“Like it or not, the acronym ‘CRT’ as commonly used in 2021 doesn’t refer to the foundational texts and authors in the academic movement. It’s a shorthand for certain ideas that have filtered (in reductive forms or not) from CRT thinkers into the mainstream, including in bestselling books like “White Fragility” and “How to Be an Antiracist” — ideas like how relationships between individual white and nonwhite people are those of the oppressor and oppressed, that all white people are consciously or unconsciously racist, that ostensibly raceblind concepts like ‘meritocracy’ are the result of white supremacy, among others.”

“Arguing that the bills (to limit divisive content teaching) are bad purely based on the semantics that they are not referring to ‘true’ CRT is little more than deflection. Arguing that the term ‘CRT’ as applied to the bills is a misnomer may be correct, but it won’t persuade anyone that the bills, or the concerns underlying them, should be abandoned.”

Greg Lukianoff, Et al, “13 important points in the campus & K-12 ‘critical race theory’ debate,” Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), June 28, 2021.

THE PLUS

There’s been a lot of “explaining” about Critical Race Theory (CRT) going on in media sources of late. Too often, these articles engage in the “deflection” that Lukianoff and his co-authors write about. Such mainstream media articles assert that CRT isn’t found in K-12 education now and imply there isn’t going to be any in the future, either.

The truth is that the reality here – as Lukianoff and his fellow authors point out – is complicated.

Certainly, there is more to the story than some media sources admit.

For example, it’s hard to accept a “nothing to see here” position about CRT when Kumar Rashad, a teacher from Jefferson County Public Schools, was the sponsor and listed contact for the National Education Association’s (NEA) New Business Item 39, which was adopted during the NEA’s 2021 annual summer conference. This NEA business item specifically says, “we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory” and “it is reasonable and appropriate for curriculum to be informed by academic frameworks for understanding and interpreting the impact of the past on current society, including critical race theory.”

The “nothing to see here” CRT position further disintegrates when you learn that Louisville’s own mayor, Greg Fischer, sponsored Resolution Number 68 at the United States Conference of Mayors’ meeting back in the beginning of September. The resolution’s title is “In Support of Critical Race Theory in Public K-12 Education.” A “gem” of knowledge in this resolution asserts that CRT claims “race is not biologically real.” A pre-final version of the conference of mayors’ resolution that lists the sponsors was captured here by Denny Burk, Professor of Biblical Studies at Boyce College in Louisville (nothing ever dies in the internet).

When Kentucky teachers and even the mayor of the state’s largest city are calling for CRT in our schools, the “nothing to see here” crowd – at best – just doesn’t look very well informed. As other comments in the FIRE document point out, some highly questionable things that relate to the CRT debate certainly are happening in public schools. But, as FIRE’s paper also points out, media sources on both the left and right are not getting all the information out to their readers.

So, if you want to know “the rest of the story” about CRT and get the full insight about why bills have been introduced in Kentucky related to the problems of teaching divisive curriculum, you will need to check other sources. Because, as Lukianoff and his partners point out, at best:

“The media coverage of these bills has been largely lacking in deep-dives into the actual text of the bills, instead relying on broad characterizations of their intent and the motivations behind those introducing them.”