The Critical Race Theory "Controversy"

 

In recent months, right-wing groups have attacked the alleged use in our schools of "Critical Race Theory," using it as a cudgel to inflame people and to prevent the teaching of basic historical facts and to suppress discussion of the significance of those facts. This is part of an effort to agitate and excite its base to get them to the polls and school board meetings in support of their issues more broadly.  They assert that Critical Race Theory is a doctrine that people  “should view everything through the lens of race and then pit them against one another.”[1] 

 

But this is NOT what Critical Race Theory is.  Rather, it is  a framework which seeks to understand the impact of race in America. It is a graduate level academic construct focusing on the proposition that, from the beginning of the European migration to what is now the United States, racism has been so intertwined with American law and society that they cannot easily be disentangled. Critical Race theorists have drawn such conclusions based on their assessment of historical and current facts. Nowhere is Critical Race Theory taught as the official core doctrine of American history in our primary and secondary schools; but, one would hope that the kinds of facts that underly it are presented in an age-appropriate manner.

 

Kendall Thomas is the co-editor of Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement.  He observes that the theory maintains that racism “does not have to define our future if we have the will and the courage to reckon with it.”  Rather than encouragingWhite people to feel guilty, Thomas explains, Critical Race Theorists aim to shift focus away from individual people’s bad actions  and toward how systems uphold racial disparities. Thomas concludes that “Critical race theory is an effort really to move beyond the focus on [simply] finding fault by impugning [people’s] racist” animus and the like, and instead looking “at the ways in which racial inequality is embedded in structures in ways of which we are very often unaware.”[2]     Nevertheless, right-wing groups incorrectly assert that “Critical Race Theory” is a doctrine which asserts that all White people are inherently, unavoidably, and irretrievably racist, and that this doctrine threatens to take over education in our country.[3] They lump the theory together with the historical facts surrounding  race in America. They oppose mention in our classrooms of historical facts and current conditions that might make White children feel bad.  Their goal is to suppress uncomfortable facts about our shared history.   Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”  But the attack on “Critical Race Theory” is an effort to impose a whitewashed version of America, by suppressing discussion of relevant facts.   There are a variety of theories that seek to make sense out of the facts. One may be summarized by Chief Justice Roberts’  2007 statement that "the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race"[4] ; this is a proposition that past evils are totally a thing of the past, that any legacies of human slavery in America have zero impact on our society today.    Recent attacks on “Critical Race Theory” are, at best, nothing more than attempts to ensconce “Roberts RaceTheory” as the official doctrine of American education, holding as irrelevant any possible impact of human  slavery and its legacy on 21st Century America.  At worst - and most of the time they are “at worst” – they are attempts to whitewash the facts of our history. For example, that is precisely what the recent Texas law limiting what may be taught in their public schools does.   In Texas, teaching of some relevant facts is permitted, but discussion of the implication of those facts is effectively prohibited by, for example, barring discussion of The 1619 Project.[5]   What our schools should do is to teach the relevant historical facts — the bad and the ugly, not just the “good” — so that students can draw their own conclusions. Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat its errors.  Students need the factual bases and critical thinking skills to draw their own conclusions. That is education, not indoctrination.   William Faulkner wrote decades ago, “The past is not dead.  It is not even past.”  We need to face honestly whether or how much this is the case as we grapple with American human slavery and its impacts.      [1] https://dcist.com/story/21/09/29/mcauliffe-youngkin-spar-over-vaccine-mandates-education-policy-final-gubernatorial-debate/   [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/05/29/critical-race-theory-bans-schools/   [3] https://secured.heritage.org/critical-race-theory-ebook-offer/?utm_campaign=crtebook&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=criticalracetheory_1   [4] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/04/race-and-the-supreme-court-what-the-schuette-decision-reveals-about-how-we-talk-about-race.html   [5] https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/87R/billtext/pdf/HB03979F.pdf#navpanes=0   at  pp. 5-6: Teachers may not “make part of a course the concept that:  . . . . (ix) the advent of slavery in the territory that is now the United States constituted the true founding of the United States; or  (x) with respect to their relationship to American values, slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from, betrayals of,  or failures to live up to, the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality;  and (C) require an understanding of The 1619 Project.” (This is the same statute that scared school staff in South Lakes, Texas, to suggest that books on the Holocaust could not be in  school libraries unless there were books that presented “the other side” of the “controversy.”  Presumably, the same would  apply to books teaching the actual facts of Reconstruction and its aftermath – somehow requiring that something like D.W.  Griffith’s infamous film, Birth of a Nation should be presented as “alternative (albeit false) facts” to provide balanced teaching.) Attachments area

