CRT
I had decided
with all the uproar over the teaching of critical race theory to weigh in on
the subject. I then realized that CRT in and of itself means different things
to different people. To history teachers like me, also a liberal, it means
laying the facts of history out and teaching in the Socratic method, when
possible, how to critically evaluate those facts and evaluate their impact on
society.
To others, teaching
critical race theory carries the scary connotation of giving their children
sufficient skills and critical thinking to possibly change their mind about the
biases and bigotry they've been taught at home. This puts the educator in the
position of having to critically evaluate how they present information. For me
it was simple, primarily because I already taught by the Socratic method.
Obviously, this is not new. In fact, the parables attributed to Jesus (many of
which are actually Buddhist tradition), are exactly the Socratic method in
action. First the story, then the question, such as “Who was truly this man's
neighbor? Like modern educators, Socrates was criticized for teaching his
students to think critically and evaluate based on facts and ultimately forced
to drink hemlock and commit suicide. Fortunately, Socrates prize student Plato
and, in turn, his prized student Aristotle, carried on the tradition of
critical and analytical thought hundreds of years before Jesus was even born.
I said that to
say this: it is possible without throwing around trigger words like CRT to
change the way people, especially students, think by simply teaching them to
think in the first place. Before we ever heard of CRT, schoolboards in places
like Kansas and Oklahoma were lamenting the inclusion of critical thinking
skills into Common Core standards. It was almost as if they understood that
teaching their kids to think rationally and critically might make them
reevaluate what they've been sent to school believing, because they've been
taught it at home. Many various religious observers have the same fear of the
critical evaluation of dogma
Much of what
far too many Americans believe seems to stem from some mystical belief that
everything we as a nation have ever done has been perfect, or at least better
than anyone else has ever done. Of course, the corollary to that is that any
other point of view is (insert trigger word here) Commie, Socialist, Liberal,
etc.
One of the differences when critical race
theory is involved is that we forget, sometimes, that immigrants from central
Europe and the Mediterranean were treated with significant bias and prejudice
simply because of their origins or beliefs. At one point simply being Catholic and
Irish was cause for such things as the Bible riots 0f 1844 in Philadelphia. The
only “crime” of Irish immigrants was that they were Catholic, generally poor
and in the mid-19th century, even considered as “non-white” in some circles. But,
to the stolid Protestant nativists of Philadelphia, they were also Catholic and
coming over in large quantities and that threatened their status quo as
dominant ethnic group in the city. Quaker and pacifist, William Penn.
would have been mortified. Anti-immigration/nativist Philadelphians killed a
significant number of Irish before peace was restored, but as late as the late
1850s, many New York Times want ads contained the phrase “Irish need not
apply”. Later, Italians were treated little better. Of course, both ethnic
groups were quick to discriminate against Blacks, principally because
discrimination based on pigmentation was so ingrained in the land of the “free”.
The difference in pigmentation meant that, if so desired, a second- generation
immigrant Caucasian could fit in because they looked like any other Caucasian.
This removed the instant perceived stigma of skin tone.
Historically,
Blacks are not the only group to be blatantly socially disadvantaged based on
color. This is another reason some fear CRT – because it may bring up formerly
poorly known unpleasantness. Take Asians, for example. The case of The People
vs Hall, an 1854 California case is instructive. A Chinese miner was shot by a
White man (Hall) in front of three witnesses, also Chinese. The relatively new
California code already stated that: “No Black, or Mulatto person, or Indian
shall be allowed to give evidence in favor of, or against a White man.” On
appeal to the State Supreme Court, two of the three justices allowed Mr. Hall
to go free, writing, in part: “The
anomalous spectacle of a distinct people, living in our community, recognizing
no laws of this State, except through necessity, bringing with them their
prejudices and national feuds, in which they indulge in open violation of law; whose
mendacity is proverbial; a race of people whom nature has marked as inferior,
and who are incapable of progress or intellectual development beyond a certain
point, as their history has shown; differing in language, opinions,
color, and physical conformation; between whom and ourselves nature has placed
an impassable difference, is now presented, and for them are claims, not only
the right to swear away the life of a citizen, but the further privilege of
participating with us in administering the affairs of our Government”
This anti-Asian
sentiment recurred nationally in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and again,
in 1942, on an even grander scale in the Internment and confiscation of
property of American citizens of Japanese ancestry. Without any actual cause
other than wartime hysteria and prejudice. German Americans were, of course,
being white, spared such treatment, as pigmentation was the Golden ticket.
