Critical race theory's opponents are sure it's bad. Whatever it is.
Attacks on critical race theory are everywhere these days: Its detractors claim that the academic movement is “planting hatred of America in the minds of the next generation” and “advocating the abhorrent viewpoint that Blacks should forever be regarded as helpless victims,” and say that it might even qualify as “child abuse.”
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) held up the Senate confirmation of one of President Biden’s nominees “because of her history promoting radical critical race theorists,” Hawley’s spokeswoman said. Delivering a speech in June pretty clearly aimed at bolstering his political prospects, former vice president Mike Pence said that “critical race theory teaches children as young as kindergarten to be ashamed of their skin color.”
Wrong.
“The critical race theory (CRT) movement,” explain legal scholars Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, “is a collection of activists and scholars interested in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power.” Its most direct academic origins can be found in the work of the late Harvard law professor Derrick Bell, who rigorously challenged mainstream liberal narratives of steady racial progress, illustrating how landmark legislation — the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 — failed to deliver liberty and justice for Black Americans.
The concept is certainly left-leaning, and it shakes up the traditional story of America as the unalloyed land of the free. But its central contention isn’t particularly radical or difficult to grasp. Far from preaching anti-Whiteness or Black victimhood, or rejecting individual rights, critical race theorists seek to explain how our laws and institutions — colorblind in theory — continue to circumscribe the rights of racial minorities. In the post-Jim Crow, post-Brown v. Board era, they ask, why and how do race and racism continue to play a constitutive role in America?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/critical-race-theory-law-systemic-racism/2021/07/02/6abe7590-d9f5-11eb-8fb8-aea56b785b00_story.html
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