Skip to main content

New top story from Time: President Trump Has Attacked Critical Race Theory. Here’s What to Know About the Intellectual Movement

https://ift.tt/36k3AyY

During the first general election Presidential debate on Tuesday night, President Donald Trump was asked to explain his Administration’s directive to all federal agencies to stop anti-bias trainings that rely on critical race theory or address white privilege.

“I ended it because it’s racist. I ended it because a lot of people were complaining that they were asked to do things that were absolutely insane, that it was a radical revolution that was taking place in our military, in our schools, all over the place,” Trump said, though he did not directly answer moderator Chris Wallace’s question about whether he believes that systemic racism exists in the U.S. “We were paying people hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach very bad ideas and frankly, very sick ideas. And really, they were teaching people to hate our country, and I’m not going to allow that to happen.”

The directive to federal agencies wasn’t the only time Trump has taken aim at critical race theory. While speaking at the National Archives Museum for Constitution Day this month, President Trump denounced it as “toxic propaganda” that will “destroy our country.”

But what exactly is critical race theory? And why has it become a point of contention for the Trump Administration?

Priscilla Ocen, professor at the Loyola Law School, who spoke to TIME before the debate, says that Trump’s condemnation of critical race theory (CRT) is part of his larger approach of using racial division as a way to maintain power, but she believes he’s probably unaware of its scope as a framework and in scholarship.

“Critical race theory ultimately is calling for a society that is egalitarian, a society that is just, and a society that is inclusive, and in order to get there, we have to name the barriers to achieving a society that is inclusive,” Ocen says. “Our government at the moment is essentially afraid of addressing our history of inequality and if we can’t address it, then we can’t change it.”

What is critical race theory?

Critical race theory offers a way of seeing the world that helps people recognize the effects of historical racism in modern American life. The intellectual movement behind the idea was started by legal scholars as a way to examine how laws and systems uphold and perpetuate inequality for traditionally marginalized groups. In Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic’s book Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, they define the critical race theory movement as “a collection of activists and scholars interested in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power.”

Kimberlé Crenshaw, one of the founding scholars of CRT and the executive director and co-founder of the African American Policy Forum, says that critical race theory “is a practice—a way of seeing how the fiction of race has been transformed into concrete racial inequities.”

“It’s an approach to grappling with a history of white supremacy that rejects the belief that what’s in the past is in the past, and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it,” Crenshaw told TIME in an email.

While critical race theory was initially conceived as a framework specifically for understanding the relationship between race and American law, it’s also provided a way to consider how other marginalized identities—such as gender, sexuality, sexual orientation, class, and disability—are overlooked.

“What critical race theory has done is lift up the racial gaze of America,” says John Powell, the director of the Othering & Belonging Institute at the UC Berkeley. “It doesn’t stay within law, it basically says ‘look critically at any text or perspective and try to understand different perspectives that are sometimes drowned out.'”

Who came up with the idea?

The critical race theory movement officially came into being at a 1989 workshop led by Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda and Stephanie Phillips at the St. Benedict Center in Madison, Wis.—but the ideas behind the movement had been brewing for years by that point.

In the 1970s, a group of legal scholars and activists developed the theory, building on the work of movements like critical legal theory and radical feminism. Civil rights lawyer Derrick Bell, who was the first tenured Black professor at Harvard Law School, is often credited as the “father of critical race theory”; his 1980 Harvard Law Review article Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma,” is often cited as an integral piece in starting conversations about the critical race theory movement. Other founding scholars of CRT include Richard Delgado, Allan Freeman, Patricia Williams, Mari Matsuda and Crenshaw, who also coined the term intersectionality, which explains how different facets of identity like race and gender can “intersect” with one another.

“[Early] CRT theorists identified the significant role that law played not only in facilitating civil rights reforms, but also in establishing the very practices of exclusion and disadvantage that the civil rights movement was designed to dismantle,” Crenshaw explains. “Racial discrimination, segregation, [anti-miscegenation rules] and many more practices were lawful practices right up until the day they weren’t, creating disadvantages and privileges that continue to live throughout our society right up to the present day.”

How has critical race theory been applied?

Critical race theory has been used to examine how institutional racism manifests in instances like housing segregation, bank lending, discriminatory labor practices and access to education. It has also helped to develop themes and language to address racism and inequality, such as white privilege, intersectionality and microaggressions, among others.

Here’s a specific current example: consider the fact that a disproportionate amount of people from Black and Latinx communities are being impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the CDC, Black and Latinx people are twice as likely die from the virus as white people. A person considering that stat in a vacuum might assume that genetic or biological factors are to blame—a false conclusion that insinuates that there is something inherently wrong with Black and Latinx bodies. However, a person applying a critical race theory framework to this issue would also ask how historical racism—which manifests today in everything from access to clean air to treatment by medical professionals—might be influencing this statistic, and would thus arrive at a much more complete and nuanced explanation.

Why is the Trump Administration denouncing critical race theory?

In his speech at the National Archives Museum, the President posited that using critical race theory as a framework to consider the history of the U.S., including its use of slave labor, encourages “deceptions, falsehoods and lies” by the “left-wing cultural revolution.”

