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Anti-CRT Lawmakers Are Passing Pro-CRT Laws

November 30, 2021 | FlaglerLive | 4 Comments

Harvard Law professor Derrick Bell is largely credited as the originator of critical race theory. (David Shankbone/Wikimedia Commons)
Harvard Law professor Derrick Bell is largely credited as the originator of critical race theory. (David Shankbone/Wikimedia Commons)

By Jonathan Feingold

Since the final months of the Trump administration, the Republican Party has waged a sustained assault on critical race theory. Otherwise known as “CRT,” this academic framework offers tools to illuminate the relationship among race, racism and the law. Through calculated caricature and distortion, right-wing think tanks and media have weaponized CRT to manufacture a culture war that recasts antiracism as the new racism.




This campaign employs a well-worn script designed to sow racial division, galvanize voters and shield economic elites – and the systems they enable – from meaningful critique.

This campaign appears to be working. Anti-CRT messaging has emerged as a signature – and potent – GOP political talking point. Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, for example, repeated a common refrain when she asserted the falsehood that “critical race theory teaches people to judge others based on race, gender, or sexual identity, rather than the content of their character.” More recently in Virginia, Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin closed his campaign with a pledge to “ban critical race theory on Day One.”

Pundits may have overstated CRT’s impact in Virginia and beyond. But Youngkin’s success cemented CRT as a favorite foil in the Republican playbook.

On the legislative front, between January and September 2021, Republicans invoked similar anti-CRT rhetoric to justify 54 bills across 24 states. At least 11 are now law.

The mainstream media keeps characterizing these laws as “CRT bans.” This framing is understandable and inviting. But often it distorts reality by mischaracterizing the laws themselves. Most of these bills – if you take seriously their actual text – call for more CRT, not less.



Banned concepts

Consider a bill recently passed by Wisconsin’s Republican-dominated Assembly. The bill, which tracks legislation across the country, prohibits teachers from “teach[ing]” a series of banned “concepts.” This includes a ban against teaching that “[o]ne race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex.”

Now imagine a 10th grade social studies class begins a unit on corporate America. The teacher opens with basic facts about Fortune 500 CEOs: 92.6% are white, 1% are Black, 3.4% are Latinx and 2.4% are Asian. These disparities exist against a backdrop in which roughly 60% of the U.S. population is white, 14.2% is Black, 18.7% is Latinx and 7.2% is Asian.

The teacher shares two additional facts. White men – roughly 35% of the population – hold 85.8% of CEO posts. Of the 83 women who have become CEOs since 2000, 72 were white, thereby comprising 86% of all female CEOs this century.

The statistics invite an inescapable question: Why do such glaring disparities exist?

One answer assumes today’s CEOs are the product of fair and unbiased systems that reward talent and hard work. This response implies that white men, relative to everyone else, and white women, relative to women of color, are simply more talented and harder workers.

In effect, this story suggests that white men are inherently superior – the precise message that Wisconsin’s bill prohibits.

Explaining advantage

A different answer might explore whether the systems that produce CEOs are, in fact, fair and unbiased.

This is where CRT enters. Roughly 40 years ago, a group of legal scholars confronted a similar question: Why do profound racial disparities persist even when the law prohibits racial discrimination?

Four decades later, these scholars – who would name their project critical race theory – have offered varying answers. These answers, many grounded in seminal work from professor Derrick Bell, have exposed the myriad ways that race and sex remain powerful determinants in America – even when laws prohibit race or sex discrimination.

The teacher in our example could bring this robust literature into her classroom. Doing so would comply with the Wisconsin bill and, importantly, enrich her students’ learning. She could, for example, assign writings from acclaimed critical race theorist Cheryl Harris, who exposed the often-invisible benefits whiteness can confer, even to poor white people.




Our teacher could then draw on professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, a CRT co-founder, whose pathbreaking work urges us to explore how racism interacts with sexism, classism and homophobia – among other dimensions of identity.

She could also turn to legal scholar Jerry Kang, who has outlined why implicit biases often lead individuals and institutions to discriminate – even when we hold earnest egalitarian commitments.

