CRITICAL RACE THEORY AND CHASING AWAY ELEPHANTS
“Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.”—Leonardo da Vinci
From the time I was in grade School, I’ve loved jokes. I was usually the kid with the smart-aleck comment that made the whole class snicker. It didn’t go down well with my teachers.
And here was one of my favorites. It was guaranteed to get its share of laughs and groans.
A man is sound asleep in his bedroom in the middle of the night, when he suddenly wakes up to a commotion out in the street. He gets out of bed, goes to the window, opens it, and sticks his head out to see what is going on (at this point, many contemporary readers will point out that this must be a very old joke. The typical American would never do this today. Instead, they would first grab a gun, or two guns, or however many guns they owned, and only then go to the window. Obviously, this was before the whole country went gun crazy).
When the man looks out the window, he sees a guy in the middle of the street, jumping up and down, waving his arms, and screaming at the top of his lungs.
The man in the window shakes his head and then yells, “Hey buddy, what’re you doing out there? It’s three in the morning!”
The guy in the street shouts, “I’m scaring the elephants away!”
The man in the window is stunned. “Elephants? What do you mean, elephants? There ain’t no elephants for at least 10,000 miles!”
“You see!” The guy in the street calls back, now more excited than ever. “It’s working!”
OK, it’s a real groaner. But after all, it’s a grade School joke.
The really sad thing, however, is that it’s no longer just a joke. Take a look around and you’ll see this playing out all over the country.
Angry parents are screaming at School Board meetings, death threats are being hurled, and every two-bit politician (OK, some of them are actually billionaires) is loudly pontificating about protecting our Schools from the most horrific threat our kids have ever faced.
Critical Race Theory (or CRT, for short).
Ever heard of it? Of course you have. Off the top of your head, can you really define it? Probably not. I know I can’t. But don’t worry, I’ll give you the official definition in a few moments.
In the meantime, here’s another question. When did you first find out about it? I’m betting that even 2 years ago, the name wouldn’t ring a bell. After all, there’s not a shred of evidence that it’s being taught in a single High School in in America. Because believe me, if it were being taught, you’d know about it by now.
FOX News is a hugely profitable organization that specializes in sensationalizing conservative viewpoints. They generate somewhere around $2 billion in profits each year. If they really wanted to, they could afford to place an undercover investigative journalist inside every High School in the country.
And who knows? Maybe they have. But we do know one thing—if they had found any evidence, Tucker Carlson would be screaming the name of the specific School, course, and teacher every night on his program.
Up to this point, there hasn’t been a single School cited. In fact, there’s no evidence that it’s ever been taught in a U.S. Grade or High School. But never mind. We have to keep jumping up and down to chase those evil elephants away.
So if you’re waiting with baited breath, here’s the definition of Critical Race Theory: “A framework of analysis and an academic movement of civil-rights scholars and activists who seek to examine the intersection of race and law in the United States and to challenge mainstream American liberal approaches to racial justice. CRT examines social, cultural, and legal issues primarily as they relate to race and racism in the United States.”
Read that definition to most American High Schoolers and they’d probably fall asleep or be playing games on their cellphone before the end of the first sentence. But remember, it’s not even taught in High School! And it’s barely mentioned in most Colleges. If it’s taught at all, it’s at the Graduate School level, and usually in Law School.
So why all the fuss? Why scream at School Boards, demand that library books be banned, listen to the speeches of self-righteous politicians, and waste valuable legislative time passing laws to outlaw something that doesn’t even exist in our Schools?
Because the quickest way to get ahead as a politician is to whip up fear, scare the hell out of you, then claim to be the one who’ll protect you from whatever that fear entails. And if politicians have to fudge the truth to scare your pants off, they’ll do it in a heartbeat.
When most Americans think of Critical Race Theory, they immediately think of the threats politicians have fed them: CRT teaches students to judge others only by race, not by merit. It teaches that all Whites are racists. It says that Whites should feel guilty about anything a White person has ever done to a Black person. It teaches Whites to feel guilty about even being White in the first place.
Of course, it doesn’t teach any of those things. But that hasn’t stopped the political B.S. “Cancun Ted” Cruz claims that critical race theory is as racist as the Ku Klux Klan.
Really? I’ve never heard of a “theory” burning people’s houses, lynching them from trees, or killing them when they tried to vote. But then again, I’m not Ted Cruz.
Politicians have been able create such fear and hatred over CRT precisely because it is so poorly-defined. And every crafty politician knows that if they can get you to fear something that’s poorly defined, they can always just fill in the blanks later—including who it is you’re supposed to fear and hate. That’s exactly what’s happening in city after city across the country.
Protests against CRT have now become protests against teaching about racial issues of any sort. Slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, racism of any kind, are now all viewed as off limits. Just mentioning that racism still exists is considered blasphemy. Having books in a library that talk about race (especially books that kids might actually read) is now somehow equated with Marxism.
