By Nazarul Islam

America’s debate has heated up over whether, or how, Critical Race Theory (CRT) may be taught in schools. It has obscured the real debate over how race and racism should or shouldn’t be taught in K-12 education and discussed in the broader society.

In a recent Facebook exchange, an acquaintance of mine, with deep public policy experience had denied that CRT was being taught in public schools. However, he had tellingly added: “It’s important kids are taught how racism shapes our society’s structures and systems.”

One parent who had helped collect together, the diversity curriculum for her school put it this way: “Critical Race Theory is simply the concept that racism is something embedded in our legal systems and policies. This means that CRT in the classroom teaches that racism is part of everyday life, so people, even well-intentioned white people, can nevertheless make choices that fuel racism.”

Thank you! Finally, we have some clarity. Now let’s reframe their statements into a question: Should kids be taught – or told – how racism has shaped our society?

The answer lies in a single word—‘no’! They should be taught to consider the question of whether and how racism molds American institutions from a variety of viewpoints and allowed to reach their own conclusions.

How racism currently influences society is a matter of opinion, not fact – and it should not be taught as fact. Asserting how racism shapes society is like asserting how teaching styles affect educational outcomes. We know they do to an extent but may not be able to pinpoint the impact compared to other factors. In other words, it’s not a fully settled question.

What’s more, in teaching opinion as fact about racism, we may be harming the same marginalized people we are trying to lift up.

Proponents of teaching how racism shapes society offer several justifications for doing so.

Our arguments of history: Proponents argue that there is no disputing that racism dominated American society for much of its history. I couldn’t agree more. But the fact that something happened in the past doesn’t mean it’s happening in the present. It is uncontroversial that numerous American institutions were defined by racism through at least the mid-1960s. Slavery was a horrific racist institution.

After abolition, racism continued to animate American society for at least 100 years, from Jim Crow to reconstruction to redlining. But after the hard-won civil rights battles of the 1960s, the role of racism became murkier. Reasonable people disagree. There certainly continue to be ample racist attitudes. That’s not the same thing, however, as the claim that racism is embedded in every system of society and insisting that it explains all disparity among groups. How racism shapes American institutions today should be discussed, debated, and studied – not imported.

The argument of examples – Proponents have pointed to specific incidents of alleged ‘systemic two racism’, but individual instances of racism do not prove that racism is everywhere. Some point to the example of Flint, Michigan, a majority-black town operating under state government control, which allowed its water supply to become contaminated.

Others point to disparities in the criminal justice system in which black people make up almost 40 percent of the incarcerated population, nearly three times their percentage of the overall population. Others point to horrors of modern policing or skewed drug laws or voting rights laws that disempower black voters. Let’s assume for a moment that we can demonstrate that racism is the singular or a significant culprit in each of these systems. It still does not mean that racism characterizes all systems all the time.

Racism didn’t, for example, shape Michigan’s state-appointed Civil Rights Commission that found that the state was guilty of systemic racism in Flint. Racism is likely a greater determinant in some systems, in some places, at some times than in others. And this is why again systemic racism should be discussed and debated, not taught as established fact.

The argument of a catalyst, a lone cause:

Proponents of this view often insist that racism is the only possible reason for racial disparities. But disparity usually has many factors, such as economic conditions, average age of a subgroup, and cultural differences. David BenMoshe, a formerly incarcerated African American writer, put it this way: “The disenfranchisement of a group of people is a complex problem. Complex problems are always multifactorial in nature.

When you focus on one thing as the sole cause and the only thing that needs to be fixed, you miss the complex interplay of the other factors that affect it.”

There are, without a doubt, other factors at play. Out-of-wedlock births have long been highly correlated to social pathologies, irrespective of race or ethnicity.

That there is a high percentage of fatherlessness – upwards of 75 percent – in inner-city communities is very likely a significant factor for many social problems, from crime to drug use to lack of educational achievement. Systemic racism is a possible factor as well. How do we weigh these factors? We conduct studies, show evidence, and debate. But we don’t insist that one factor explains all of reality.

Those who insist on a single cause will often accuse anyone who offers up an alternative explanation of victim-blaming and racism. The problem with this line of reasoning is that it’s not a line of reasoning – it’s an allegation, meant to slander and shut down alternative explanations.

