To preserve liberty, look first to the truth: Combating the Attack on Critical Race Theory

To preserve liberty, look first to the truth:

Combating the Attack on Critical Race Theory

In a democracy, we are free to do many things, but we are not free to ignore the truth.         Jonathan Schell

If we have learned anything in the last few years about life in these United States, it is that people live in many different realities, based on life experiences, race, class, education, opportunities, values, beliefs, myths, ideology, and a multitude of other factors. One thing is clear, no matter what your “reality” is, there is an objective world that we all exist in, but which is interpreted differently based on our personal weaving of the above mentioned factors.

Recently there has been an aggressive attack in the media by conservatives against the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in our public schools. Usually, the argument from the Right is that CRT is anchored in the concept that racism is systemic rather than personal, it is a toxic ideology with Marxist underpinnings spreading from universities into k-12 education and throughout our culture. At its core, they state that CRT teaches children that they are either privileged white oppressors or victims of color. Their view is that CRT is diametrically opposed to, and totally destructive of American founding principles of equality and meritocracy, of responding to people based on their character and not on immutable characteristics such as skin color.

This argument then continues a similar theme questioning whether there is structural racism in the United States which disparages this idea by stating that if anything, CRT is racist against whites and promotes self-loathing in white school children. Apparently, people with this view do not believe that there is “structural” or “systemic” racism in the United States that is based on the history of this country. They believe that racism is merely a problem of some people having a “personal” bias against various other persons of color or national heritage.

Let’s try to clear this up. Prejudice is simply prejudging a person because they belong to some social group – gays, African-Americans, immigrants, Muslim, Christian, etc. These are usually just negative generalizations about the group projected on to an individual which are learned through stereotypes and feelings gathered from friends, family, the media, or other sources. They usually have no real basis in fact. Discrimination, on the other hand, is activities and actions based on prejudice. These can be mundane, like snubbing someone, or overt, like denying the renting of an apartment to someone based on their being perceived as a member of some social group. Being prejudiced and discriminating against someone based on “race” is manifesting racist ideas and feelings. But this is not racism.

Racism, like sexism and other forms of oppression, is when one racial group’s prejudice is backed by legal authority and institutional control. The control and authority transform this prejudice into systemic social, political, and economic structures which are then perpetuated by the controlling racial group at the expense of the targeted racial group. This is what is systemic and structural racism is.

Jim Crow laws in the United States, redlining neighborhoods for real estate loans, apartheid in South Africa, the Chinese Exclusion Acts, the internment of U.S. citizens of Japanese heritage during World War II, and many other things are all examples of structural and systemic racism. This is what the Civil Rights Movement was about – the expansion of rights and liberties granted to one group and denied another based on race. It is also the basis of movements like Black Lives Matter.

An ongoing issue in the U.S. is systemic and institutional racism which reflects the unequal application of laws in many areas of everyday life. Disparities in health care, education, criminal justice, housing, employment, and other areas are well documented. Racial disparity in access to health care are reflected in a variety of indicators and statistics which reflect that the equal application of these laws is not taking place. Blacks have higher death rates at younger ages from cancer, heart disease and diabetes. Disparities in home ownership in the U.S. for black and Hispanic families is striking. While 71% of white families live in owner-occupied housing, less than half of Hispanic families (45%) and black families (41%) do. Families of color have been excluded from home ownership for decades and the source can be traced back to the policies in place in the New Deal expansion of mortgages through such as entities as the Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration home loan programs. These policies have left Hispanic and black families lagging in the accumulation of wealth and tax savings which come from home ownership. One study revealed that for every dollar of wealth a median income white family held, the median Hispanic family had only ten cents and the median black family only eight cents.

Racism is alive and well in the U.S. as is the ideology of white supremacy that it is founded on. The history of the United States is founded on three principals in existence in the early years of its formation: (1) the ideology of white supremacy; (2) the practice of African slavery; and (3) policies of genocide of native peoples and the theft of their land. One of the myths created out of these three principals is that the founders of this country believed “that all men are created equal.” This view of them is not only a myth – it is a lie.

The colonies and their economies were founded on the genocide and eradication of the Indigenous people of the Americas and the enslavement of people from Africa. These are the hard truth and facts. That the “founding fathers” could eradicate entire populations of people and own slaves while truly believing in the principal that “all men are created equal” clearly strains reasoning. How is this possible?

It all comes down to who they meant as “men.” Simply put, their idea of who was included in this category were white, property owning, educated males who were the elite of colonial society. Women, slaves, and Indigenous people were excluded and not considered viable political beings. Slaves were codified as being three-fifths of a human being, solely for the purposes of the census to allow the smaller states more representation in the newly forming federal government.

Of the fifty-six signers to the Declaration of Independence, forty-one owned slaves, among them Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and James Madison. Seventeen of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention owned a total of about 1,400 slaves, and of the first twelve U.S. Presidents, eight owned slaves. And slavery in the original thirteen colonies was notable for its cruelty, dehumanization, and brutality. Slavery in the U.S. amounted to

The conversion of human beings into currency, into machines who existed solely for the profit of their owners, to be worked as long as the owners desired, who had no rights over their bodies or loved ones, who could be mortgaged, bred, won in a bet, given as wedding presents, bequeathed to heirs, sold away from spouses or children to cover an owner’s debt or to spite a rival or to settle an estate. They were regularly whipped, raped, and branded, subjected to any whim or distemper of the people who owned them.^[i]

As one legal historian noted, what the colonist created was “an extreme form of slavery that existed nowhere else in the world. For the first time in history, one category of humanity was ruled out of the ‘human race’ and into a separate subgroup that was to remain enslaved for generations in perpetuity.”^[ii]

Beginning with the Bill of Rights the push to bring more democracy to greater numbers of the citizens of the U.S. is integral part of our history.  The suffrage movement for women’s right to vote, the labor movement struggle for decent working conditions, eight hour workday and a decent livable wage, the eradication of voter suppression laws, the right of women to control their own biology, the right of gays and lesbians to marry, are all examples of the struggle to overcome systemic and structural oppression of various kinds, including racism.

Race, after all, is a social construct. There is no scientific basis to different “races” of human beings. The sooner we accept this and change the status quo of systemic racism to a more just and fair society, the sooner we can move on to tackle many other issues that are tearing this country apart and destroying our environment. It won’t be easy, but it must be done.

[i] Wilkerson, I. (2020). Caste: The Origin of our Discontents. Random House, New York, NY. p. 45.

[ii] Gross, A. J. (2008). What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.