"Critical Race Theory" is just a rehash of what is commonly understood; white kids shouldn't feel "shame" about being more "enlightened" than their parents

 

We are told by Fox News that in the Virginia governors’ race, Republican Glenn Youngkin has pulled ahead of Democrat Terry McAuliffe, after McAuliffe seemed to have a significant lead just two weeks ago. What happened? One reason may be that Joe Biden paid a visit; Democrats should be wary of “receiving” help from a president whose current approval ratings are underwater. But another issue is that Youngkin has been hammering McAuliffe on parental control of what is being taught in classrooms. Here are some of those parents:

 

It is probably not very intelligent to give parents such control, since many probably already have difficulty with their six-year-old’s homework. But this isn’t about “reading, ‘riting or ‘rithmetic”; this is about what is being taught in presumably social studies classes. What is at issue is a curriculum that school districts across the country have had to “assure” irate white parents that they do not, in fact, having any plans of instituting in their kids’ classrooms. It is something that the Brookings Institute has noted that “Fox News has mentioned 1,300 times in less than four month” and has become “a new boogie man for people unwilling to acknowledge our country’s racist history and how it impacts the present.”

When I was in K-12 schools in small-town Wisconsin, there was almost no mention of race in history classes, save for what the Civil War was about. In grammar school, we might have learned something about the cultures of other countries, but nothing about the people here that we seldom encountered, save during excursions into the city (Milwaukee or Racine).  I recall in high school, a teacher brought in a film projector and showed us D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation; I think the teacher was trying to raise our consciousness about past history. I found the blackface actors clownish, their behavior ludicrous rather than disturbing, and the white people too “pure” to take seriously. I’m not sure what the other students thought, since the bell rang just after it was over; some seemed to be thinking to themselves “WTF was that?”  The one thing that should have given pause to take it seriously were the scenes of men riding around in KKK outfits, who were being portrayed as the “heroes” of the story.

I don’t know what is being taught is social studies classes these days, but I can pretty much assume that in mostly or all-white schools it is unlikely that students are being taught about the racial history of this country, or to prepare them about how historically-discriminated against groups view their “place” in a white-dominated society. No, everyone should have ingrained in their senses the “greatness” of this country as told through the eyes of white elites, and not the “untold history” of who was trodden upon to make it “great”—black slaves, Native Americans, and laborers of all kinds (both industrial and farm), who were abused, without rights, and usually worked for wages just enough to raise a family in one-room tenements, hovels and tents.

Those issues may be mentioned but quickly passed over. So what is this “boogie man” that has white nationalists and the far-right media in a tizzy-fit? Something called “Critical Race Theory.” I suspect that most people are like me, who didn’t really know what it was, but have  heard nothing but angst about it. Unfortunately for those who support the teaching of “CRT,” they got off the wrong foot from the very beginning; I mean, couldn’t they come up with a more “benign” name that “critical race theory”? It doesn’t surprise me that it sounds “scary” to white people. And calling it a “theory” suggests it has no “factual” basis, just something that is “made up.”

So what exactly is “critical race theory” anyways? Nothing you’ve never heard before. The “tenets” of CRT include the assertion that race is a social construct, not a biological one. To say it is biological is to separate different groups by skin color and certain genetic and physical traits—but in reality these differences are merely created to construct a social mechanism to keep people divided between the “haves” and “have nots.” “Race” is also tied to certain “behavioral” and “intellectual” traits, assumed to be “good” in some groups, and “bad” in others, and thus justify discrimination and prejudice. Very few people in this world are naturally “bad,” or want to be, so there has to be some other reason that “race” matters—such as how “pleasing” one is to another’s eye, and skin color is the most important variable in white people’s equation.

