Attorney and law professor Derrick Bell is widely acknowledged as the Godfather of Critical Race Theory. He walked his talk. Pictured above is his 1992 book.

One of the first steps toward being anti-racist in the United States in the 21st century is to be open to the lessons and limitations associated with Critical Race Theory (CRT). Unfortunately, the very mention of CRT among certain sectors of American society evokes a visceral, negative response.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas asserted at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference that “CRT is every bit as racist as the Klansmen in white sheets.”1  Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida criticized the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley for allowing CRT to be taught at the United States Military Academy at West Point.2

If anyone were to take seriously the views of Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham on Fox News, you would be convinced that CRT poses a mortal danger to the very foundations of the United States of America. 3

These critics of CRT and many others like them have argued that the goal of CRT is to brainwash white, school age children into hating their country and living with shame about what their ancestors may have done in years past. They all agree that CRT should be banned from public school classrooms across the country. Here in Ohio, two bills have already been introduced to the State Legislature with just this outcome in mind (House Bills 322 and 327) that would ban from the classrooms of this state any topic that might be “controversial, divisive or uncomfortable.”

But who decides what topics fit those categories?

What is actually being done with bills like these is shielding students and the public from the whole story of American history and from the transformation of this country into an increasingly multi-cultural society. Racism takes the form of banning any instruction that challenges the existing historical narrative about the creation, expansion, and power structure arrangements of the United States. Anti-racism insists that the narrative of this country must be expanded and edited if the truth about the United States is to be fully known.

The preferred narrative focuses exclusively on 1776 and 1787 as the years to remember. CRT suggest 1619 is of equal importance, because that was the year the economy of this country began to be built in large measure on 246 years of legalized slavery.

The preferred narrative focuses on George Washington at Valley Forge and Yorktown. However, it ignores George Wallace of Alabama promising “segregation, today, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.” 4

The preferred narrative would focus on such terms as Manifest Destiny and American Exceptionalism. CRT would force a discussion on the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Dred Scott Decision of 1850, the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision of 1895, and the Southern Manifesto of 1956 written by Strom Thurmond and Richard Russell and signed by 19 US Senators and 82 members of the House of Representatives that pledged resistance to the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954 calling for desegregation of public schools in the United States.

To be anti-racist is to be open to learning about the long history of racial bias, racialized violence, and the ways in which structural racism have created and maintained an unequal society.

CRT is not designed to be taught in elementary schools, as so many of its critics have suggested. It is also not designed to make white people hate their country or be ashamed of its founders. It is designed to point out the ways by which equal opportunity for African Americans in housing, employment, education, access to voting rights, and fair treatment in the criminal justice system have been severely limited.

CRT does not suggest that the issue involves the racial prejudices held by individual white citizens. Rather, the focus is on institutional and/or structural racism where the laws and social norms of the country were subject to the presumption of white supremacy or white privilege, and where power arrangements were set up to perpetuate that supremacy and privilege. 5

As of October 2021, laws are being enacted at every level of government by conservative, Republican, state legislatures that would safeguard the power of white Americans even after the country becomes increasingly multi-racial and multi-cultural. There seems to be a fear of the United States becoming a majority-minority country that fuels much of the racist rhetoric being heard within conservative political, religious, and militia groups.

To be an anti-racist is to embrace a changing America and reject those who would turn the United States into a replica of apartheid in South African with minority rule as its cornerstone. CRT would also urge the United States to move beyond a binary discussion of race relations where the issue is simply black versus white. Intersectionality is becoming a crucial term, where race and ethnicity extends to Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, and other groups once described by Michael Novak as the ”unmeltable ethnics.” 6

To be anti-racist is to be open to the full diversity that is present in the United States today. It is to see that diversity as a strength and asset in the global context, and not simply as something to be rejected and resisted for the sake of a faulty national narrative rooted in the denial of the truth about our nation’s true origins.

The key to anti-racism is being open to the worth and value of all people!

 

NOTES

[1] Kevin Kruse, “Ted Cruz’s erroneous definition of critical race theory explains white America,” MSNBC.com, June 20, 2021

[2] Danielle Kurtzleben, “Top General Defends Studying Critical Race Theory in the Military,” NPR.com,  June 23, 2021.

[3] Tucker Carlson, “If you question critical race theory, crazed ideologues will attack you and hurt your children,” FoxNews.com, July6, 2021

[4] George Wallace, “George Wallace’s Inaugural Address of 1963,” www.blackpast.org

[5] Richard Delgado and Jean Stefanic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, New York: NYU Press, 2017.

[6] Michael Novak, Unmeltable Ethnics: Politics and Culture in American Life, New York: Taylor and Francis, 2018.

 

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The Rev. Marvin A. McMickle, pastor emeritus of Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, retired in 2019 as president of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York, where he had served since 2011.