Sally Kohn’s fine opinion piece Thursday in USA Today employed some old-fashioned personal experience to slap back at the moral panic ginned up by the right over critical race theory. She once took a class from Derrick Bell, a founding scholar of critical race theory (CRT), at New York University law school. Because law schools — not grade schools — are where CRT is actually taught:
For Derrick Bell, the criticism at the core of critical race theory was never aimed at us as students, including white students, nor arguably is that the case for most critical race theory founders and scholars. In fact, quite the opposite. The whole point of critical race theory was to help our collective understanding of racism move past a focus on individual acts and blame to instead scrutinize systems, policies and institutions that are by far the most pernicious and pervasive ways in which our racial caste system is perpetuated.
Professor Bell wasn’t implicating us as in creating those systems and injustices in the first place; he was inviting us to help dismantle them. He wasn’t blaming us for not comprehending the history and complexity of systemic injustice; he was helping us learn – to open our eyes and our minds. That saying that if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem? That’s not a critique of whiteness, or any specific identity, but an attack on ignorance and complicity. Critical race theory is about helping Americans – all Americans – understand the reality of our nation’s past and present in order to scrutinize and ultimately fix what has long been broken for communities of color. The criticism is focused on systems, not people.
By the same token, I remember one moment during class when professor Bell asked whether any in the class had ever felt nervous getting into an elevator with a man they didn’t know. Every woman in the class put their hands up, myself included. Most of the men didn’t, and several looked around at the rest of us and were visibly perplexed. That’s not because the question was anti-male, but because it abruptly revealed the ways in which gender shapes our different realities – and how women are acutely aware of the ever-present reality of sexism and gender-based violence, while most men go about their lives completely unaware.
I guess some of those men got “woke.” The horror.
It took a nine-minute video of George Floyd being slowly murdered under Officer Derek Chauvin’s knee to wake the rest of the country (some of it) to how differently our system of justice treats non-white citizens. Chauvin is scheduled to be sentenced for the Floyd murder today.
Here is how that system treats white people:
A grandmother from Indiana who participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was sentenced Wednesday to three years of probation for her participation in the riot, making her the first person sentenced in the attack.
Anna Morgan-Lloyd, a 49-year-old hair salon owner, pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a capitol building, which carries a maximum sentence of six months in jail and a $5,000 fine. Washington, D.C., District Judge Royce Lamberth also ordered her to complete 40 hours of community service and pay $500 in restitution.
A TV commentator observed that Black people get worse treatment for sitting in front of a grocery store.