After examining Critical Race Theory’s history and what the theory is all about, it is now important to move the discussion forward and discuss how it affects education. This topic is important to discuss due to the divisive conversations around the theory in education.

If you looked up CRT, you would see daily articles talking about how a school somewhere has banned the theory or will be defunded due to teaching about it. Knowing why this topic is banned is integral because the ban does way more harm than good.

First of all, Critical Race Theory is not actually being taught, but something that stems from it that is used in education is culturally responsive teaching. This distinction is important to make as culturally responsive teaching is specific to the classroom. Culturally responsive teaching is a method of teaching that focuses on teachers’ ability to teach in a multi-cultural setting, allowing their students to draw from their cultural knowledge and prior knowledge to ensure their education is relevant and engaging to them.

A few examples of culturally responsive teaching are learning about your student, giving them space and opportunities to talk about their culture, allowing multiple ways to complete projects, perspective-taking to understand how an event impacted different people and so many more examples. With this in mind, it is important to understand that culturally responsive teaching uses Critical Race Theory’s tenets to teach students about oppression and racism and how they interact within their space.

Now that we got that point out of the way, it is important to understand why the CRT ban in education is more harmful than people think. The bans of CRT came around because people are unable to accept the ongoing racist history of America and how that has a direct impact on our lives today. This sense of fragility is harmful to the conversation on getting rid of racial disparities in America, as instead of finding a solution, people just become divisive and ignore the real problem.

CRT is misunderstood as painting all white people as oppressors. Instead, what the theory seeks to do is to have them be more morally responsible about how racism impacts our lives. Another main goal of CRT is to discuss how even though we have had the civil rights movement and went through desegregation, racial disparities still exist to this day. CRT seeks to examine why those disparities exist and once that is acknowledged, what we should do with that understanding.

An example of things not changing is segregation. Even with all of these laws put into place, segregation can still be seen within schools and neighborhoods as publicly funded predominantly white schools score much better in standardized exams than those that are predominantly black. Instead, the people who are wanting the CRT ban want America to be this colorblind place that ignores the existence of all the discrimination and oppression that happens around us.

Another side effect of these laws is also the banning of teaching about race and racism which would make history and English classes centered around white people. This then continues to uphold white supremacy within education as it does not allow Black, Asian and Native American voices to be heard, elevated and listened to. This would also make the discussions around slavery, civil rights, the Trail of Tears, Japanese internment camps, segregation and so many other topics much worse as those lessons would be taught narrowly and only focus on the events objectively and not the horrific impacts they have had on the people experiencing them. This is harmful as it silences these voices rather than giving them space to talk about the impact these events have had on them.

With all of this in mind, it is important to understand that these laws have impacts beyond what they suggest on the surface. CRT is not the enemy in any way, instead, it is a vehicle for understanding why racial disparities exist in America and what we need to do about them.

Implementing the theory with culturally responsive teaching is important because it helps students become more aware of who they are and who the people around them are. Implementing them in education also helps in community building as the students will learn to be more culturally responsible and respectful to their peers. These laws come from a place of fragility and wanting America to be a perfect place it never was, and so banning CRT is another way to upkeep oppression as it forces educators to not discuss the disparities and oppression that have been ongoing in America’s history. The next topic of this series will be a discussion on racial disparities through statistics and I will briefly discuss how people also purposefully misuse statistics for their own benefit.

More information on the topic can be found here.

Article by Alaa Almoamen