I understand that it’s just some dumb culture war issue the right is waging.
But like, what is their definition of “teaching critical race theory” in the schools? Like what type of lesson would that constitute?
Critical race theory is an academic discipline within the social sciences and humanities that theorizes about race and racism with a progressive bent. American conservatives have this tendency to take concepts from social sciences and humanities classes and make a big fuss out of them. Never mind that most universities teach nothing but straight liberalism, some of it with a radical sheen.
I see the “critical race theory” panic as similar to the “Frankfurt school” stuff from a few years ago. It’s just conservatives reaching to try and find “cultural Marxism” in the curriculum by finding the most far-left stuff that is actually taught, which ends up being progressive lib stuff.
Sure, WEB Du Boise was a communist party member and he technically falls under “critical race theory,” but none of his communist beliefs are taught in the university. It’s completely de-fanged and turned into “racism sure harms our psyches and social institutions huh.”
It’s really just a boogeyman, isn’t it? I don’t think I know anyone who has interacted with what is considered CRT. CRT is part of the many critical theories surrounding race and it’d be wrong to generalize it as “most theory surrounding race” which is how I’ve seen it interpreted by some libs, cons and leftists. It’s a silly boogeyman and it shouldn’t be brought up as actually representing leftism and race, but for some reason leftists suddenly want to pick this up because of this boogeymanning. At least Habermas had influence before becoming the conservative boogeyman.
