Politics
What is the critical race theory?
CRITICAL race theory maintains that law and legal institutions in the United States are “inherently racist.”
A wealthy suburban school district in Texas recently voted to keep critical race theory from being taught in classrooms.
Critical race theory examines institutionalized racism[/caption]
What is the critical race theory?
Critical race theory, as defined by Britannica, is an “intellectual movement” of Civil Rights scholars who critically examine the law as it intersects with issues of race.
Critical race theorists maintain that legal institutions in the US “function to create and maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites, especially African Americans.”
Theorists seek to challenge mainstream liberal approaches to racial justice.
Kendall Thomas, a law professor at Columbia University told Newsweek that “CRT maps the nature and workings of ‘institutional racism.”
It is debated in the United States whether CRT should be taught in schools[/caption]
“CRT challenges us to see that racial injustice in America is not, and has never been, just a problem of isolated instances of individual bias and private prejudice which we can solve by enacting ‘color-blind’ laws and policies.
“CRT tracks the ways in which the ‘color-blind racism’ of today’s post-civil rights era entrenches racial disparities, discrimination and disadvantage among Black, Brown and Native American communities without ever explicitly using the language of ‘race’.”
What happened in Texas?
A school board in the wealthy suburb of South Lake, Texas, recently won an election to stop “critical race theory” and a new “cultural competence action plan” from being forced into classes.
Opponents of CRT classroom integration claimed the school district were calling for the “diversity police,” and that the board was pushing a “left-wing agenda,” the Dallas Morning News previously reported.
Some rallied together to take the issue to court, winning a temporary restraining order to stop implementation, the outlet wrote.
A Texas school district voted to keep CRT out of classrooms[/caption]
The topic became so divisive that backers of the new anti-racism measures called on the Department of Justice to intervene.
Two school board positions as well as mayor and city council seats went to the opposition of the plan at the contentious election.
2 percent of the roughly 8,500 students in Southlake are black, the Dallas Morning News wrote.
What did people say about the Texas schoolboard election?
Staff, parents and school district board members resoundingly celebrated on social media regarding the election’s outcome.
“Critical Race Theory ain’t coming here,” tweeted the Southlake Families PAC. “This is what happens when good people stand up and say, not in my town, not on my watch,”
“Parents are running institutionalized Marxist racism OUT OF THE DISTRICT,” radio host Dana Loesch said, adding that “parents showed up and fought back.”
One parent tweeted ‘Critical Race Theory ain’t coming here’[/caption]
“The voters have come together in record-breaking numbers to restore unity,” wrote newly-elected board member and lawyer Hannah Smith.
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Smith called the election a “a referendum on those who put personal politics and divisive philosophies ahead of … students and families, and their common American heritage and Texas values.”
Pop star Demi Lovato added her two cents into the mix earlier this year.
“It is horrifying to see how some of the parents … are literally FIGHTING to uphold white supremacy and are resisting the anti-racism work that is so needed,” Lovato tweeted in January.
