In 2023, in the land of the free and the home of the unreported perks of Supreme Court justices, the American Culture War seems to find a new front to defend or invade every day or so. At least it feels that way to me.
We seem overwhelmed by increasingly dangerous socio-political, racial, sexual, religious and environmental divisions in the body politic and the public sphere — fissures ever unresolved.
Such fissures are evident in controversy surrounding Critical Race Theory, a central source of praise or blame for elucidating or exacerbating these momentous divides. A 2022 essay in EducationWeek offers this description:
Bill Leonard
The campaign against “Critical Race Theory” started in September 2020 with an executive order signed by former President Donald Trump, which has since been revoked. Last spring, (2021) state lawmakers started introducing bills that banned “divisive concepts” and forbade teaching that people should feel guilt or anguish because of their race or sex, that all people of a certain race have unconscious bias, or that the United States is a fundamentally racist or sexist country. They deemed these concepts Critical Race Theory.
In reality, Critical Race Theory is an academic framework that posits that racism is systemic as opposed to only individual acts of discrimination. It has now become a catchall term conservatives apply to any topics or lessons dealing with race and racism, gender identity, sexuality and sexism.
CRT is a multi-faceted, complex proposition. The UCLA School of Public Policy offers this summary:
Critical Race Theory was developed out of legal scholarship. It provides a critical analysis of race and racism from a legal point of view. Since its inception within legal scholarship, CRT has spread to many disciplines. CRT has basic tenets that guide its framework. These tenets are interdisciplinary and can be approached from different branches of learning.
CRT recognizes that racism is engrained in the fabric and system of the American society. The individual racist need not exist to note that institutional racism is pervasive in the dominant culture. This is the analytical lens that CRT uses in examining existing power structures. CRT identifies that these power structures are based on white privilege and white supremacy, which perpetuates the marginalization of people of color.
“Critics of CRT abound, as evident in legislatures, school boards, pulpits and other public institutions.”
Critics of CRT abound, as evident in legislatures, school boards, pulpits and other public institutions, including:
The Goldwater Institute: “Critical Race Theory and similarly divisive political ideologies have descended upon our institutions, our schools, and our children, setting them against each other and shaming them on the basis of race.”
The Heritage Foundation: “When followed to its logical conclusion, CRT is destructive and rejects the fundamental ideas on which our constitutional republic is based.”
The Seminary Presidents Council, SBC: “In light of current conversations in the Southern Baptist Convention, we stand together on historic Southern Baptist condemnations of racism in any form and we also declare that affirmation of Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, and any version of Critical Theory is incompatible with the Baptist Faith and Message.”
The denunciations of CRT raise questions that can, should and have been addressed widely. Nonetheless, if its claims of an “engrained racism” in the “system of American society” are incorrect, why do such things continue to occur?
Consider these recent illustrations:
- The mayor’s office, Newbern, Ala.: Newbern, a town with a U.S. Census population of 275 (other sources say 129). For upward of 60 years, there was no mayoral election, the office was passed down through a group of white citizens, in a town where 85% of the population is Black. In 2020, African American Patrick Braxton officially registered for the office and, unopposed, was elected, then proceeded to appoint a Black majority town council, since no one had filed for those offices. In response, the former town council members met secretly, called a special election asserting that they “allegedly forgot to qualify as candidates,” reconstituted the original board and mayor, and locked Braxton out of his office. The local bank refused to give him the town’s financial records, as did the U.S. Post Office when he requested the town’s mail. A court case brought by Braxton continues; and he is running again in 2024. Braxton and other Black townspeople continue to receive threats.
- Also in Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that the state legislature had gerrymandered voting districts, thus limiting Black voters to one congressional district when census data indicated their right to an additional one. Instead, Alabama legislative bodies ignored SCOTUS and rewrote the election map, again with only one Black-majority district. The House Speaker declared: “If you think about where we were, the Supreme Court ruling was 5-4, so there’s just one judge that needed to see something different. And I think the movement that we have and what we’ve come to compromise on today gives us a good shot.” Bull Connor would be proud.
- In 2022, the Florida Legislature passed a new school curriculum the governor said would be the “strongest legislation of its kind in the nation” to “take on both corporate wokeness and Critical Race Theory.” One segment of the legislation declared, “A person should not be instructed that he or she must feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress for actions in which he or she played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex,” clearly a response to incorrect perceptions about CRT.
- In Florida 2023, a new African American history curriculum encouraged teaching middle schoolers that, in slavery times, “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” Volusia County Black leader Ronald Durham responded that the new policy was “systemic racism in its purest form.”
- In July 2023, Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s lawyer during the 2020 election, falsely accused two African American Georgia poll workers of mishandling ballots related to the presidential election. Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, a mother/daughter pair, told the House January 6 investigators how their lives were irreparably impacted through their public identification by Giuliani and Trump. Giuliani’s confession was made in preparation for his defamation trial from the women.
For me, one of the most powerful responses to the anti-CRT crowd comes from Washington Post columnist Colbert King, an African American who addressed congressional efforts to banish CRT from D.C. public schools, writing,
The truth is many Black people in D.C. and in the Deep South were raised under state-sponsored racism. We attended public schools, lived in neighborhoods, went to movie theaters, ate in restaurants, prayed in churches and were laid to rest separated from white people, by law and custom. This focus on group identity — a practice purportedly loathed by apostles of conservatism — was not a mutually agreed upon arrangement. White people made those decisions, including to engage in the practice of denying equal job and housing opportunities. Now, this isn’t a matter of teaching children how bad we are. But it does teach how bad things came about.
Colbert seems to say: “Want to abolish Critical Race Theory? Stop acting out its central thesis of the American system.”
One final comment: When I read this mandate from the Florida Legislature — “A person should not be instructed that he or she must feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress for actions in which he or she played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex” — I realized I had heard the reverse of those words long before, in the 8-year-old boys’ Baptist Sunday school class when Mr. Johnny Ramey gave us the “plan of salvation.” Back then I felt guilt, anguish and psychological distress for ancient actions in which I played no part, committed by other members of the race.
Mister Johnny didn’t call it CRT; he called it Original Sin.
Bill Leonard is founding dean and the James and Marilyn Dunn professor of Baptist studies and church history emeritus at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, N.C. He is the author or editor of 25 books. A native Texan, he lives in Winston-Salem with his wife, Candyce, and their daughter, Stephanie.
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