Reader Responses to An Academic Theory Goes Unexpectedly Viral

It seems like many who disagree about CRT get labelled ‘racist’ and all debate shuts down.

First, the tragedy of Mr. Woodward happened in 1946 and is a poor anecdote for that reason. 

Second, I have seen a four-year-old studying his copy of Anti-Racist Baby, which has a nine step program for overcoming the r-word. This book is evidence the theory has escaped from the laboratory and is in general circulation. It contains some of Jesus’s words but without the redemption and peace which can follow. Rather it tries to make children suspicious and judgmental (say, if one does not confess properly) which will not lead to a “deeper level of engagement.”  It tries to rob ALL children of their innate innocence, openness, and joie de vivre.  Be bred to “make society transform” and “knock down cultural blocks,” says the book. Zealotry belongs to adults, not babies. The r-word has become a pejorative. Let’s try to live a POST-r life.

The faces of the three professors in the photo that accompanies your story suggest that they find Brown an unhappy place to work. Assistant Professor Offutt-Chaney seems particularly bleak. In her world, “white students” with their “white innocence” are pitted against “everyone else”—apparently brown, yellow, red, and multi-racial, as well as Black students—none of them allowed the “white innocence” that they have “to live and see every single day.” And because “everyone else” sees early in life the “white innocence” that results from racism, schools ought to be allowed to teach children about racism early in life. With that prescription, she takes all childhood innocence off the table. No wonder she is bleak. What makes “white innocence” even more unjust is that white students apparently have the “opportunity to choose their neighborhood,” one that apparently excludes “Black [with a capital B] students.” But students do not choose where they live; their parents do. And note that “everyone else” turns out to be a cover for “Black.” Brown, yellow, red, and multiracial students have vanished from her argument. In the end, it’s white privilege versus Black victimhood. Thirty percent of America is missing. If Professor Offutt-Chaney has the data to support the loose generalizations about the role of race in American education that gird her battlefield agenda, she does not share them. 

I read carefully the article on Critical Race Theory because I believe it deserves serious consideration, especially given the tragic history of Black people in America. It doesn’t follow that I have to agree with the need to teach it. My understanding is that CRT is encouraging public schools to learn about racism. This seems like a goal fulfilled long ago. In my average public school in suburban New Jersey, in the 1960s, a teacher read to us about the Middle Passage, and many Black authors were made available, including Richard Wright, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Piri Thomas, and of course James Baldwin, whose books were assigned and discussed in English classes. Also, the idea of “systematic racism” is foreign to me. To find it in the State Department, where I worked for 30 years, you would have to identify programs, plans, budgets and personnel engaged in this systematic activity. You won’t find that, but you can easily identify systematic anti-racism: Pell, Rangel, Pickering, and Payne grants; the Office of Equal Opportunity; the Diplomat in Residence program; and more recently, the Diversity and Inclusion Office and an advisor to advance DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). If one argues that young children must be taught about racism because they might experience it, then learning about how their electronic gadgets work must also be on the curriculum, precluding class time for basic math and reading. Finally, I don’t believe that American children are taught their history as “a beautiful and picturesque development,” as Jonathan Collins says. I was taught about slavery, the Civil War, and the civil rights movement. America may have been born with the original sin of slavery, but has made huge progress in addressing historic injustice, and it seems that the CRT movement fails to acknowledge that. I agree with what Angela Merkel said about her deeply scarred Germany: “I love my country with a broken heart.”

The unexpected article on Critical Race Theory presents a one-sided description of the tenets of and the opposition to Critical Race Theory. The BAM article suggests Critical Race Theory is nothing more than an alternative curriculum for a grade school history course which provides “…an honest telling of American history,” and opposition to Critical Race Theory is nothing more than the misguided protests of those unable to grasp the intricacies of this “nuanced academic theory” and who incorrectly take personal offense to being labeled as systemic oppressors based on the color of their skin. In fact, there is a concern that “Critical Race Theory is an insidious and racist Marxist ideology spreading throughout our culture and society” with the purpose and effect of dividing our society based on race. While the BAM article suggest “…it began as a hypothesis put forth by legal scholars in the 1970s” (presumably referring to Derrick Bell, a Harvard law professor), its origins have been more accurately traced to Herbert Marcuse who was a German-born Hegelian-Marxist ideologue of the Franklin School of political theorists which is the source for the term “critical theory.”  None of this fuller discussion, or at the very least alternative view, is mentioned or even suggested in the BAM article. What is more alarming is there is at least one Brown University academic with a different point of view who was not comfortable expressing his/her views. This raises the disturbing questions whether the culture at Brown stifles dissent or prevents the expression of alternative views on the subject of Critical Race Theory and perhaps other academic subjects.