And if the accuser shuts off conversation about varied causes, as often happens in the current ideological environment, then we won’t be effective in addressing social problems. Indeed, all these arguments that seek to uphold the pedagogy of systemic racism conspire to suppress discourse and make life worse for the people adversely affected by current conditions. If, for example, proponents insist that the only reason there aren’t enough minority scientists is because of discrimination, and they make it difficult to discuss more salient factors such as education and upbringing, then society may never take the steps to build a pipeline of minority scientists.

The last thing we should do is tell our kids that we know all the reasons for disparity in society when we don’t. They will be in for rude awakening when efforts to curb racism don’t, as advertised, significantly narrow the racial divide. Let’s instead expose them to multiple perspectives, including the perspective that identifies systemic racism.

Equipped with stronger critical-thinking skills, they may, we can hope, do better in addressing American society’s problems than their parents and grandparents, had accomplished.

Nazarul Islam

The Bengal-born writer Nazarul Islam is a senior educationist based in USA. He writes for Sindh Courier and the newspapers of Bangladesh, India and America. He is author of a recently published book ‘Chasing Hope’ – a compilation of his 119 articles.

The post Racism has shaped American society… first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Tom Arms

America has developed its own version of Original Sin. It is called the Critical Race Theory and is proving to be yet another toxic debate topic dividing Black and White and the growing chasm separating America’s right and left.

Original Sin was propagated by St Augustine in the 4th century. It maintained that every human was born sinful and spent a lifetime fighting against it. The Augustinian philosophy was a major tenet of the medieval church and proved especially with the breakaway Protestant sects. Gradually, however, first the Catholics, and then most of the Protestants revised their thinking. Sin was washed away with sacrament of baptism and replaced with personal responsibility.

Critical Race Theory maintains that all Americans—or at least all White Americans—are born racist. Racism is systemic in American society, reinforced by the law, sub-consciously taught in American classrooms and a key element in American political structures and police forces because of the country’s tainted history. It can only be rooted out with a serious re-education effort and change at every level.

This does not sit well with a lot of White Americans—and not just the White Supremacist brigade. They willingly accept that slavery, Jim Crow and segregation were bad and shameful. But White America made recompense for that with subsequent civil rights laws.

Critical Race Theory attacks their self and national image as the land of meritocracy where every person has an opportunity to rise to greatness on a level playing field which stretches from sea to shining sea. Yeah, sure, say Americans of color – If you are White.

Critical Race Theory has another element which disturbs many Whites. It vilifies slave-holding founding fathers such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and attacks the constitution as pro-slavery. Generations of Americans have deified the founding fathers and the constitution is virtually a secular Bible. It is nigh impossible for them to jettison those beliefs.

Critical Race Theory (or CRT) had its origins in the 1970s with African-American Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell. He noted that despite the raft of civil rights legislation, there had not been that much of a change in the economic conditions of African-Americans. Bell concluded that that this was because the building blocks of American history had constructed a society which was systemically racist and that precedent-based law supported it.

CRT remained a relatively obscure theory until 1990 when President Bill Clinton tried to appoint one of its strongest proponents to a federal judgeship. The nomination was opposed by all Republican senators and a significant smattering of Democrat lawmakers. The nomination was withdrawn and CRT sprang into the headlines.

However, it did not become “The issue” until the Black Lives Matter and the murder of George Floyd Matter. And it truly took off with the New York Times Pulitzer prize-winning 1619 Project. The date is significant as the first time African slaves were landed in Virginia. The project itself “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the US narrative.”

The result was that companies and federal offices introduced CRT-based anti-racist training for their staffs and, more importantly, it started being taught in schools. The White backlash was led by one Chris Rufo who maintained that Critical Race Theory “poses an existential threat to the United States” and is “anti-American” He was given a megaphone platform by Fox News, from which called on President Trump to stop CRT training in federal offices. Trump listened and did just that, and went further and set up a commission to reinforce the traditional teaching of American history. He called it the 1776 Commission as a clear dig at the New York Times 1619 Project.

When Joe Biden took office he re-introduced CRT training in federal offices and scrapped the 1776 commission. “We can’t continue to just teach what we want to know instead of what we need to know.” He told a crowd gathered to mark the anniversary of the previously unmarked 1921 massacre of African-Americans in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The political lines are now clearly delineated. The Democrats have embraced Critical Race Theory. The Republicans—seeing it as profitable stick with which to bludgeon the looney left Democrats—have attacked it as “toxic, anti-American, neo-Marxist, communist and, in its own way, racist.