Just for the record, Abraham Lincoln lived long before Karl Marx, as did Frederick Douglas and a host of others who fought against racism. And Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, and their contemporaries fought for justice without somehow pledging loyalty to Marx, Lenin, or any other communist.
For many White people (which includes about everyone where I grew up), talking about race drags up an ugly fear—a notion that’s been around since the civil rights era. It’s the belief that there’s actually no discrimination against Blacks today. Instead, it’s really the other way around.
Blacks get special treatment. They get hired ahead of Whites because of special quotas. They get a pass to go to the front of the line, ahead of all the hardworking White folks who’ve struggled for years to move forward.
When you dig into the facts, the reality is much different. Yes, programs that might be loosely described as “affirmative action” have attempted to increase diversity in a host of settings. But they haven’t blocked anyone—Black or White—who’s sought to move ahead.
What really happens when someone applies for a job? Usually, they send out a resume, then wait to hear about an interview. Here’s where it gets interesting.
Numerous studies have shown that when it comes to actually getting an interview, your first name is important. If it sounds Black, you’re less likely to be interviewed.
That’s right. When researchers randomly sent out applications, even with similar qualifications and experience, applicants with first names like “Tiffany,” “Connor,” and “Greg” got called back 50% more often than applicants named “Lakisha,” “Darnell,” and “Jamal.”
And it doesn’t stop there. Another analysis found that White businesses were 50% more likely to receive small business loans than Black business owners—even with similar business profiles.
But what about Colleges? Don’t Universities give preferences to Blacks when it comes to admissions? That’s what we’ve been told. But the reality is different.
Having wealthy parents who make large donations, who had themselves gone to the same University, is a much better predictor of who gets accepted. Exhibit A? Trump’s son-in-law Jarred Kushner. The size of your Old Man’s wallet, it turns out, is way more important than the color of your skin.
So what does all of this mean? The employers that called back Tiffany instead of Lakisha, the bankers that would make loans to White owned businesses rather than Black—are they all overt racists? Do they all have Ku Klux Klan robes hanging in their closets?
Of course not. Most of them would likely have no outward feelings of bias against minorities or anyone else. They wouldn’t even be aware of any sense of prejudice, and be shocked if anyone suggested it.
But subconsciously? Based on years of processing everything they’ve heard and seen? That’s something else. An unconscious bias may exist, whether the individual is aware of it or not.
This is what is meant when the term “institutional racism” is used. No one thinks of it consciously. No one decides “this person’s Black, I’m going to discriminate against them.” But because of longstanding exposure to all of the things we’ve seen and heard, an unconscious bias can still occur.
Most people don’t want to admit this. And even suggesting it brings charges of “reverse racism.” But it’s hard to argue with the evidence.
The question is, how do we deal with it? There are plenty of ideas, but one thing is certain. We can’t deal with it by denying that it exists.
At this point, many would say “Wait a minute. I’ve worked my butt off for everything I have! No one ever gave me anything because of ‘White privilege!’”
Maybe. I’ll submit I’ve worked hard too. For my family, a “new” car meant buying a used car that was less than 10 years old. I can’t even remember a time when I wasn’t working.
But that doesn’t mean I’ve had to deal with the barriers that a Black person growing up in a similar economic background had to deal with. And even though that fact doesn’t make me a racist, acknowledging it doesn’t make me a racist, either.
Instead, it makes me a realist. And if those realities are taught to my children and grandchildren, it also doesn’t make me a racist, or a Marxist, or any other name that Cancun Ted or anybody else wants to throw at me.
If we are going to have a functional society, where everyone contributes to a strong, thriving economy, we must correct these things. Opportunities and a level playing field for all of us are critical. That’s fundamental.
And acknowledging that reality is not Critical Race Theory.
When my Father came home from World War II, he used his GI Bill benefits to build a home, something he’d never experienced while growing up with his single Mother and younger brother in a cramped apartment. But for over a million Black veterans, that opportunity didn’t exist.
And even if a Black family could afford a home? A covert financial barrier called “redlining” kept them out of neighborhoods where their home (and consequently, their net worth) would grow in value.
Should this history be taught in School? Of course it should. But claiming that any discussion of race in School is Critical Race Theory, and therefore should be banned, is ridiculous. If we are going to confront, learn, and move on as a nation, we have to talk about this stuff.
So the next time you hear someone screaming that Critical Race Theory needs to be banned, the next time you hear a politician pontificating about CRT as the greatest threat we’ve ever faced, ask them this: Are you really talking about Critical Race Theory, which isn’t taught in a single School in the country? Or are you actually talking about banning any discussion of the history and current state of race relations in our nation?
Because how we move forward in the 21st century, how we prepare ourselves for the troubling and uncertain times ahead, may well depend on how we answer that question. We can come together as a nation and grow stronger, or we can jump up and down in School board meetings, brag about how we’ve scared away elephants, and just grow weaker and more stupid in the process.
The choice is up to us.
References are below for those interested. See you next post.
https://www.cos.gatech.edu/facultyres/Diversity_Studies/Bertrand_LakishaJamal.pdf