From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is daily.

Today, the intensifying national battle over critical race theory.

I spoke with my colleague, Trip Gabriel, about how a once obscure academic concept

became a political rallying crime and is now at the heart of America's racial reckoning.

Plus, the indictment of the Trump Organization.

It's Friday, July 2.

Trip, tell me about these school board meetings that you have been watching.

So, school board meetings tend to be very sleepy hours long affairs in most American school districts.

But in Loudon County, which is in the suburbs of Northern Virginia, the school board meetings in the last few months have been fiery and incendiary affairs.

Now, I'll campaign against anyone and everyone who attempts to indoctrinate my children into the most racist of racist ideas.

And the words they thrown out have been accusing the school district of practicing racism and accusing the school district of penalizing their children for being white.

I will do everything I possibly can to fight to the bitter end until you prove to me that you are not teaching my children that they are racist just because they're white.

Accusing the school district of being woke.

You are now teaching training our children to be social justice warrior and to lose our country and our history.

The held captive to far left and even communist and Marxist ideas.

This is indeed the American version of the Chinese culture revolution.

The critical race theory has its roots in culture Marxism. It should have no place in our school.

And what's driven this, Michael, is the issue of critical race theory, which has been injected into this school district in the suburbs in a very impassioned way lately.

And to what exactly is critical race theory, it seems to have arrived with tremendous force in our national discourse, but without much of a definition or an origin story.

Well, simply put, critical race theory is a lens or framework for examining how systemic racism is woven into American law and institutions and how those systems perpetuate an uneven playing field for people of color.

And where does the theory come from? What's its backstory?

It originated in the 1970s and the 1980s in law schools and was associated originally with Derek Bell, a professor at Harvard Law School.

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