Native
Americans (I’m going to use “Indians” for brevity, But I actually prefer the
term “First Nations” which Canada uses) have fought the same biases since 1607,
when Jamestown was established. Their apparent crime in Virginia, and then
later in Massachusetts and the rest of British North America, was being in the
way. In New England, Indians fared a bit worse because of the religious fervor
of the Pilgrims, themselves fleeing religious persecution, only to dish it out
to the Wampanoags and other regional tribes. In fact, the first actual
“Thanksgiving,” proclaimed in 1637, was an event announced by the governor of
Massachusetts to celebrate the massacre of several hundred Native people from
the Pequot tribe.
An example of
the way Indians were regarded even if Christian, was the Gnadenhutten massacre,
where in 1782, a group of militiamen from Pennsylvania killed 96 Christianized
(Moravian pacifist) Delaware Indians, illustrating their growing contempt for
native people. The converted Delawares, who had been falsely blamed for attacks
on white settlements, were ordered to go to the cooper (barrel maker’s) shop
two at a time, where militiamen beat them to death with wooden mallets and
hatchets.
Later, at Fort
Utah, Governor (actually de facto dictator) Brigham Young issued an order to
exterminate the Timpanogos in Utah Valley. The Mormon militia approached the
Timpanogos, telling them that they were friendly. The militia proceeded to line
them up and execute them. Dozens of Timpanogos women and children were
enslaved. Other examples of unprovoked armed brutality against Indians are too
numerous to mention, but the curious reader might look up the Sand Creek,
Washita, and Wounded Knee Massacres.
In all, U.S.
government would go on to authorize over 1,500 wars, attacks, and raids on
Indians, the most of any country in the world against its Indigenous people. Not
included as “attacks” is the systematic planned extinction of the Plains
Indians’ primary food source, the American bison. By the close of the Indian
Wars in the late 19th century, fewer than 238,000 Indigenous people remained, a
precipitous decline from the estimated five million to 15 million living in
North America when Columbus arrived in 1492. As an aside, every single treaty
ever enacted between the native Americans and the US government has been broken
by the government. Of course. Indians were even darker skinned than most Asians,
I do not have
the room to begin to describe all the atrocities committed against Black
Americans, by US citizens and by their government. The distinct difference
between Black Americans and other non-Caucasians is the fact that, for Indians,
slavery, as such, was relatively limited and situational, while it was the
raison d’etre for the involuntary forced immigration of Blacks to this
continent. Black Slavery was initially based on the European assumption of the supposed
innate inferiority of the Black man, compounded by greed and the lure of cheap
labor, facilitated by the willingness of a small minority of Africans to sell
their own into servitude. It was compounded by the early silence of the Church
on the subject. Unlike most other forms of this vile traffic, Race, and by race,
I mean pigmentation, not social position, or national identity, was the sole
determinate.
While the
Government and a somewhat more enlightened portion of the populace have made
efforts (and strides) in chipping at the wall of bias which still
disproportionately hampers Black Americans, there are far too many who, through
ignorance and familial tradition, see the bad old days as the nostalgic past.
They, and to a lesser extent immigrant Hispanics, have become the external
focus of much of the internal self-loathing of the MAGA crowd, who see an
America where we are truly equal as brothers and sisters as threatening to
their own misplaced sense of racial superiority. The fear of change compounded
in many cases by religious extremism, eats at these folks like acid, so they
oppose such initiatives as teaching CRT or critical thinking.
Fortunately for
those of us who know better, CRT is simply an acronym for what good teachers
have done for years. And finally, in the interest of candid disclosure: as in
any other movement, there is a danger of extremism which can cripple the
achievable effort of more organized practitioners. The individual who hates an
entire group because of the actions of some of its members is less effective
than they might be otherwise. And that statement is operative in both
directions. Telling an impressionable student that they are responsible
for the condition of others they have never met, assumes, without proof,
that the student has been fed a diet of racism and bigotry at home. While this
certainly can be true, it is far from a universal condition, as some militant
CRT advocates proclaim.
To posit that,
as is stands today, America still struggles with racism, is undeniable. To
further state that all Caucasians are
responsible for that sad state of affairs is hypothesis, conjecture without
fact and not universally valid. In a succinct nutshell, institutional racism
has affected every ethnic minority in America to some degree. Perhaps examining
the mistakes and evils of the past with an eye to non-repetition is more valid
than “paying the blame forward.”
As for as the
crippling effects of racism: “Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the
vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”
Mark Twain