“Students in our universities are inundated with critical race theory,” he said. “This is a Marxist doctrine holding that America is a wicked and racist nation, that even young children are complicit in oppression, and that our entire society must be radically transformed. Critical race theory is being forced into our children’s schools, it’s being imposed into workplace trainings, and it’s being deployed to rip apart friends, neighbors, and families.”

Scholars who work with CRT, however, say it has become an indispensable and widely accepted tool for properly understanding the state of the nation—but they’re not surprised by Trump’s attitude toward it.

“I think this is another part of the general approach that Donald Trump is taking to campaign to try and separate and divide folks along racial lines and to try to create division instead of really addressing what our core issues are in our nation,” says Ocen, who also notes that President Barack Obama’s relationship with Derrick Bell was weaponized in previous campaigns against Obama.

What has the reaction been to Trump’s comments?

Following the memo from the Office of Management and Budget, American Association of University Professors president Irene Mulvey released a statement that called on faculty and administrators to “condemn this ban” on critical race theory.

“Critical race theory represents an important body of such expertise and President Trump’s recent attack on it is a naked attempt to politicize our national reckoning with racism and a new escalation in the assault on expert knowledge,” Mulvey wrote.

Meanwhile, many scholars have taken to their social media accounts to voice their concerns and opinions over Trump’s attempt to censure critical race theory.

Minister and activist Bernice King, a daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., also weighed in with her thoughts on Trump’s attempt to stop the application of critical race theory.

The influence of CRT on academic thought in the last few decades has been so thorough, many say, that it would be effectively impossible to stop its use, even if the words “critical race theory” don’t come up. But, Crenshaw argues, that doesn’t mean Trump’s attempt to shut it down isn’t worth thinking about.

“The question now with Trump’s efforts to censor anti-racism is, what story will we as a society be permitted to tell about what 2020 has revealed about our country?” she says. “What we are allowed to officially see and tell will shape what is within our societal reach to address.”

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

New top story from Time: Little Recognition and Less Pay: These Female Healthcare Workers Are Rural India’s First Defense Against COVID-19

https://ift.tt/3mrDgrm Archana Ghugare’s ringtone, a Hindu devotional song, has been the background score of her life since March. By 7 a.m. on a mid-October day, the 41-year-old has already received two calls about suspected COVID-19 cases in Pavnar, her village in the Indian state of Maharashtra. As she gets ready and rushes out the door an hour later, she receives at least four more. “My family jokes that not even Prime Minister Modi gets as many calls as I do,” she says. Ghugare, and nearly a million other Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) assigned to rural villages and small towns across India, are on the front lines of the country’s fight against the coronavirus . Every day, Ghugare goes door to door in search of potential COVID-19 cases, working to get patients tested or to help them find treatment. With 8 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, India has the second-highest tally in the world after the United States and its health infrastructure struggled to co

Sushant Singh Rajput Death Case LIVE Updates: Rhea Chakraborty to undergo CBI interrogation again today https://ift.tt/2ErYXaz

Rhea Chakraborty summoned again by CBI in connection with actor Sushant Singh Rajput's death The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) moved one step ahead with the investigation when on Friday, it interrogated Sushant Singh Rajput's girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty, the main accused in the mysterious death of the actor. Rhea reached the DRDO-IAF guest house in the suburbs at 10:30 am along with her brother Showik and was interrogated for 10 long hours. During the interrogation, the actress revealed her side of the story about how she met Sushant and their live-in relationship for the last one year. The actress has been asked to appear again before the CBI. Besides Rhea, her brother Showik, Sushant's flatmate Siddharth Pithani, house manager Samuel Miranda, personal staff Neeraj Singh have also been questioned on Friday.

Just in Time for Bike Month: The Active Communities Plan Interactive Map!

Just in Time for Bike Month: The Active Communities Plan Interactive Map! By Christopher Kidd Image of the new Active Communities Plan (ACP ) interactive map  As part of our ongoing public outreach about the Active Communities Plan , the SFMTA has created a new ACP interactive map .  The release of the map comes just a couple of weeks after we began collecting feedback through our new survey .   The map shows conditions for biking, scooting and rolling across San Francisco, as well as multiple layers of analysis conducted by the Active Communities Plan team. It is meant to help users understand how different factors like comfort, safety and network quality influence whether people decide to use active transportation or not.   We want users to have the opportunity to explore and compare data, reflect on how it compares to their experiences with active transportation and provide input about what kinds of solutions work best.  The interactive map has six main layers to explore: 

New top story from Time: Latest Tests Bring Israel a Step Closer to Commercial Drones

https://ift.tt/3lyZxGe TEL AVIV, Israel — Dozens of drones floated through the skies of Tel Aviv on Monday, ferrying cartons of ice cream and sushi across the city in an experiment that officials hope provided a glimpse of the not-too-distant future. Israel’s National Drone Initiative, a government program, carried out the drill to prepare for a world in which large quantities of commercial deliveries will be made by drones to take pressure off highly congested urban roads. The two-year program aims to apply the capabilities of Israeli drone companies to establish a nationwide network where customers can order goods and have them delivered to pick up spots. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The project, now in the third of eight stages, is still in its infancy and faces many questions about security and logistics. “We had 700 test flights at the start of this year and now we are close to 9,000 flights,” said Daniella Partem, from Israel Innovation Authority, a partner in th