Kulanu Services at Temple Emanuel, 2000-2021

Kulanu Services at Temple Emanuel, 2000 through 2021 

June 11, 2021: Kulanu Shabbat (Guest Speaker, Evan Glass, Member-at-Large, Montgomery County Council: My Journey, Our Journeys, and Using the Political Process to Achieve Progress.) https://davidfishback.blogspot.com/2021/05/evan-glass-to-speak-at-temple-emanuel.html

June 12, 2020: Kulanu Shabbat (Guest Speaker, Nicolle Campa, President, Metro DC Chapter of PFLAG: The Importance of Family in the Struggle for Equal Rights and Community Embrace and presentations by Youth Advisor Devorah Stavisky and Students Eli Herman, Quinn Spence, Kayden Reff, and Autumn Cook) 

June 7, 2019: Kulanu Shabbat (Guest Speaker, Ellen Kahn, Director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Children, Youth, and Families Program: Where are we now, where are we going?)

Sept. 16, 2016: Kulanu Shabbat (with Temple Community Social Action Commission) Comfort Cases for Children in Foster Care: Rob Scheer, founder of Comfort Cases. 

April 15, 2016: Kulanu Shabbat Mike Fishback, Intent and Impact) https://davidfishback.blogspot.com/2016/04/intent-and-impact.html

March 27, 2015: Kulanu Shabbat Building Community by Sharing Our Stories: David Fishback, Sara Cytron, Glenn Northern, Nat Rasmussen, Marti Teitlebaum & Tim Zwerdling 

Oct. 4, 2013: Kulanu Shabbat Dr. Dana Beyer, Executive Director, Gender Rights Maryland, Jewish Values and Transgender Equality 

Jan. 2013: Co-Sponsor MLK Service Jonathan Jayes-Green (speaking about the Maryland Dream Act and the Maryland Civil Marriage Equality Act) 

Oct. 26, 2012: Kulanu Shabbat Jewish Values and Civil Marriage Equality, guest speaker State Senator Richard Madaleno 

Feb. 10, 2012: Kulanu Shabbat Celebrating Our Temple’s Rich Diversity: Sara Cytron, Lisa Feldman, Glenn Northern, and Tim Zwerdling 

April 1, 2011: Kulanu Shabbat Captain Michael Rankin (USN, Ret.), Retired Navy psychiatrist and openly gay advocate for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and Board Member, Union for Reform Judaism 

June 11, 2010: Kulanu Shabbat Delegate Heather Mizeur 

June 12, 2009: Kulanu Shabbat Rabbi Sarah Meytin, Jewish Community Relations Council, Issues of Human Rights 

Feb. 8, 2008: Kulanu Shabbat Delegate Anne Kaiser: Civil Marriage Is A Civil Right: A Gay Jewish View in Annapolis 

Jan. 2007: Co-Sponsor of MLK Service Patricia Corbett, Community Outreach Director, Metro DC PFLAG 

Sept. 15, 2006: Kulanu Shabbat Dan Furmansky, Executive Director of Equality Maryland, Equal Rights for Gays and Lesbians: A Jewish Perspective 

May 22, 2005 Temple Emanuel Celebrates Lag B’Omer: A Celebration of Life and Jewish Survival GLBT in the Family: Response & Embrace 

Feb. 27, 2004: Kulanu Shabbat Rabbi Leila Gal Berner, Values, Tradition and Challenges: A Jewish Approach to Sexual Ethics.  Also presentations from Temple members Ellen Mann (Karch), Bobbi Fishback, and Mike Fishback 

Nov. 16, 2001: Shabbat Service A Vital Part of Our Jewish Community: Embracing a Diversity of Sexual and Gender Identities, Ken Carroll and Stephanie Handel of Bet Mishpachah 

Oct. 18, 2001 Lee Walzer, Homophobia and Anti-Semitism, Temple Social Issues Committee co-sponsored with Bet Mishpacha Social Action Committee and Jews United for Justice 

May 19, 2000: Shabbat Service Gay and Jewish: Issues and Reflections. Rabbi Stone and Catherine Tuerk, Past President of PFLAG and PFLAG Member Hannah Lipman

Consequences of Pain

Being a human being can be extremely complicated. People swimming in a flood of pain often grab at anything they see in the water in an effort to save themselves. Sometimes, tragically, what they grab onto may actually drag them down – and may cause them to drag others down, as well. A new documentary film, Pray Away, demonstrates that one should never assume that those in pain who grasp at false cures for their pain are lost forever. 

