Critical Manifestations of Race Aren't New

 

While I know that the controversy over Critical Race Theory (CRT) will blow over sooner rather than later, it is leaving some destruction in its path because teachers will err on the side of comfort when it comes to teaching Black history. The thing is, some of the tenets of Critical Race Theory have been accepted for as long as I can remember. And no one had a problem with how it manifested in Black communities. It didn’t really dawn on me until an Asian colleague said, “the reason that my parents were so hard on us to study had less to do with the greatness of America and more to do with racism. If we focused on out performing academically, we could always have class cover. We wanted economic power and didn’t care about social or political power. You don’t see us caring about Asian American history in the school curriculum.” When she said that, I thought about how the main tenet of CRT guided my upbringing without any complaint from the white community and now the very thought of it has people clutching pearls all over the country.

 

Racism is a normal feature of society and embedded in systems. Centuries of slavery and Jim Crow did not sanitize racism from systems. It will take many generations to rectify the impact of America’s shame. People in the black community have accepted this and acted accordingly. While my church was Black and my social groups Black, my mom knew that the neighborhood public schools were not preparing most of the black kids well. I really didn’t understand, but she said that those schools “only prepared you for the working class”. She wanted me in a school where college and professional opportunities were guaranteed and not predicated on the right track for limited access opportunities. She wanted a school where the curriculum and enrichment access prepared me for the appropriate assessments. She chose for me to integrate small private schools. She made sure I presented myself well and never discussed race. I would get popped in the mouth for Black vernacular. Education was of utmost importance, but she never came to the school or engaged as a parent. I was taught to read and write standard English without controversy. I endured a canonical based program because she knew that it was the accepted path to college with “universal” themes and no Black protagonists whose lives were lived without struggle. Whiteness was centered without complaint or question and modeled for Blacks to follow. But I accommodated because Algebra was guaranteed in 8^th grade and calculus is what seniors took.

 

So why complain now? When racism manifested itself in a way that maintained a comfortable social and political order, it was fine. Scholarly opponents of Critical Race Theory know that it has been around for over 50 years. The only problem that opponents have with it today is that it is being used by anti-racism proponents to question social and political structures outside of the “ivory tower.” While CRT is NOT a theory taught in schools, diversity “experts” are aligning it with school professional development in anti-racism and equity. I oppose some of the "ideas" like getting rid of all standardized testing as opposed to raising rigor and teaching so ALL students have access to grade-level proficiency. Other aspects I welcome include analyzing the impact of school desegregation and community redlining or de-centering the white experience as the American experience in the school curriculum. I also welcome an honest examination of the origin and structure of "racialization" in American in order to understand the concept of race as a social construct designed to subjugate a group of people based on the color of their skin and then eradicate the construct over time.

 

We need to be honest about race. When my African ancestors were brought to America to work as slaves, they were not black in America. They were enslaved Africans with a proud culture. They were "racialized" in order to subjugate and bear the mark of inferiority so that they thought and operated like slaves. When we used the political process to give Blacks access to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” like everyone else, we never bothered to “de-racialize”.  Decision maker, we could use the school curriculum to "de-racialize" while raising up a group who has roots in Africa, but uniquely helped to shape the culture we all share as Americans.