New top story from Time: Japan’s Prime Minister Abe Reportedly Stepping Down Over Health Concerns

https://ift.tt/32yNoGh (TOKYO) — Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has expressed his intention to step down due to his declining health, according to reports Friday by NHK and other Japanese media. The Prime Minister’s Office said the report could not be immediately confirmed, but that Abe was believed to be meeting top ruling officials at the party headquarters. The Liberal Democratic Party spokesman did not answer the phone. Concerns about Abe’s chronic health issues, simmering since earlier this summer, intensified this month when he visited a Tokyo hospital two weeks in a row for unspecified health checkups. Abe, whose term ends in September 2021, is expected to stay on until a new party leader is elected and formally approved by the parliament. He had abruptly resigned from his first stint in office in 2007 due to his health, which was fueling concerns about his recent condition. Abe on Monday became Japan’s longest serving prime minister by consecutive days in of

New top story from Time: The Reopening of Springsteen on Broadway Brought Broadway Out of Hibernation—and One Packed Theater Into a Brighter Future

https://ift.tt/3A6wS0a The city that never sleeps is still a little sleepy, unsure of how to move its joints and muscles as it awakens from its forced hibernation . Although Times Square is now almost as brightly lit as ever, it’s remarkably hard to find a bar that will serve a drink after 11 p.m. On a late-June Saturday night, Eighth Ave. around 42nd Street was vibrating with young people: guys imported from the outer boroughs and beyond in their baggy, rumpled shorts, young women in elastic spangled mini-dresses making their first outing after a year lying in a drawer, men in mardi gras beads and the tiniest of tank tops ready to make the most of the final days of Pride month . Yet it was hard to know exactly what all these people were doing there, other than taking their place in a kind of Brownian-movement minuet under the cheerfully garish lights. Because Times Square cannot be itself while Broadway—meaning not the actual street but the constellation of live shows around

More 20 MPH Streets Coming Soon Near You

More 20 MPH Streets Coming Soon Near You By Christine Osorio Last October when California Assembly Bill 43 (Friedman) was signed into law, we posted a blog about which gave cities new flexibility in setting speed limits—specifically reducing them. “Speed Management,” a reference that is still in development, focused on reducing speed limits in key business activity districts where at least 50% are dining or retail. Since the bill went into effect last month, we’ve already started lowering speed limits by 5 MPH (from 25 MPH to 20 MPH) in the first phase of approved corridors, four of which have been implemented:  San Bruno Avenue, from Silver to Paul avenues (Completed January 2022)  Polk Street, from Filbert to Sutter streets (Completed January 2022)  Haight Street, from Stanyan Street to Central Avenue and from Webster to Steiner streets (Completed February 2022)  24th Street, from Diamond to Chattanooga streets and from Valencia Street to San Bruno Avenue (Completed

New top story from Time: Donald Trump and Trump Biden Square Off for First Debate

https://ift.tt/3kQSmpA President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are facing off on the debate stage during one of the most turbulent periods in modern American history. A viral pandemic has killed 200,000 Americans and pummeled the economy, racial justice protests continue in towns and cities, and vast fires wreak environmental disaster across the American West . Adding to the national sense of foreboding, Trump has refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power i f he loses the election and is using his bully pulpit to sow distrust in the voting process and spread false allegations that voting by mail —a safe alternative for many during the pandemic—will lead to rampant voter fraud. ( It won’t.) There’s a lot to debate. While the head-to-head is an opportunity for both candidates to convince Americans that they are the right person to lead the country through this tumultuous time, it’s also a moment for voters to see the two men’s styles set

New top story from Time: Pfizer-BioNTech Have Started Testing Their COVID-19 Vaccine in Children Under 12

https://ift.tt/3vWOQjL Alejandra and Marisol Gerardo are nine years old but already making a little bit of history. The twin sisters are among the first young children to get vaccinated with a COVID-19 shot in Pfizer-BioNTech’s study of its vaccine in kids under age 12. Alejandra and Marisol had their blood drawn in the morning on March 24, then got their first dose of the two-dose vaccine later that afternoon. “Their primary concern was, ‘is it going to hurt,’” says their father, Dr. Charles Gerardo, chief of emergency medicine at Duke University School of Medicine. “They’re not too worried about the long term side effects; they’re looking at the moment, not the future.” Testing the vaccine in younger children will answer critical questions about how much immunity the shots can provide, and potentially give parents and education officials more confidence in re-opening schools. While it appears that younger children don’t get as sick with COVID-19 as older teens and adult

FOX NEWS: Top baby names list for 2021 reveals familiar trends For the second year in a row, these two names are the most popular for girls and boys – leading BabyCenter's Top 100 Baby Names list.

Top baby names list for 2021 reveals familiar trends For the second year in a row, these two names are the most popular for girls and boys – leading BabyCenter's Top 100 Baby Names list. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/2ZZEl3u