First, let’s define terms. This posting is not about the academic subject taught in graduate schools. Nobody cares about that, nor is that what angry mobs besieging school board meetings and opportunistic Republican politicians are screeching about. They’re using the phrase to describe K-12 course content that “makes white kids feel bad about themselves” (or, alternatively, “feel inferior,” as in, “white people are the real victims of racism”), or something like that.
This might not be precisely accurate, because I don’t normally directly communicate with those people, I only know what I read in news reports, but it’s close enough for our purposes here.
What it boils down to is, a segment of society with a pre-existing trainload of grievances manufactured by rightwing propaganda have adopted, as their latest grievance — this one targeting school boards, administrators, principals, and teachers — teaching kids anything at all about America’s racist history, or suggesting to kids that our country might still have a racism problem.
You can probably tell by now that I’m biased about race and racial issues. So I may as well be forthright about it: I don’t like white supremacists, it shows in my editing and writing, and furthermore I’m not inclined to negotiate with them; I believe the only proper approach is to defeat them.
And yes, this latest appalling social movement emerging from the political right, attacking what they describe as “critical race theory,” either because they don’t know what CRT is or have hijacked the term, transformed it into vernacular, and imbued it with a vastly broader meaning — most likely both — is something decent people should work to defeat, not work out an accommodation with.
I’m choosing my words carefully here. I didn’t say “fight” these people. This should be framed as a contest of ideas, and a competition for hearts and minds. If they want to fight, let them take the low road; we have to be better. We have to keep this on an intellectual plane, and talk about right and wrong, because that’s what lies at the heart of it.
So, what does working to defeat them mean? It means you read up on school board candidates, and if they want “CRT” banned from schools, you vote for their opponent. Same with candidates for state legislature. But your duty as a citizen doesn’t stop there. You also support school board members, school administrators, and educators under fire from the anti-CRT mob, turning out at meetings in person, if necessary, to let them know you have their back.
Their basic theme — that systemic racism doesn’t exist in America — is a crock. Smarter people than me speak and write about this, and because someone has already done the work and much better than I can, I’ll borrow from him.
George Critchlow is a practicing lawyer in Spokane, Washington, and a retired Gonzaga Law School professor. He grew up in Kennewick, where his dad was a lawyer, and says after graduating from law school he “went to work for my dad,” who assigned him the case of Sam and Dorothy, a black couple (originally from Mississippi) who in their search for a better life ended up in Pasco (after Sam fought in World War 2), across the river from Kennewick, because Sam found railroad work there.
They had tried to buy a lot in a new development, but none were for sale to black people. George’s dad, lawyer Ed Critchlow, “Knowing of my interest in civil rights, … gave the case to me and remarked that it might not be worth a lot of money, but it was among the most important cases in the office.” To make a long story short (I’ll tell you below how to read the long version), an all-white jury found that the defendant corporation discriminated against Sam and Dorothy but awarded them zero damages.
George explains,
“I asked the court’s permission to interview the individual jurors, at least those willing to talk with me. Two jurors shared with me how their deliberations led to a verdict of discrimination, but not damage. The explanation went something like this: ‘Well, yes, the developer did discriminate. You proved that. But you should remember, this is Pasco, and we just felt that your clients were better off and happier living with their own kind rather than forcing themselves into a community that did not want them. So, since your clients were better off, not worse off, we just didn’t see any damage.”
That was many years ago, and this is now. So what relevance does this have to today? I’ll let Professor Critchlow answer that in his own words:
“This statement of the jurors’ sense of justice may be the most succinct and forthright declaration of white privilege and racial paternalism I have ever heard. … I suppose some might conclude that my clients’ experience was a regrettable but anomalous example of racial bias in a post-Civil Rights Act America. But people whose ancestors were legally treated as chattel know better. The habits and practices of our country’s systemic marginalization of non-white people” —
I’ll interject here and say this is what the anti-CRT mob doesn’t want taught in public schools, ostensibly because it might make white kids feel bad about being white. More about that below.
“– were evidenced by Pasco’s historic housing patterns, the attitudes and behavior of the defendant’s corporate agents, the minds of the jurors, a justice system composed almost exclusively of white folks, and a trial court judgment that erased a finding of racial discrimination. In the context of racial justice, Pasco (like many towns in America, North and South, was a town that lived in the past, not in some idealized post-racial present.”
Yes, but how is this relevant to today? George Critchlow continues,
“Our continuing struggle for racial justice in modern times requires us to challenge and overcome the trope that today’s America is post-racial — that slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, school and housing segregation, voting impediments, employment discrimination, and disparate law enforcement practices are things of the past, long since remedied by civil rights laws, court decisions, and social policies. As symbolized in the iconic photo of a jubilant protester carrying a Confederate flag in the halls of Congress on Jan. 6, the atavistic appeal of racial dominance has not disappeared. It may, in fact, be ascendant.”
(Italics mine.) He concludes by encouraging today’s young lawyers to “burn with passion” for justice, and then says,
“But if we are to rid our nation of the vestiges of white supremacy …. We must educate our children and ourselves about our racial history and its tenaciously destructive effects on both individuals and institutions. We must talk about white privilege and the dirty secrets of our past so that young people do not grow up, as I did, learning about the rhetoric of freedom and the rule of law but remaining ignorant about those principles’ imperfect application in modern society. The objective of critical thinking about race is the opposite of what some people might argue. It is not about making white people feel bad, it is about making all of us more empathetic and aware of our shared humanity.”
Don’t bother trying to explain this to the anti-CRT mob. They won’t listen. They wouldn’t get it. Instead, the job at hand is not letting them steamroller our public education system, whose purpose is to prepare students to function in adult society. This part of our history helps them understand the society they live in. They need to know America is a work in progress, with tasks remaining to be completed, and it’ll soon be their turn to work on those problems. That’s why we can’t let the anti-CRT mob do to America’s racial history what the Chinese government just did to Hong Kong’s Tiananmen massacre memorial.
If teaching kids America’s racist history, and telling them our country is still afflicted with racism today, hurts their feelings — tough. Let ’em cry in their beers.
Closing thoughts: The outcry against “critical race theory” is a subterfuge for censoring history and social studies textbooks and curricula. This assault on schools and teachers must be fought and defeated, not negotiated with. White supremacists must not be allowed to control what children learn in school.
Source: Professor Critchlow’s article was published in the November 2021 issue, at p. 28, of the Washington State Bar News, the official publication of the Washington State Bar Association, which is mailed to all members of the bar. I encourage readers of this blog to read his entire article, to get a richer context of Sam and Dorothy’s case. It’s written in language you don’t have to be a lawyer to easily understand. The WSBN is available online, but in a .pdf format, so after you go here, you’ll have to scroll down to p. 31 of the .pdf file to find it.