After discussing Critical Race Theory’s history and its relation to education, it is important to look at how the theory focuses on racial disparities through statistics. This is the finale of the CRT series, but that does not change the fact that this is an important topic to discuss.

CRT began in the 1970s as a response to racial inequalities continuing even after civil rights legislation. This means that when understanding CRT, it is important to understand that the theory focuses on discrimination and inequality in things like the law, economy, class, housing, healthcare, and so on. You can not have a discussion about race or even CRT without discussing racial inequalities and discrimination.

Statistics are a good way to understand where the racial inequalities are and how they disproportionately affect minorities. The caveat with statistics though is that you need to understand how they work and what they are exactly saying. This leads to statistics being misused or used to create a false narrative. In this article, I will discuss why it is important to discuss statistics and how they work to ensure they are not misused and to look at racial inequalities in statistics to show what the founders of CRT were talking about.

The first thing to understand is what it means to misuse statistics. Misusing a statistic means an error in understanding what the data is saying. This can be done intentionally or by mistake. These misuses of statistics cause readers and viewers to be manipulated by the person talking about the data as they are not being told everything they need to know. There are way too many examples to mention of misuse of statistics in politics, news, advertising, healthcare and so many industries. A great article written by Bernardita Calzon highlights the misuse of statistics and even categorizes them.

The main two areas to focus on when it comes to the misuse of statistics in relation to this series are flawed correlations and purposeful and selective bias. Flawed correlations are when you try to say that two unrelated things are related to each other. When thinking about correlation, an important thing to keep in mind is that correlation does not always equate to causation. An example of how this can be used to manipulate someone is the use of line graphs to show a point of intersection between two unrelated things like a Fox news story that tried to correlate universal health care and terrorism and insinuate that one causes the other.  This manipulation was done to scare Americans away from universal health care by correlating it with terrorism. As for the other issue of misusing statistics by being purposeful or selective with the data chosen is usually done intentionally. The way someone is purposeful or selective with their data is by omitting key facts of the data or phrasing their question in a tricky way to manipulate what they are saying. These two areas are important when discussing racial inequality as people will try and find data to make sure to manipulate their audience into believing what they are saying.

Now let’s cover data that shows racial inequalities in America which speak to what the founders of CRT were talking about. Even though we have had civil rights legislation we still have persisting racial inequalities. I am going to list some statistics that show these racial disparities and how they affect minorities. This list is to let it sink in that these racial inequalities do exist and should be addressed. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Black Americans are almost twice as likely as white Americans to lack health insurance. This statistic shows a big disparity as the health care system in America is difficult to navigate and if you can navigate it is near impossible to pay the health care bills without insurance. This is even more difficult to deal with in Covid-19 as without health insurance the medical bills for getting treated at the hospital could bring someone to bankruptcy.

In education, Black students face disproportionate rates of suspension as they are 6 times more likely to get suspended than white students (this also leads to the school to prison pipeline, but that is a topic for another day).

Black Americans are less likely to own a house than other racial groups. These statistics go on and on, but the key thing remains that racial disparities within America disproportionately affect minorities in general. This shows that the conversation around why CRT developed is still relevant to this day as even though we have had things like civil rights legislation and anti-discriminatory acts these disparities still exist to this day.

All in all, this series has focused on the beginnings of what Critical Race Theory is by looking at what the theory is about and who its founders are. Then we took a look at the controversy surrounding the topic in education and why it is important to understand what is happening. Finally, in this article, we discussed statistics and their importance to the topic of CRT. The aim of this series was to discuss and explain what CRT is and what are some of its important components that people should think about.

Article by Alaa Almoamen