Tag: Education

Education, Politics

An Analogy For Those Brave Enough to Discuss CRT

pollywannamath

I wasn’t planning to discuss Critical Race Theory (CRT) on this blog for a few reasons:

  • I thought the controversy surrounding it would be a flash in a pan
  • Critical Race Theory isn’t formalized or defined well enough to review meaningfully
  • I’ve seen no evidence that teaching the core tenants of Critical Race Theory in a classroom leads to positive or negative educational or social outcomes

However, Critical Race Theory continues to play a major role in conservative rhetoric and I think it will likely show up in middle or high school civics courses. After receiving an email (excerpts below) about the dangers of CRT, I found it important that I could come up with an analogy that I could use with friends and family to discuss Critical Race Theory without alienating people on one side or the other.

The Email:

email
Name hidden

The Analogy:

Have you ever noticed that left-handed people struggle with things that come naturally to right-handers, such as writing, using scissors, and opening cans? Why is that?

The obvious reason is that our world was built for right handed people. Replace left-handers with people of color and that is the core tenant of Critical Race Theory. The specific items that are hard don’t matter much, the point of the analogy is that the world was designed so that it worked best for the people that were in charge of shaping it.

The Conversations:

The other aspect of Critical Race Theory is how to deal with that built-in inequity and to what extent it must be resolved. This analogy does not attempt to guide a conversation on what the “right” outcome is. Ideally, this analogy fosters that discussion. Once all parties understand the core principle of CRT, how it should or shouldn’t be used should be fertile ground for constructive ideas-based conversation.

Without being able to ground discussions about CRT in something that is generally understood, I fear too many of the conversations will sound like the email above reads.

Want to learn more?

I’ve complied a few resources I’ve used to learn more about about CRT: