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| Republican attacks of CRT are an example of Trojan Horse rhetoric. Republicans claim to be protecting children from a hateful ideology. They are actually engaged in historical revisionism, and attempting to lay the groundwork for rolling back Civil Rights for African-Americans. |
The Republican Party of the United States has engaged in a coordinated effort to slander the concept of Critical Race Theory. The most outrageous aspect of their slander campaign is that they've been able to do so without bothering to define what Critical Race Theory is. Critical Race Theory, as originally conceived by Harvard Law School professor Derrick Bell, was intended to address the pernicious nature of racism; how it had deeply infected American institutions and persisted over generations. The following passage from the preface of Bell's textbook Race and Racism in American Law, provides an excellent thumbnail sketch of what Critical Race Theory is really about
"We have witnessed hard-won decisions (in court cases), intended to protect basic rights of black citizens from racial discrimination, lose their vitality before they could be enforced effectively. In a nation dedicated to individual freedom, laws that never should have been needed face neglect, reversal and outright repeal, while the discrimination they were designed to eliminate continues in the same or a more sophisticated form. In many respects, the civil rights cases and laws of the 1950s and 1960s are facing a fate quite similar to civil rights measures fashioned to protect the rights of blacks during an earlier racial reconstruction period more than a century ago."
After reading that passage from Bell, we can see right away why Republicans are so reluctant to define Critical Race Theory before they attack it. The social phenomena that Bell is referring to are obvious to any rational person. Desegregation of schools led not just to the outrageous behavior of white parents towards the Little Rock Nine as they were being led into Little Rock Central High, but also a generation of "white flight" from American cities that has resulted in many suburban schools being over 90% white, while urban schools that became under-funded after the bottom dropped out of urban real estate values across the country have overwhelmingly Black and Hispanic student bodies. In Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts threw out Section 5 of the Voting Rihts Act, that section dealt with pre-clearance of voting laws in former Confederate states, and its repeal led to the passage of literally hundreds of new laws at the state level that appear to be designed for the sole purpose of minimizing minority representation and maintaining the Republican Party's control of Red state governments. The first African-American woman to be nominated to the Supreme Court maintained a heroic feat of self-control while having to face vicious slander and false claims from a number of GOP Senators. Bell's textbook was first published in the 1970s, and the century old legislation he refers to are the Civil Rights Acts of 1866, 1875 and 1876. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 established the legal right of African Americans to enter into contracts and to have access to the court system. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 (which was later repealed) and 1876 attempted to established equal access to places of public accommodation. Acts of terrorism by right-wing conservative groups like the Klu Klux Klan and pro-segregation rulings by conservative judges prevented the effective implementation of those rights, and the right of equal access to places of public accommodation was only restored in any effective sense as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1967. Everything that Bell describes is factual, based on his own thorough understanding of American history, and reasonable.
Let's now contrast the measured and realistic nature of Bell's statement to recent comments from Republicans. During a Senate hearing, Texas Senator Ted Cruz falsely claimed that CRT "teaches children that all white people are evil and calls for a war between the races." Cruz's claim is laughably false. Cruz's comments are also an excellent example of Nazi Propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels's admonition to "accuse your enemy of what you are most guilty of." Critical race theory openly acknowledges the value of white allies and has never been associated with calls for a war between the races. Calls for a race war come from white supremacist ideology, and the Republican Party has had an increasingly close association with white supremacist groups since Donald Trump's 2016 Presidential election run. The Republican problem with white supremacist statements has become so bad that many social media companies complain they can't develop algorithms to police white supremacist content without accidentally blocking statements by a number of GOP politicians.
We should also examine comments by Christopher F. Rufo, the conservative activist who has been a leader in the effort to demonize Critical Race Theory. In a tweet from March 15th of 2021 Rufo said "We have successfully frozen their brand -"critical race thoery"- into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities [sic] under that brand category." Having already defined Critical Race Theory using Bell's passage above, the extremely toxic and racist sentiment of Rufo's claim becomes self-evident. Rufo's goal is to pre-empt discussion of the impact of racism on American society, to drive people to perceive any such discussion as inherently damaging, and to falsely attribute claims by ideological outsiders and the politically naive to Critical Race Theory. The racism that an honest and frank discussion of American history is intended to eliminate continues in a more sophisticated form, a form that was created by conservative activists like Chrisopher Rufo. At the same time that Republicans have been building their ties to white supremacists and insisting that any pushback against blatantly racist rhetoric is "cancelling" conservative ideas, they are seeking to preempt discussion of the long term impact of systemic racism. Republicans have been so successful in their campaign that parents in Alabama have complained openly that Black History Month was "Critical Race Theory" and should be abolished. On social media, comments from conservatives are starting to sound like the rhetoric of the "Citizens Councils" across the American South that opposed the integration of public schools and passage of civil rights legislation throughout the 1960s. I have chosen to spare the reader the examples of racist statements by Trump supporters; search Twitter or Facebook for "Critical Race Theory" or "CRT" for numerous examples.
Republicans chose not to offer a definition of CRT for a reason: they wanted to demonize the topic as part of a Trojan Horse messaging campaign to preempt discussion of the long term effects of racism in American society. When we turn to professor Derrick Bell's statement from his textbook Race and Racism in American Law, we see that the concerns he's addressing are entirely reasonable, and examples of the phenomena he describes are self-evident to any rational person. Conservative rhetoric however, falsely accuses those who study CRT of "being divisive", and of promoting a "war between the races", a concept that is actually a part of white supremacist ideology. Having defined CRT according to the language of Harvard Law professor Derrick Bell, one cannot help but recoil at comments from conservative activists. The racist intent of their campaign against CRT becomes obvious and even overwhelming. One cannot avoid the conclusion that the Republican Party's coordinated revisionist campaign is intended to preempt discussion of the long term impact of racism in American society, and increase public acceptance of blatantly racist statements as part of a campaign to roll back civil rights for African-Americans.
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