What Should We Be Teaching When It Comes to Racism and America’s Past?

Matter of Opinion

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Ross Douthat, News, New York Times, Journalism

4.2 • 7.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 August 2021

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For many politicians and parents, there’s growing concern over critical race theory. It maintains that race and racism in America are about not individual actors and actions as much as bigger structures that lead to and maintain gaps between racial groups. The theory started in the legal academy, and some fear that it has begun to take over the American education system. How concerned should you be? Jane Coaston and her guests disagree. Chris Rufo is a senior fellow and the director of the initiative on critical race theory at the Manhattan Institute. Professor Ralph Richard Banks is a co-founder and the faculty director of the Stanford Center for Racial Justice. Mentioned in this episode: “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction” by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, published in 2001 “How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory” in The New Yorker “Does Teaching America It’s Racist Make It Less Racist?” podcast episode by “The Argument” “Critical Race Theory: On the New Ideology of Race” panel discussion from the Manhattan Institute

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today on the argument, is critical race theory being taught to your kids?
0:06.2	Better question, should it be?
0:11.3	If you turn on cable news, there's a good chance you'll catch a segment on the biggest
0:15.0	issue said to be threatening students these days.
0:17.6	Not COVID, or unequal facilities, or guns, but critical race theory.
0:26.6	It's the academic theory that race and racism aren't just about individual actors and
0:30.9	actions.
0:31.9	Critical race theory looks at the inner workings of bigger structures that foment and maintain
0:35.4	gaps between different racial groups.
0:37.7	In short, racism isn't always burning crosses in using racial slurs.
0:42.0	It's a normalized systemic effort.
0:45.1	Critical race theory got its start in the world of law, but as the story seems to go, it
0:49.2	migrated to workplaces, the defense industry, and finally to schools.
0:54.4	Did it?
0:59.8	I'm Jane Kostin, and you've probably heard a lot of people arguing about critical race
1:04.3	theory in schools.
1:05.4	Either that kid reading about the story of Ruby Bridges is being exposed to the dangerous
1:09.6	theories of critical race theory, or that critical race theory isn't being used in schools
1:14.3	at all.
1:15.3	But my take is maybe one you haven't heard.
1:18.8	I think it would be pretty okay if people used critical race theory to talk about race
1:24.0	and racism in schools.
	...

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