Professor Derrick Bell has probably been turning in his grave.
The late Harvard scholar’s study on the complexities of race culminated in the development of Critical Race Theory in the 1970s.
Others, like feminist Kimberle` Crenshaw, have continued to develop the theory. CRT has been thrust into the national spotlight by conservatives who have twisted its meaning to suit their own perverted motives.
I don’t have enough space to expound on CRT, but trust and believe that the white folks talking negatively about critical race theory don’t have a clue what it is. They have reduced the theory to the mere teaching of Black history in schools. They perpetually line up in opposition to Blackness.
In short, CRT validates the existence of racism in every facet of American life. Race is a social construct built on white supremacy and is foundational to this country’s history and institutions. Most tragic is the legal complicity to keep white supremacy in place.
CRT proponents believe it is why, after centuries of Black people fiercely fighting for equality, the gains have been less than transformational. They certainly have not been permanent.
CRT is the Right’s latest bogeyman. The damage can be real and enduring. The fight for equality and dignity by those of African descent is fully documented. The overthrow of Reconstruction. The re-segregation of public schools after Brown v. Board of Education. The attack on affirmative action.
The Republican Party is desperately seeking a unifying message for 2022, when it hopes to galvanize white voters. In the interim, its activist right-wingers are kicking it up at school board meetings. Books that have anything to do with Black people are being banned, burned or both.
Just like they didn’t want their white children sitting next to Black children in a classroom, they don’t want their children to know the facts about Black life in America.
In Missouri, Attorney General Eric Schmitt pushed for the Department of Education to oppose teaching CRT and the 1619 Project in Missouri schools.
The GOP-dominated House proposed HB114 to prohibit teaching CRT. The Rockwood School District superintendent buckled under the pressure of white parents who were “appalled” at the books their children were reading. (There was no acknowledgment of the centuries when non-white kids saw no characters that looked like them in their schoolbooks.)
History and the accurate telling of it is crucial. In his book How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, Clint Smith asserts the centrality of African enslavement to U.S. history.
Writes Smith, “The history of slavery is a history of the United States. It was not peripheral to our founding; it was central to it. It is not irrelevant to our contemporary society; it created it.”
Those of us with a political consciousness, along with those of us who are committed to truth, have a responsibility to interrupt the racist narrative that has under developed our humanity as a nation and demonized Blacks as a people.
This history is now our present and will be our future as long as discussion of the system of chattel slavery is suppressed, romanticized and white-washed, and as long as there’s legal justification as to why Black folks are sub-human.
The reckoning of slave history is inevitable. There is no easy, quick or comfortable way to address it. What we must end is the continued devastating impact already done on generations who have gone before us.
The past damage is real, measurable and irreparable. Our destiny includes creating not just a different narrative but a different society for those of African descent to live and prosper.