Blogger: Isaac Adeyemi
This question is very polarizing and has been a big point of focus in America where parents are getting more involved in school board meeting and functions to put pressure on the boards to ban teaching or implementing critical race theories in schools for young children. Firstly, to explain what CRT is, I must go back to the origin it is believed CRT can be traced as far back as the 1960s and 1970s in philosophical writings by Derick bell and other founders of the term, but it was in the 1990s when it started being recognised more with the works of many writers like Richard Delgado and Jean Stefanic. “There are five major components or tenets of CRT: (1) the notion that racism is ordinary and not aberrational; (2) the idea of an interest convergence; (3) the social construction of race; (4) the idea of storytelling and counter-storytelling; and (5) the notion that whites have actually been recipients of civil rights legislation” (2022). These 5 components believe racial grouping were created by oppressors (white) to oppress (coloured). They also believe only ethnic minorities can talk about racism, that civil rights are benefitting white people, all systems are beneficiary to white people and oppressing coloured people e.g., meritocracy and capitalism and people should strive to tear down these systems.
CRT was originally “a radical legal movement that sought to transform the relationship among race, racism, and power”(2022).CRT was initially just a theory taught in Law curriculums as it’s an outlook on law that all systems are inherently racist, and this is at the core of all institutions. The outrage is not it being taught in universities to students that chose to learn it but the fact it is now taught or going to be taught to children in colleges, secondary or even primary schools. Some people don’t believe in CRT or don’t want it to be taught to young children while others believe it should be taught to young children as it is “history”. Those who support CRT being taught in schools call it History, but this is massively incorrect as history is taught in schools about the past e.g., slavery, holocaust & genocides, but CRT teaches that countries like USA are currently systematically racist and all systems like capitalism and the meritocracy are racist and divides society into oppressed (coloured) and oppressors (white). It doesn’t blame individuals for racist behaviour but rather the whole system it also doesn’t blame individuals for crime or failure in life but the system.
Lastly teaching CRT in schools sometimes lead to teachers improvising and separating the classrooms into oppressed and oppressor not by their actions but by their skin colour and this is dangerous and instils a victimhood mindset into children. For example, in the USA a 5th grade teacher lined up white children and made them apologize to black children for oppressing them because of the colour of their skin a similar incident in the USA amidst a police shooting trail a teacher told his white students they all have white privilege, and this is a fact demonizing them for something they have no control over. I believe history should be taught in schools the good bad and the ugly and history is currently taught in schools worldwide rightly so, but CRT can’t be classed as history despite the fact it may have some historical references and so I believe CRT shouldn’t be taught in schools to young children but be only taught in university as a law theory as it was created and intended to do. It divides society into coloured vs whites oppressed and oppressors and paints the whole country as systematically racist instead of pointing out laws or people that are racist and fixing or criticising them which is the right way to deal with racist people and systematic racism when it occurs.
Journal Files.eric.ed.gov. 2022. [online] Available at: <https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED506735.pdf> [Accessed 2 March 2022].
Books
Delgado, R. and Stefancic, J., 1998. Critical Race Theory: Past, Present, and Future. Current Legal Problems, 51(1), pp.467-491.
Websites:
Teacher who taught white privilege is a fact to students
Education Week. 2022. Teacher Fired for Lesson on White Privilege Loses Appeal. [online]
Available at: <https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/teacher-fired-for-lesson-on-white-privilege-loses-appeal/2021/10> [Accessed 2 March 2022].
Teacher who made 5th graders apologize for being white
Montgomeryville-Lansdale, PA Patch. 2022. North Penn Parent Claims Teacher Made White Elementary Students Say 'Sorry' To Black Ones. [online]
Available at: <https://patch.com/pennsylvania/lansdale/north-penn-parent-claims-teacher-lined-white-black-students> [Accessed 2 March 2022].