Oct 8, 2022 5 min read

The latest flashpoint in the ongoing cultural wars over how and what public school students should learn is the concept of critical race theory (CRT). Critical race theory is a way of looking at our history of racism with the goal of restructuring imbedded discrimination. It is an academic construct based on the well-documented understanding that systemic racism is a social, economic and cultural historical fact. CRT is directed against racism in institutions and long-standing practices, not individuals or white America as a class.

Right-wing elected officials and their supporters will back any action that denies racism is common and systemic. Many Republicans seem to believe that racism will end when the nation stops discussing it. Attacking CRT has become their latest method to accomplish this goal. They claim that CRT is an ideological manifesto that seeks to demonize white people in the past and present for developing or supporting systemic racism. In fact, CRT is simply a factual recognition of historical events that have led to numerous long-standing institutional examples of systemic racism. Adherents of CRT believe that by acknowledging and discussing systemic racism we can move forward as a nation in a positive way.

The concept of CRT has existed since the early 1960s when Derrick Bell, an African American Harvard law professor (born and raised in Pittsburgh) developed the idea as a reaction to the civil rights movement. His aim was to move the country toward a culture based on racial equity by examining the root causes of white supremacy.

For decades, the theory remained a little known discussion point, debated only in academic circles. CRT broke into the mainstream with the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Right-wing commentators exploited the post-Floyd nationwide demonstrations as a way of introducing critical race theory to a white audience suspicious of the Black call for justice. It became the right-wing symbol of an aggressive new ideology to malign all white people. In fact, the theory was neither new, nor aggressive. Nor was it designed to paint all whites as racist.

Since 2020, CRT has become a major talking point in Republican political campaigns around the country. The hope is that this “dangerous concept,” misrepresented on Fox News and other conservative media, will sweep them into office. Remarkably, no public school in America had critical race theory as part of its curriculum. Nonetheless, states governed by Republican legislatures have now passed laws to prohibit discussing CRT. Predictively, these misplaced legislative efforts have been expanded to limit how teachers can present racism in any context and to curtail racial and diversity initiatives in education.

Republican efforts to ban CRT and related anti-racist programs offer no better example of how systemic racism continues its long saga in American education. A recent history on the teaching of race in America (“Teaching White Supremacy,” by Donald Yacovone) illustrates the enduring tradition of racism presented in public school textbooks.

The author examined hundreds of school texts distributed by the nation’s leading publishing houses from the early 19th century to the 1980s. He found that public education promoted white supremacy by saying little about slavery or portraying it as a positive institution that helped lift “savage” blacks into the realm of civilization.

The most popular history and civic texts taught three prevalent themes to young students well into the 1960s. First, that white superiority and Black inferiority were an acceptable part of American culture, including accounts of the nation’s past. Second, that the Civil War emancipation was a cleansing event that marked the end of further wide scale racism in America. Third, that reconstruction provided white students with an easy explanation for ongoing white privilege. The argument was that during reconstruction African Americans failed to take advantage of an opportunity to progress and therefore could not complain about their unequal status.

Systemic racism is not limited to the United States. Democratic forms of government do not eradicate it. In addition, CRT is relevant in nations where Blacks are in the overwhelming majority. Consider South Africa, where in one election, a nation long divided into racial castes controlled by a white minority was turned upside down. After 1994, long disenfranchised people of color now wielded political dominance over the white minority.

Unfortunately, South Africa underwent immense political change while remaining on the same dismal, white-dominated economic track. Today, the unemployment rate remains at 30%. Thirty million Blacks live below the national poverty line. Twenty companies control 80% of the nation’s capital assets. Almost all are white owned.

White privilege remains as strong in South Africa as it was during apartheid. Whites control all the best schools, employment opportunities and agricultural land holdings. The Black middle class has found it difficult to penetrate into the white-managed mainstream of economic activity.

Clearly, systemic racism is a widespread, global reality. Solutions are only possible by admitting the problem exists and developing programs to break it down. In 2021, the America Civil Liberties Union released the following statement: “Our country needs to acknowledge its history of systemic racism and reckon with present-day impacts of racial discrimination – this includes being able to teach and talk about these concepts in our schools.” Without this open approach, our nation is destined to perpetuate systemic racism for generations to come.

Gary Stout is a Washington attorney.