2/ Fact is, both practitioners & observers claim that CRT is, or should be, at the core of contemporary teaching abt race in K-12. Recent piece in Education Post (funded by Walton Family Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative), makes clear:
3/ “CRT...provides educators tools they need to transform current practices in teaching & learning. [...] CRT allows for creation of new curricula that help students think critically about institutions that shape their lives & develop their own affirmative racial identities.”
4/
https://educationpost.org/explained-the-truth-about-critical-race-theory-and-how-it-shows-up-in-your-childs-classroom/ It wasn't Republicans or conserv parents who went digging thru academic legal studies journals to find a term—"CRT"—to fear. Admins & curriculum designers foregrounded CRT to lend the imprimatur of academic cred to questionable pedagogical practices.
5/ The name "CRT" guards this pedagogy as a "no-trespassing" sign. If you haven't read all of Crenshaw, Delgado, etc., you must defer to the "experts" on your kids' education. "Real" CRT is a will-o'-the-wisp. When you try to call it out, its defenders claim it's something else.
6/ If it were merely a branch of critical legal theory that looks at racial inequity encoded in institutions, there'd be no controversy. But “CRT” has become, in common usage, a synecdoche for a mélange of pedagogical practices, such as in this 24-Twt thread
7/ Concerned parents & citizens are grasping for what to call this mix of Marcuse, Laclau & Mouffe, CRT, & Kendi/DiAngelo-style “antiracism.” Call it "White Privilege Studies"? “Post-Marxist, class-free, race-reductionist identitarianism?” Take your pick.
8/ After we agree on a term, we can discuss whether having children create "identity maps" of their "power and privilege," and teaching that POC cannot, by definition, be "racist," or do not, in principle, have any power, belongs in an elementary school curriculum.
9/ Whatever we wanna call it, it’s a thing. When the largest pub school system in US adopts an Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum that lib LATimes calls “an impenetrable melange of academic jargon & politically correct pronouncements,” we can say it’s real:
California's proposed new ethnic studies curriculum is an impenetrable melange of academic jargon and PC bromides.
www.latimes.com
10/ When former advisor, speech-writer, & legal counsel to MLK, Dr. Clarence Jones, says the CA Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum is a "perversion of history" that "will inflict great harm on millions of students," you know there's something real afoot:
www.calethstudies.org
11/ So telling people "you don’t understand CRT!" or "it's not really CRT!" isn't adequate. Is it mislabeled as CRT? Sure. OK. But what should we call it? Those who pretend it's not happening & doesn't have intellectual roots in academic CRT are gaslighting or not paying attn.
12/ Well said by @ rayrobisonwrite: "Proponents [of CRT] are asking critics to define it because they think by doing so they can 'disprove' the complaint if the critic misses one aspect of the CRT in their definition." Don't fall for it. What you see in schools is unhealthy.
13/ In closing, public discussion of CRT (or whatever you want to call what's showing up in K-12—and we didn't even get into workplace DEI training!) is a civic good and absolutely necessary if we are to chart a way forward as a country. We welcome good faith engagement. END.
www.orlandoweekly.com