Though the specifics differ, the above scholars – and the collective CRT canon – offer a consistent insight: CEO white/male overrepresentation cannot be explained by some “inherent superiority” enjoyed by whites and men. Rather, contemporary disparities result, in large part, from race and gender – and often class – advantages and disadvantages embedded within the systems through which CEOs must pass.

CRT’s political reality

For educators like me who have witnessed the benefits of a CRT-rich curriculum, it’s welcome news that anti-CRT lawmakers are proposing and passing pro-CRT laws – even if unintentional and counterintuitive.

But in reality, these laws are unlikely to yield more CRT in classrooms – regardless of their actual language.

The GOP’s anti-CRT crusade, as with related campaigns targeting trans youth and mask mandates, has never been about facts – let alone concern for legal text. This is about power, and “anti-CRT” laws empower private and public actors to target teachers who engage in even basic conversations about race and racism.

A recent report from the free-speech advocacy group PEN America captures this dynamic. After reviewing all 54 bills, PEN concluded: “These bills appear designed to chill academic and educational discussions and impose government dictates on teaching and learning. In short: They are educational gag orders.”

PEN further explained that even when bills do not become law, they “send a potent message that educators are being watched and that ideological redlines exist.”

In today’s toxic political climate, this translates to less CRT in the classroom, even when the law – and sound teaching – demands more.

Jonathan Feingold is Associate Professor of Law at Boston University.

The Conversation


The Conversation arose out of deep-seated concerns for the fading quality of our public discourse and recognition of the vital role that academic experts could play in the public arena. Information has always been essential to democracy. It’s a societal good, like clean water. But many now find it difficult to put their trust in the media and experts who have spent years researching a topic. Instead, they listen to those who have the loudest voices. Those uninformed views are amplified by social media networks that reward those who spark outrage instead of insight or thoughtful discussion. The Conversation seeks to be part of the solution to this problem, to raise up the voices of true experts and to make their knowledge available to everyone. The Conversation publishes nightly at 9 p.m. on FlaglerLive.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Devrie says

    November 30, 2021 at 10:07 pm

    The TED Talk by Jerry Kang is pretty awesome.

    https://youtu.be/9VGbwNI6Ssk

    Reply
  2. beachlover says

    December 2, 2021 at 9:17 am

    This wokeness is real, after 35 years in a corporate job starting at the bottom, getting shit wages. I got told by our CEO that we should have conversations about our white privilege, really. I don’t remember anyone paying for my bills or getting any special treatment while working two jobs and trying to go to school at the same time. Ending up with a substandard degree, and never really getting into the top tier jobs, with set aside positions for minority candidates. Whiteness and male have been a determent not an asset in corporate world. Affirmative action has been horrible solution to discriminate against white males. It’s clear to me that this starts in the classroom and should be ended. We should truly be color blind in our government and businesses.

    Reply
    • Pierre Tristam says

      December 2, 2021 at 5:44 pm

      In other words, white power, fist-raised? Seems to me your analysis is Exhibit A of why Trump is so popular among angry, resentful, “substandard degree” whites who need something, anything, anyone to blame for their shit luck or god forbid–if we’re to take the GOP line about bootstraps–blame themselves. So any whites who didn’t get that CEO job has something, anything, anyone to blame, and that, of course, is the damn Blacks, the woke, the sensitivity seminars, because really, what’s destroying this country–not Covid, not shitty school board members more worried about the word “fuck” (pardon my mountain Lebanese) than thousands of children’s achievements, not crushing inequalities that have turned upward mobility into a sick joke at poorer people’s expense. No. What’s destroying this country is the goddamn 45-minute sensitivity seminar your company requires you to take so you don’t call your co-worker a faggot or make inappropriate jokes, though you think it’s your right to. Sure. Yes. I’m with you. White power, white blubber, what’s the difference anymore.

      Reply
  3. Jackson1955 says

    December 2, 2021 at 1:48 pm

    Smart people learn from everything and everyone, average people from their experiences, stupid people already have all the answers. The GOP’s recent culture war topics are about appealing to white rage, since President Biden doesn’t generate the same level of animus as President Obama.

    Those that have been discriminated against for hundreds of years already know their legacy. The only people discomforted to learn of that history are those that have benefited from it.

    Reply
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