomes). Those policies and legal systems led to the perpetuation of racism and inequality even after the Civil Rights Movement formed. What this means is Critical Race Theory or CRT is quite complicated. It was originally a legal theory, after all, and relatively few of us are lawyers. However, to simplify it a bit, let us look at some of the claims made regarding CRT.
One of the most prominent claims by conservative pundits and politicians is CRT intends to portray all white people as racist or sinful, and therefore CRT is racist in and of itself. However, none of the original academic works about CRT (by scholars including the like of Kimberlé Crenshaw) ever insinuated such a thing. In fact, that part of the “definition” has only been mentioned by critics of CRT. It hardly seems fair to critique an idea based on whatever one wants to make up about it. The closest Crenshaw ever came to such a statement was when she said, in an interview, that CRT asked us to recognize all of us – regardless of race – are capable of inadvertently perpetuating a racist system or outcome without being explicitly racist ourselves.
Another claim is CRT makes white children feel guilty or uncomfortable. First, there is no consistent evidence of such feelings among white students. If we were to assume CRT was being taught in all classrooms (it is not), remember it’s a legal theory, so only the most complex of high school social studies electives would even approach CRT, as opposed to the non-theoretical history of slavery and Jim Crow. There is no evidence of studies or surveys provided to back up claims of white student guilt. Secondly, many African American and other minority students would argue they do not get a choice about whether they deal with race or not – from insensitive jokes to being stared at or singled out during lessons about slavery. I can confirm that sometimes happens because it happened to me in elementary school before kids realized there is a difference between being South Asian American and African American. Even if white children did feel a small level of guilt, how is that more damaging than what minority children face from derogatory jokes and language? An ounce of prevention may not be pleasant, but it is worth a pound of cure.
The manufactured panic regarding CRT is not just about preventing discussion of it. If it was, it would not change much, if anything, in most schools. Instead, legislation based on the CRT panic is intended to prevent discussion about anything that harms or has harmed African Americans or other minorities. That is because the language of these laws is very loose since almost none of the drafters of said laws seem to know what CRT is. However, if we are never allowed to learn or discuss these things in school, minority students – especially African Americans – will be forced to deal with the disadvantages without anyone ever realizing the problem.
(Janagan Ramanathan, the son of Sri Lankan immigrants, was raised in Sartell and graduated in 2020 from Sartell High School. He spent two years as a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy, then transferred to the University of Minnesota, where he studies aerospace engineering. His hobbies are strategy board games, video games, frisbee, Tom Clancy novels, Bollywood movies and annoying his family and friends.)
