Criticizing Criticism of Critical Race Theory

Critical race theory (CRT) is one of the hottest topics of the day, so it seems fitting to critique the profuse criticism of it.

Basically, critical race theory is an academic concept that explains racism as a social construct. That is, racism is understood not merely as the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies. Why, though, should that be a target of constant criticism? 

(From a 1/22/2017 post by Kyia Young)

Political Criticism of CRT

The political criticism of CRT has been strongest since September of last year. On Sept. 4, then President Trump had the Executive Office of the President issue a memorandum for the heads of executive departments and agencies.

That memo ended with these words: “The divisive, false, and demeaning propaganda of the critical race theory movement is contrary to all we stand for as Americans and should have no place in the Federal government.”

Since then, several states (Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas) have banned/restricted the teaching of CRT.

Perhaps most egregious is Oklahoma’s ban, for earlier this year it was reported that over 80% of the citizens of that state had never heard of the Tulsa race massacre at the end of May 1921.

Nevertheless, on May 7 Oklahoma Gov. Stitt signed a bill that seeks to prevent teachers from saying things so that “any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex.”

But how could Tulsa 1921 possibly be taught without Black students feeling some anguish at the way Blacks were so seriously mistreated then, without White students feeling some guilt at what their ancestors had done, and without all feeling considerable discomfort?

However, all across the country Republican-led states are criticizing CRT, and more states will likely ban/prohibit the teaching of CRT in public schools.

SBC Criticism of CRT

In recent years, perhaps a higher percentage of Southern Baptists have voted for Republican politicians than voters belonging to any other major Christian denomination. Accordingly, CRT has been widely discussed, and criticized, by Baptist pastors and Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leaders.

There was a major push by the new organization known as Conservative Baptist Network (CBN) to get Pastor Mike Stone of Georgia elected as the next president of the SBC.

In the run-off election on June 15, he lost by a narrow 52%-48% vote at the SBC annual meeting in Nashville. (Lee Brand, Jr., a member of CBN’s steering council, was elected 1st vice president.)

In CBN’s May 20 statement endorsing Stone, the third reason they gave for their support was his opposition to CRT. They boasted that Stone “holds that the Bible is the only analytical tool he needs, leading him to reject unbiblical ideologies such as Critical Race Theory.”

Criticizing the Criticism of CRT

In twentieth-century American Christianity, an important emphasis emerged on what came to be widely labeled as “sinful social structures.” Early on, that emphasis was found in the writings of Walter Rauschenbusch and other Social Gospel proponents.

In A Theology for the Social Gospel (1917), Rauschenbusch wrote that “we are continuing to sin because our fathers created the conditions of sin by the African slave trade and by the unearned wealth they gathered from slave labor for generations” (p. 79). Sin was embedded in the system of slavery.

Fifteen years later, Reinhold Niebuhr published his highly influential book with the sometimes misunderstood title Moral Man and Immoral Society. That means, for example, some slaveowners might treat their slaves kindly (morally) while simultaneously the system of slavery was grossly immoral.

True, some teachers might use CRT in harmful ways. But the greatest harm to society will come from those who refuse to recognize the reality of sinful social structures.

The longer that reality is denied and attempts to understand/dismantle it are rejected (such as by most criticism of CRT), the stronger the roots of racism will become and the longer the detrimental effects of racism will be experienced by so many People of Color.

Yes, criticism of Critical Race Theory must be forthrightly criticized.

The Tragic Tulsa Massacre of 1921

There seems to be no end to the need for acknowledging the violence done to African Americans in this country. Two months ago, I wrote about the shameful Easter 1873 massacre in Louisiana. This weekend is the 100^th anniversary of the tragic massacre of Blacks in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The Basic Facts of the Tulsa Massacre

It all started on a Monday morning, May 30. Sarah, a 17-year-old White elevator operator charged that Dick, a 19-year-old Black man grabbed her arm as he entered the elevator. It is not known what actually happened, but the next day Dick was arrested for attacking Sarah.

By mid-afternoon on May 31, threats of lynching Dick surfaced, and Blacks begin to gather to protect him—but they were far outnumbered by the Whites. About 10 p.m., a White man attempted to disarm a Black man. The gun fired in the ruckus, and the massacre began.

Beginning around 5 a.m. on June 1, Black homes and businesses were looted and set ablaze. At 7:30, Mount Zion Baptist Church was set afire.

Most of the killing and the destruction of property was over by noon, but by then Tulsa’s prosperous Black neighborhood of Greenwood, known as the “Black Wall Street,” was completely destroyed.

According to the large, impressive book The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: A Photographic History, “Perhaps as many as three hundred Tulsans” were killed.

Moreover, “Upward of ten thousand Black Tulsans were without homes or businesses, their lifetime possessions either consumed by fire or carried away by whites” (p. 271).**  

Why Remember the Tulsa Massacre?

One of William Faulkner’s most memorable lines comes from his 1951 novel Requiem of a Nun: “The past is never dead. It's not even past.”

Faulkner’s words were paraphrased in "A More Perfect Union," a speech delivered by then Senator Barack Obama in March 2008. He argued that many of the difficulties in African American communities could be traced to the sufferings of previous generations under slavery and Jim Crow laws.

Or, he might have said, traced back to events such as the 1906 lynchings in Springfield, Mo., and the massacre in Tulsa 15 years later.

For decades and decades, evil racist acts of the past were overlooked, disregarded, consigned to the dustbin of history—or so it was hoped.

Just 35 years after the tragic Tulsa massacre of 1921, I took an American history course in Bolivar, Mo., just over 200 miles from Tulsa. I’m quite sure no mention was made of the Tulsa massacre.

According to the online Britannica, “Despite its severity and destructiveness, the Tulsa race massacre was barely mentioned in history books until the late 1990s, when a state commission was formed to document the incident.”

Nor was there any mention of the lynchings of African Americans fifteen years earlier in Springfield, Mo., even though that city was only about 30 miles away. My small Baptist college had no Black students, and there was little, if any, interest in Black history in the classroom or on campus.

But the past is never dead—and in 2019 the city of Springfield finally, after 113 years, erected a historical marker in the city. And now, 100 years after the massacre in Tulsa, the country is finally paying some attention to the tragic events there. The past, thankfully, is no longer forgotten or concealed.

There is hope for the days ahead if the nation learns from the living past in order to create a livable future with liberty and justice for all.

_____

** The book of photographic history was written by Karlos K. Hill and published in March of this year. Another important book on this subject is Randy Krehbiel’s Tulsa 1921: Reporting a Massacre (2019). (Both of these books were available in my local public library.)