Critical Race Theory had a serious problem – until now (op-ed)

 

During the last two decades of the 20th century two academic movements emerged out of the black intelligentsia, Afrocentricity and Critical Race Theory. 

Afrocentricity was a historical movement that claimed the great achievements of Western Civilization originated in Africa. They also claimed Eurocentric scholarship suppressed Africa’s contributions to humanity in order to maintain white supremacy.

Critical Race Theory developed within legal studies.

CRT scholars questioned the “very foundation of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” Then CRT branched out into other fields – education, political science, ethnic studies, and so forth.

The textbook - Critical Race Theory: An Introduction - also stated, “Unlike some other academic disciplines, Critical Race Theory contains an activist dimension. It not only tries to understand our social situation (how society organizes itself along racial lines and hierarchies), but to change it.”

By the mid-1990s, Afrocentric scholarship was mainstreaming while CRT remained in academic obscurity. Then in 1996 Mary Lefkowitz published, Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History. Lefkowitz’s book demonstrated how the historical claims of Afrocentric scholars contradicted the historical evidence.

Needless to say, Lefkowitz’s book was controversial.

The book created a national debate concerning the merits of Afrocentric Scholarship. This debate should have been welcomed by Afrocentric scholars because it gave them an opportunity to present their case to a national audience and prove their historical claims were correct.

Unfortunately, the Afrocentric scholars chose not to match evidence with evidence. They chose to dismiss Lefkowitz as a racist. By taking that route, it gave the Afrocentric scholars the national opportunity to defend their work from racist attacks instead of defending the merits of their historical claims. Lefkowitz expected this tactic from the Afrocentric scholars, but she didn’t expect to hear what some of her white colleagues told her in private. They basically told Lefkowitz they dismissed Afrocentricity as serious scholarship, but the myths they created were therapeutic for black people living in an oppressive society, and Lefkowitz should have left Afrocentricity alone. 

While Afrocentricity was receiving all of this attention, Critical Race Theory was still in obscurity. Legal scholar Martha Minow once stated, to be taken seriously in the business of scholarship means becoming the subject of sustained criticism, if such criticism is not forthcoming, those new to the field will tend to assume it is flawed or marginal. By the 1990s CRT scholars published over a dozen books, published over 200 papers in academic journals, and hosted several conferences, but CRT was not taken seriously by the mainstream. During this time, Critical Race Theorists took issue with being ignored. In 1998 one sympathetic professor stated a “systematic and comprehensive public review” of CRT was long overdue, and CRT should not be evaded it should be challenged.

CRT remained unchallenged for decades, but its activist dimension conducted a long march to incorporate CRT inside American institutions through diversity training programs and k-12 curriculums.

Now, the vast majority of Americans never heard of CRT until President Trump’s 2020 executive order that removed CRT from federal training programs. Incidentally, all the opponents of Trump, who never heard of CRT or ignored it all of this time, suddenly championed CRT in order to cite Trump’s executive order as another example of his racism.

Obviously, this type of secondhand partisan support does nothing to promote the merits of CRT, but the Critical Race Theorist didn’t take issue with those supporting CRT in order to denounce Trump because CRT was finally taken seriously.

Trump eventually lost the presidency, President Biden overturned Trump’s ban on CRT, and, now, Republican legislators across the country are creating legislation to prevent CRT from being taught in their respective schools, and Democrats are denouncing the Republican state legislators while defending CRT. 

Unfortunately, these brand-new Democratic defenders of CRT are only doing so in order to paint the Republicans as racist, but in reality, they view CRT the same way Lefkowitz’s colleagues viewed Afrocentricity in private.

CRT hasn’t been challenged until now, but it still has a “serious” problem because who exactly is taking CRT seriously?

First published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 6/16/21