Critical Race Theory; What's Critical to Know About CRT

By Aditi Jha

28 years ago in 1993, Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier was nominated by former President Bill Clinton to be the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Many conservatives, editorials and critics immediately and loudly disagreed with the choice. They said that Guinier endorsed a radical theory called critical race theory. Barely anybody knew what it was, but the critics still won. Clinton canceled the nomination, saying that it was because “the battle would be carried on a ground that I could not defend.” The former president claimed that with “deep regret,” he was declaring the “withdrawal of the nomination of Lani Guinier to be assistant attorney general for civil rights,” while praising her as “a person of high integrity, great intellect, strong character and a superb civil rights record.” In 2002, over 20 American law schools were using critical race theory. Now, it has risen up again as a highly controversial topic. So what is it? Critical race theory, otherwise called CRT, is an over 40-year-old academic concept. It circles around the belief that race isn’t only an individual bias, it’s an idea known and accepted in society, one of the fundamental tenets that is ingrained in humans, but also the legal and judicial system. As Gloria Ladson-Billings, the president of the National Academy of Education explained in early July, “critical race theory is a series of theoretical propositions that suggest that race and racism are normal, not aberrant, in American life.” An example is the 1930s, government officials drew lines(quite literally) around locations they thought had poor financial risks, and their reasons frequently were just based on the color of the inhabitants’ skin. Banks then refused to give the black residents of those locations mortgages. According to CRT, the same discrimination is seen in single-family zoning, where affordable housing isn’t allowed to be built in advantaged neighborhoods that are majorly white. Critics say that it would make the K-12 students believe that the United States is fundamentally racist, or that there are two groups, the “oppressors'' and the “oppressed.” There’s a lot of misunderstanding over critical race theory because of this, especially with its connection to other concepts like anti-racism and social justice. An aftereffect of this means that all diversity education and education about race history is labeled as critical race theory, even though it’s not always the basis of those subjects at all. A conservative organization named the Heritage Foundation blamed several of the events they disagreed with on critical race theory, including the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, California’s new ethnic studies curriculum and diversity training in the workplace. They alleged that “When followed to its logical conclusion, CRT is destructive and rejects the fundamental ideas on which our constitutional republic is based.” While, according to Edweek.org, CRT says that “racism is part of everyday life, so people; white or nonwhite; who don’t intend to be racist can nevertheless make choices that fuel racism,” critics say that the theory’s idea of equity is discrimination against white people. Ibram X Kendi wrote a book called How to Be An Antiracist where he famously wrote that equity stemming from discrimination could be considered antiracist. This is often quoted. The difference between the critics and advocates’ views of critical race theory is, lastly, related to their different views of racism. CRT is focused on finding the outcome of the decisions and actions that were harmful to minority communities, and wants the outcomes to change to be more equal. The mention and reference to race in this is what’s debated and different in everybody’s perspective. Christopher Rufo at Manhattan Institute went on Fox News last year to ask the former president to ban critical race theory. He said; “I call on the president to immediately issue this executive order and stamp out this destructive, divisive, pseudo-scientific ideology at its root.” A few weeks later, former President Trump signed an executive order to ban the version of critical race theory that Rufo was talking about. It came up in September’s debate, and Trump said that he “ended it because it’s racist.” He said that he “ended it because a lot of people were complaining that they were asked to do things that were absolutely insane.” And then in early 2021, Republicans in various states such as Oklahoma, Iowa, New Hampshire, Florida and more started drafting similar state bills and resolutions. It wasn’t only in America, too. In October of 2020, the Conservative UK Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch had stated that, when it came to critical race theory in middle and elementary schools, “we do not want to see teachers teaching their pupils about white privilege and inherited racial guilt … any school which teaches these elements of critical race theory, or which promotes partisan political views such as defunding the police without offering a balanced treatment of opposing views, is breaking the law.” The Australian Senate banned CRT in June 2021 after media reports that it was “preoccupied with the oppression, discrimination and struggles of Indigenous Australians.” So what can you do about this? A poll taken in late June by YouGov and The Economist showed that only 26 percent of Americans said they knew “a lot” about critical race theory, while 38 percent said they knew “a little.” In conclusion, it is essential to educate yourself and others about critical race theory, and then decide for yourself how you can work to improve your own biases and help make your community a more equitable place.