Pray Away focusses on the story of Randy Thomas, former vice president of the now-defunct Exodus International, who was in pain because the environment in which he grew up insisted that one could not be gay and be “right with God.” So Mr. Thomas was convinced that conversion therapies could help him and others “pray away the gay.” Eventually, after years of urging people to change their sexual orientation and debating those who opposed the “Ex-Gay” Movement, the suicide of a close friend finally led him to conclude that the Movement he had dedicated himself to was based on something that simply was not true. He describes his journey here. 

In 2008, as Advocacy Chair for the Metro DC Chapter of PFLAG, I debated Randy Thomas on a local television program, NewsTalk, hosted by Bruce DePuyt. See transcript and commentary here. I think the transcript conveys the frustration Mr. Thomas felt in being challenged with the conclusions of the American Medical Association and other mainstream American medical and mental health professional associations – all of which rejected his premise. (I wish there was an extant audio or video of it.) He did not come over as a bad person. I felt bad for him. I am glad that Randy Thomas has seen the light. What his journey illustrates is that we should never simply assume that because someone has beliefs that seem to us hurtful and factually wrong, that they are irretrievable. 

I hope that others in pain, whatever that pain may be, who currently seek false remedies for their suffering will come around. Those who seek to bring facts – not fantasy – to the public discourse must approach those discussions with compassion and as much wisdom as they can muster.

Past Self-censorship on the Tulsa Massacre?

There is much discussion today about the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, including talk about why so few Americans were even aware of it until recently, and even fewer were aware of its scope and significance.

In response to the upheavals of the late 1960s, my alma mater, the George Washington University, offered in 1969 History 174, The Negro in American History; the professor used eminent African American scholar John Hope Franklin's From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (3d edition) as the textbook. I took the course. I still have the 652-page book. Today, I went to the index to see what was written about the Tulsa Massacre. Much to my surprise, the entire discussion is in one part of one paragraph (pp. 483-84). The details and huge significance of those horrible days were treated cursorily by Professor Franklin as nothing more than a denouement to a series of incidents of mob violence in the United States in 1919. Here is the passage:

[I]n June 1921, the Negroes and whites of Tulsa, Oklahoma, engaged in fighting which some residents prefer to call a ‘race war,’ in which 9 whites and 21 Negroes were known to have been killed and several hundred injured. When news reached Negroes of the accusation of an assault of a young woman by a Negro, Negroes took arms to the jail to protect the accused person, who, it was rumored, would be lynched. Altercations between whites and Negroes at the jail spread to other parts of the city, and general rioting, looting, and houseburning began. Four companies of the National Guard were called out,, but by the time order was restored more than one millions dollars worth of property had been destroyed or damaged. This progressive young city of the Southwest was thus added to the list of communications in which there was no interracial peace.

This description is even more surprising in light of the fact that Professor Franklin’s father was attorney Buck Franklin, who, according to Wikipedia, is “best known for defending African-American survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race riot, in which whites had attacked many blacks and buildings, and burned and destroyed the Greenwood District. This was known at the time as the 'Black Wall Street', and was the wealthiest Black community in the United States, a center of black commerce and culture.” 

Is part (albeit a small part) of our national ignorance the fear of African American scholars of being too forthcoming regarding the depth of American racism, for fear of being written off as too sensitive? I do not know. But it is something worth considering.

Evan Glass to speak at Temple Emanuel Kulanu Shabbat Service, June 11 (Zoom Service)

In recognition of Pride Month, Temple Emanuel’s annual Kulanu Service will be held on Friday evening, June 11, at 6:30 p.m.

Our featured speaker this year will be Montgomery County Council At-Large Member Evan Glass, whose achievements include the authorship and passage of the Montgomery County LGBTQ Bill of Rights, which fills in gaps in our existing legal protections, including protections of seniors’ access to health care, HIV status, and gender expression. His topic will be My Journey, Our Journeys, and Using the Poltical Process to Achieve Progress. Evan, a former CNN producer and community activist, lives with his husband in Silver Spring.

