Critical Race Theory yet another Strawman issue

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Guest Columnist

An unnamed, unidentified Black man at the raucous Temecula School Board mid-March meeting was the latest to feel the wrath of the countless number of livid, dyed in the wool opponents of anything that smacks of teaching critical race theory in the schools. The man had the temerity to oppose the Boards ban on teaching CRT in the schools. He then got the boot for objecting to a racial slur hurled at him for opposing the Board’s decision.

At last count nearly two hundred right-wing think tanks, advocacy groups, and parent groups have railed against CRT teaching in the schools. Fox News predictably has been on a virtual nonstop crusade against anything that remotely smacks of CRT in the schools.

It’s a strawman issue concocted by the right since almost no school district in the nation mandates that CRT be taught in the schools. The strawman issue was created as yet another hammer to browbeat, cow, and intimidate school boards, whip up fury among the GOP conservative base, and most importantly piledrive Democrats with the usual falsehood that they are trying to shove racial guilt down white throats.

Let’s be clear. There’s nothing new about the term critical race theory. The term goes back almost four decades. Then, a handful of Black scholars and writers came up with the term to name what for decades had simply been called battling racism. The reaction at first was, well really, no reaction. It seemed a puzzling, overloaded, and very academic term that was subject to just about any meaning and interpretation. Trump’s White House grab in 2016 changed that. He publicly demanded a cease and desist to any school district and/or teacher that dared stuff students with what he branded “left wing indoctrination.” In plain English, he meant any mention of the pernicious history of racial bias in America.

Trump railed that this fanned the very racism that America had supposedly long gotten past. Worse it scapegoated whites as the perennial bad guys for all of America’s racial sins. Trump followed his diatribe with an executive order that virtually wiped out any diversity training for federal employees.

The great fear of the conservative attackers, though, is not that teaching about America’s past and present history of racial and social injustice will poison the minds of minority students but that it could seep into curriculums and presentations to influence a lot of white elementary and highs schoolers. This could have a far-reaching political consequence. In that it could decrease the generational racial polarization that the GOP banks on to maintain political power and control in a nation that is on the verge of becoming an ethnic minority-majority nation.

The study of race and racism is not just a mere academic exercise. It’s a crucial body of scholarly work that has established a direct connection between political power, social organization, and language. It has influenced wide fields within education, and been the basis of countless court decisions, state and federal laws, and local ordinances that have attacked and provided remedies for racial inequities. The 1954 Brown versus Board of Education decision is a classic example of how studies on the damaging impact of racial segregation on school children can play a huge role in law. The studies helped sway a few doubting and reluctant SCOTUS justices on the need to outlaw school segregation. The wide body of race studies has been a staple in fields such as the humanities, the social sciences, and teacher education.

The counter attackers understand this. The Heritage Foundation is always on the point in providing the intellectual, legal, and financial muscle to counter so called liberal, and racial policy issues. It has churned out a set of counter position papers that cite 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, LGBTQ clubs in schools, diversity training in federal agencies and organizations, and California’s ethnic studies model curriculum, to name a few as supposedly the product of activists and teachers instilling Blacks, Hispanics, gays, and young people with the evil white’s brainwash.

The counterattack against critical race theory uses the same game plan used to oppose or roll back every past civil rights act, voting rights act, and affirmative action plans Indeed anything in law and public policy that even smacks of race is always under conservative fire. Critical race theory opponents have latched onto, and shamelessly mangled, the color-blind mythology that any talk of racial bigotry and bias and its continued devastating impact on American society is racism. This deft turn the tables has made legions of school districts wary about touching the forbidden subject in any way. The Temecula school district was only the latest in the right-wing steamroll of any teaching that seeks to bring an honest, balanced teaching of history to the schools. For the right it’s yet another strawman issue.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is The Politics of Chess (Middle Passage Press). His political affairs commentaries can be found weekly on thehutchinsonreport.net.

This article originally published in the April 3, 2023 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.