One Small Voice: Critical race theory misunderstood

by Lynn Mandaville

For several months now I have been irked by one particular meme making the rounds in my liberal circles on Facebook.

It says:

CRITICAL RACE THEORY = ACTUAL AMERICAN HISTORY

The text is usually accompanied by an old fashioned, black and white, wood-block engraving of African slaves being sold on an auction block.

The point of the meme, I reckon, is to shame the “unenlightened” into teaching unvarnished history in public school classrooms.

The unfortunate thing about the meme is that it is wildly inaccurate and only serves to muddy the waters around the discussion of CRT and public schools.

Critical race theory is, in fact, not simply a telling of American history in its laid-bare nakedness. Though there is an element of history involved in CRT, it is not the sole element.

The most important fact about CRT, in my opinion, is that it is not a curriculum intended for, nor used in, instruction at any level below graduate level studies.

CRT is doctoral level education aimed at students mostly engaged in jurisprudence, that is to say, the study of law.

Other points to be made early on in this unveiling of what is CRT involve the terms “critical” and “theory.”

“Critical” means the type of thinking involved in conducting the study of this course work. It is not to be confused with the idea of criticism, specifically, criticizing the behavior of whites during the slave era, or any whites of any era, toward Americans of any color. “Critical thinking” means being deliberate in weighing all facts and opinions about race relations in America to form some semblance of understanding of the legal ramifications of being a person of color in modern America.

The “theory” part means just that. It is not critical race fact. It is an idea being postulated for study to test out ideas as to where certain attitudes originated, and why those attitudes continue, particularly within the American legal system.

As in the sciences, a theory is a statement that one, or many, wish to study to draw out as much factual data as possible to understand it to the best possible outcome. Theory is not the be-all and end-all, it is the path toward an answer that may or may not pan out.

Once people understand the true nature of PhD level Critical Race Theory, they will be less likely to fall victim to the current politicization of teaching age-appropriate American history in American public schools.

As it is, memes such as the one I cited above attempt to equate what is a cross-disciplinary PhD study with straight American history. And they are not one and the same.

Let me say that again. CRT and straight-forward American history are not one and the same.

I have taken to pointing that out whenever I see this meme posted on Facebook.

So far no one has blocked or unfriended me over it. But I have noticed that those specific postings have tended to disappear after I have corrected them. The threads have not continued. So that’s something, I suppose.

However, I think it behooves all of us to be responsible about NOT perpetuating this myth that CRT is American history.

Critical Race Theory, as I said earlier, does have an element of history about it.

But CRT is a cross-disciplinary theory, involving, as I mentioned, the study of law, in addition to sociology, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, language studies, statistics and demographics, and the ways in which various groups of people interpret all these things from their unique points of view.

It is a very complex course, and I doubt if it is intended to produce a finite, quantitative result as much as it is intended to induce understanding, empathy and compassion in those who study this theory. As well as to pose more questions.

I have heard that in certain states there is legislation afoot to ban the teaching of critical race theory in their public schools, despite the indisputable fact that CRT is not being taught in any public schools in the entire United States.

What the true intention of these bans has been interpreted to mean is that no American history that makes any group of children feel bad about themselves is to be taught. Or, more pointedly, no American history is to be taught that makes white children feel bad about themselves or the part their ancestors played in that history.

And that interpretation is what the wildly inaccurate memes are protesting when they boldly, yet wrongly, equate CRT with American history.

I personally think it’s a sad situation in America where we cannot simply tell the story of America, warts and all, to our children.

It’s another instance of adults selling our children short. Or maybe more accurately, it’s another instance of adults transferring onto young children our own adult insecurities, our own misplaced guilt about what happened in the past, and our own actual guilt for allowing the inequities to continue through benign neglect.

Kids are not dopes.  Almost every child I have ever known has had an innate sense of fairness and equity until it was taught out of them.

Watch young children on a playground or in unsupervised play at home. If they don’t know the specific rules of a game, they make up their own rules, and those rules inevitably center around what’s fair to each kid involved. A group of kids who don’t know the fine points of a board game will seek to develop their own rules, in order to make the game work and to make that game fair.

So it is with teaching a factual story of the United States.

Kids will sort out what is fair or unfair within a historical setting unless a bias or prejudice has been pre-established by other older children or adults.

In other words, teachers need not editorialize about what occurs within a historical story.

Kids already have a sense that it isn’t proper to own another person. Kids know that it’s wrong to willfully hurt another person, bodily or emotionally. Kids know that it’s wrong to take things from others against their will, that it’s wrong to invade the personal space or bodies of others without consent.

(Have you ridden in a car with two or more young children in the back seat as they vie for their fair share of that back seat? Have you watched toddlers take things from one another and seen their reactions to losing that which they want? Have you listened to kids race to tattle on the sibling who hit them, punched them, scratched them, etc., etc., etc.?)

So it is with teaching history to kids.

Kids know it was not a good thing that Native Americans were run off their ancestral lands. Kids know that enslaving kidnapped Africans was a bad thing to do. Kids know that judging anyone different than themselves as “less than” should never occur on a general basis, but that opinions of individuals should be formed after they get to know one another.

They don’t have to be told these things. They already “feel” it.

So it’s not really about what we shouldn’t be teaching in public schools so much as it’s about what else we should be teaching.

Besides teaching the stories of America, we should be teaching in schools that what came before is not the fault of kids today. Today’s white children did not kidnap and enslave black people, nor did they deny black children, or any child of another color, basic human rights. Today’s white children didn’t force the Trail of Tears.

Besides teaching the stories of America, we should be letting kids discover that those actions they already know to be wrong should never be allowed to happen again.

Teaching American history is not about laying blame. It is about relating facts.

Did Indian massacres occur in response to white settlement of the North American continent? Yes. Were there slave uprisings in opposition to their treatment by plantation owners? Sure. Should these also be taught along with the insults committed by whites? Absolutely. When it is age appropriate, to obtain full understanding, not to play tit-for-tat in laying blame.

I sure do wish that Facebook and other social media weren’t being used to sell political agendas with just a “sound bite.”

Memes have come to perpetuate an oversimplification of too many complex issues in these complicated times.

CRT as being equated to American History 101 is only one example of the harm being done by perpetuating well-meaning, but completely wrong, memes that do more harm than good in the overall political health of the nation.