The “group” that has made these constructions have been Europeans and European-Americans, which they have historically employed for the purpose of segregation and discrimination. In some parts of this country, this was codified by law; in other parts of the country, it was simply “custom,” such as in the animosity that the Irish and Italian communities in the Northeast had for blacks—and still do. White people employed various stereotypes to justify their attitudes that changed for the “times”: being a “threat” to the sanctity of white womanhood after the Civil War to justify segregation; before the civil rights movement, blacks had the “childlike,” subservient qualities that you saw in films of the 1930s and 40s;  during the civil rights era, posing a threat to “civilized” society and white job security. While laws have been passed that ban active discrimination, that hardly means it still doesn’t occur, and many white people tend to express their prejudice by more “subtle” microaggressions, which communicates someone’s stereotypes and paranoia about someone of a different color or “ethnicity” in “small,” but demeaning, ways that can still be translated into such things as job and housing discrimination.

When white political elites did deign to ban segregation and outright discrimination, it was more out of self-interest than desire for the moral high ground. To quote Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane: “If I don’t look after the interests of the underprivileged, maybe somebody else will, maybe somebody without any money or property, and that would be too bad”—that is, for his privileged group. On the other hand, as we see now, whites can also act to take away rights from minorities, such passing laws to suppress the minority vote to maintain control, or by limiting or stopping non-white immigration.

Of course we see today how a love-me-or-I-will-destroy-you racist like Donald Trump has claimed to oppose “divisive” and “anti-American” racial sensitivity, yet at the same time he has deliberately and gleefully divided this country with racist rhetoric. But this division isn’t new; when Barack Obama was elected, the so-called “Tea Party” movement arose, which the media refused to identify as racially-inspired. You don’t hear about the “Tea Party” movement anymore, because it was just a new name for far-right extremists; Trump supporters and the January 6 rioters were the natural successors of the “Tea Partiers.”

Naturally, you can’t expect slimy sleazeballs like Rep. Matt Gaetz selling his hypocritical “can’t we all get all along” snake oil to understand Gen. Mark Milley’s point of understanding the history of this country, or trying to root out what a 2020 Military Times poll found, which was that one-third of service members had witness white supremacist activity in the ranks, or to understand why extremist and neo-Nazi groups actively recruit former members of the military.

But what “harm” could there be in teaching about this country’s past and present history based on the white-constructed concept of race? Because it makes minorities “hate” white people? Because we don’t want to “shame” white kids about conscious or unconscious prejudice? We don’t want “teaching” that is different from the bigotry these kids’ are fed by their parents? Because we might see “fights” in classrooms when white kids and minorities offer different “perspectives” about the notions they have about each other? That white kids should be left “unaware” of something they already know—that being born white infers upon them an immediate expectation of “privilege” in this society, and that others who don’t look like them are inherently “inferior,” and their own “superiority” is assumed? This is how at least minorities see how society is constructed.

OK…that’s it? None of this should “shock” anyone. We have been talking about these things for many, many years. So why is it so “upsetting” to many people? Because, as I pointed out before, these topics are not part of many schools’—probably nearly all that are mostly white—required curriculum. If it were, it would be “codifed” and given “legitimacy.” A lot of people in this country are in denial and want to keep it that way, instead of allowing their children the information to self-examine, and maybe become more "enlightened" than their parents.

Yes, we can’t deny the dysfunction in many minority communities, mainly those in poverty. But then you have a Democratic lawmaker from a “red” state who opposes setting aside the filibuster to pass a bill to strengthen the voting rights of those people white nationalists are trying to suppress, or who is loath to assist low-income people, a large percentage who are minorities, whose states have denied them access to the Medicaid under the ACA for purely partisan reason. Or opposes free community college, Medicaid vouchers for dental care, and every social spending program, even now putting paid family leave under threat.

Let’s not be hypocrites about this: in the minds of  white nationalist voters, “race” is the issue—always the issue, and they believe that “undeserving” non-whites are principle beneficiaries of all this, and that is the reason for so much opposition. And yes, this is what “critical race theory” predicted they would do, even if they don’t want their kids to know that.