We also will be noting the launch of the Temple Board of Trustees’ new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiative. Please join us after the Zoom service for a discussion with Evan, followed by the Kulanu Committee’s first LGBTQ and Allies Happy Hour. Contact the Temple Office at 301-942-2000 or at office@templeemanuelmd.org for Zoom login information. 

The mission of the Kulanu Committee is to support Temple Emanuel’s increasingly diverse community as we seek to welcome, celebrate, and honor each other’s identities. Kulanu was formed initially to advocate for the inclusion of LGBTQ Jews, same-sex couples, and families with same-sex parents. Over time, its mission has expanded to encompass the range of diversity in our community, including family structure, race and ethnicity, religious background, familiarity with Judaism, age, economic circumstances, political views, and physical and mental health.

The future of Roe v. Wade before a Supreme Court majority not reflective of the popular will.

On June 29, 1992, the Supreme Court decided Planned Parenthood v. Casey, upholding its ruling 20 years earlier in Roe v. Wade. Both decisions rested on the proposition that there is a constitutional right to privacy. Yesterday,the Court agreed to hear a case that coukd lead to a reversal of those precedents. In the nearly 30 years since Casey was decided polling has shown consistently that a majority of Americans believe that those two cases were correctly decided. In the nearly 30 years since, the issue of reproductive rights has increasingly split along political party lines, Democrats largely in favor, Republicans largely against. In the nearly 30 years since, we have had eight Presidential elections. The Democrat has won the popular vote in seven of those eight elections. In the nearly 30 years since, eight of the nine justices of the Supreme Court have replaced retired or deceased justices: only Justice Thomas was on the Court when Casey was decided, and he dissented. Three of the eight were appointed by Democrats, five by Republicans. In each instance, the question of Roe and Casey loomed over the confirmation proceedings. Over a century ago, the satirist Finley Peter Dunne's fictional bartender Mr. Dooley observed that the Supreme Court ultimately “followed the illiction [sic] returns.” While this was intended as a cynical comment, it also reflected the concept that, over time, the Supreme Court was not as anti-democratic as it could, in the abstract, be. The relationship of the Court to the elected branches of government was, in theory, tempered by the fact that its members were nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. For many decades, most Americans have been basically satisfied with Roe and Casey, and this approval has been reflected in the popular vote for President. But now we are seeing that the Constitutional defect of the malapportioned Electoral College and Senate is catching up with us.

The Senate's Constitutional Responsibility to Enforce the Fifteenth Amendment

Today, the Washington Post published my letter discussing the Constitution's 15th Amendment in light of the recent enactment of the Georgia voter suppression law, and the avalanche of similar laws around the country:

The 15th Amendment states that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." And it further states that "Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

In light of the voter-suppression laws signed by the governor of Georgia and similar laws on their way to enactment in many other states, it is clearly time for Congress to do its job, to "enforce [the 15th Amendment] by appropriate legislation."

If the Senate is faced with the choice between keeping the filibuster and enforcing the 15th Amendment, then the imperatives of the Constitution must take precedence over a Senate rule that was used in the 1950s and 1960s to thwart the Constitution. Senate Republicans need to look to their consciences. All Senate Democrats need to have the courage to look to what matter the most.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/letters-to-the-editor/on-the-georgia-voting-law/2021/03/30/85b39492-90a9-11eb-aadc-af78701a30ca_story.htm

Of course, the Post has word number limitations on letters it considers for publication; it published what I submitted.  If I had had the space, I would have provided this further context:

Congress sought to enforce the 15th Amendment during the First Reconstruction in the decade following the Civil War. Then Congress abandoned the field to the forces of White Supremacy for more than 80 years. In a very real sense, the victory for freedom won in the Civil War was then lost.

Finally, in 1964 and 1965 with the enactment of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, Congress started to do its job, beginning the Second Reconstruction -- seeking to finally secure the rights patriots fought and died for a century earlier.

Then, in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, the Supreme Court cut the guts out of the Voting Rights Act. Now the Republican Party seeks to end the Second Reconstruction and revive the soul of the Confederacy. The enactment of the Georgia voter suppression legislation is just one example.

It is time for Congress to do its job under the 15th Amendment. If it cannot be done so long as the filibuster survives, and the choice is between the obstruction of the filibuster and the promise of the Gettysburg Address -- "Government of the people, by the people, and for the people" -- then can the choice made by patriotic, decent Americans be in doubt? Senate Republicans need to look to their consciences. And Senate Democrats need to look to what matters the most.