Thanks for writing about CRT, but I hoped for more details about the fundamentals of the theory and its origins. I understand that it is an outgrowth of Critical Legal Studies at Harvard Law and have a vague idea that it ties racial injustice to institutionalized racism, but what is the crux? Wish this article had been a bit more of an explainer.

[This] states that “one other [Brown academic], who has spoken out against CRT, declined to speak to the BAM for this story.” It is hard for me to believe that nobody could be found to give an opposing opinion. On the other hand, it seems like many who disagree about CRT get labeled “racist” and all debate shuts down. I have seen mixed race couples complaining at school board meetings that their child has come home and told them that their white mother, or white father, is “bad.”  White children are also being told they are “bad,” while non-whites are made to feel like “victims.” Obviously, some elementary school teachers are not teaching CRT appropriately, or maybe they are. Maybe an “academic theory” should be debated in graduate school and not in kindergarten. We are not doing a good job teaching our kids to read, write and do math. How can we think “CRT” can, or should, be taught to kids?

     The 1619 Project was also mentioned in the article. Many distinguished historians have reviewed and debunked the main points of that project. Again, another viewpoint would have been appropriate.

I lived under segregation with hatred and bigotry in Tuskegee despite the fact that the largest economic force was a VA for Black patients barred from white hospitals. We were able to act for ourselves. We fought back. Gradually we had victories over racism. Dr. King’s lawyer, Fred Gray, who was also Rosa Parks’s lawyer, lived next door to me for 30 years. I got to know him well. They both would have rejected CRT. Dr. King urged us to be colorblind when it comes to judging and dealing with others. CRT is the opposite. Racism and bigotry never die. CRT mirrors those evils. Focusing on skin color reminds me of being kicked out of stores, theaters, and other places because I was the “wrong color.” King’s work was not in vain. Even the mayor of Montgomery is now Black. Much in our history is shameful and inhumane, but we are not frozen in time. No other largely white nation has twice chosen a black man as leader. CRT has many things right about slavery, bigotry, overt racism, and the like. But it’s wrong to racially stereotype blacks and whites in today’s world as CRT does.

I think all I learned from this article is what the interviewees say CRT isn’t. The title of the article is misleading. This follows the same thing we see on both sides of the media these days with both sides talking past each other. Perhaps a longer space is needed for a fuller explanation of what CRT is (and isn’t). I can’t wait to read it and learn.

I thought this was a very good article, which was accurate and which fairly criticized Fox News and Christopher Rufo. However, I thought it was not balanced and failed to identify valid criticisms of CRT. I thought it was a bit chilling and upsetting to read that a Brown prof “who had spoken out against CRT declined to speak to the BAM for this story.” CRT raises complex and nuanced issues which cannot be developed in a short comment but suffice it to say that I much prefer the traditional civil rights discourse to the CRT approach (especially relating to legal theories), although I think CRT raises many valid points. With respect to Professor Offutt-Chaney’s comments on teaching elementary school children to learn about racism, I wonder what he thinks about the teacher who tried to do some role playing exercises in which the black kids were supposed to be slaves and the white kids were the owners? The teacher got fired.

I had my first exposure last year to environmental justice. Discussions made me very uncomfortable, but I now realize that this should be expected when dealing with matters that are complicated and difficult. Racism is clearly one of those matters. I feel strongly that in order to effect improvement, one needs to actively seek and to know the truth, even though the truth may be difficult to accept. The intent of CRT is not to demean but to elevate.

The article in BAM about the CRT debate was interesting. I encourage those interviewed to assemble pro- and anti-CRT people to have a discussion, not a debate. If moderated well, they may find they have a lot more in common about teaching history than they thought. And from that will come collaboration and progress and improved understanding.