The issue of CRT training in schools has already led to fights and arrests at normally boring public meetings of county state education boards. Corporate America is struggling with how to deal with the issue. It is now at the forefront of political debates between candidates battling in next year’s mid-term elections.

It is not about to go away. CRT will soon cross the Atlantic—if it hasn’t already—and become part of the debate over the colonial legacy of Britain and Europe. Critical Race Theory is here to stay. It can no longer be swept under the carpet. Ways must be found to deal with it to prevent dangerous divisions in society.

World Review

• Cuba may be reaching the end of its long search for Utopian Socialism. Shop shelves are empty. People are hungry. The Pandemic is spreading. Jobs are scarce. Money is tight. The people have taken to the streets to demand change. The marching slogan of the communist regime was “Defend our homeland with our life.” Now they are rioting and shouting: “Homeland and Life.” The cause of the current crisis is fourfold:  1- The cumulative effect of 60 years of economic sanctions. 2- The collapse of Venezuela as an economic substitute for the Soviet Union. 3- Coronavirus and finally, the government’s inability to deal with any of the above. The Obama Administration’s lifting of sanctions and a promise of future normal relations held out the olive branch of hope and economic prosperity. Then it was snatched away by Donald Trump as part of his pursuit of Florida’s Cuban expat vote. Joe Biden is so far refusing to re-extend it. He smells the strong possibility of the long-established US policy of regime change. It is the second time that Cuban regime change has been at the edge of the abyss. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s the Cuban economic shrunk by half overnight and tens of thousands of Cubans were encouraged to flee to Florida. Then Venezuela stepped in with ‘oil for doctors’ scheme and when Obama announced the lifting of sanctions a wave of hope engulfed the island. Coronavirus is the final straw. Cuba’s much-vaunted health service appeared to have rescued the island from the pandemic. But it has now succumbed with new cases trebling in the past month. When faced with past problems, the communist government has responded with the political stick as its powerful security apparatus simply rounded up and jailed the protesters. This time it is carrot and stick. Protest leaders are being thrown behind bars but at the same time, the government is offering greater consultation. It is a chink in the communist armor which could easily and quickly widen.
• Ten years from now—probably less— 2021 will not be known as the year of coronavirus. It will be known as the year that the world was dragged kicking and screaming to the reality of climate change. In the Pacific northwest—a region known for its balmy weather—people are literally boiling to death. Wildfires are spreading through Western and Southwestern America. In Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands they are drowning. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef—spawning ground for Pacific marine life—is dying. Sea levels continue to rise and threaten island nations and the world’s coastal communities. Greenland is emerging from under an icecap tens of thousands of years old and the Northwest Passage is opening to shipping. Against this rapidly changing environmental background, The European Commission this week announced the world’s most sweeping Green agenda to date.  The business community has attacked it as too much too fast. Environmentalists denounce it as too little too late. The aim of the commission’s proposal is to reduce EU carbon emissions from 1990 levels to 55 percent by 2030 (they have already been reduced by 24 percent) and to be carbon neutral by 2050. To achieve that aim they will tax aircraft fuel; ban petrol and diesel fuels within 20 years; raise tariffs on steel, concrete; provide financial help to insulate homes, reduce coal production and invest heavily in renewable energy projects. The plans still face months of haggling with coal-producing member states such as Poland and trading partners in the US, China and India. But it is a clearly stated and understandable start.
• The Taliban continued its march towards victory this week with the capture of a key border crossing in the southeast corner on the Afghan-Pakistan border. The Spin Boldark crossing near Kandahar is one of Afghanistan’s economic arteries. It provides access to Quetta, one of Pakistan’s major cities where many Taliban have sought refuge. Nearly a thousand Lorries a day pass through Spin Boldark to Quetta markets and beyond that to the port cities of Karachi, Muhammad bin Qasim, Keti Bunder and Gwadar. These Lorries paid a crossing fee which now goes to the Taliban instead of the government in Kabul. Of possibly greater importance is that the Taliban has gained and the government has lost a major route for military supplies.
• Boris Johnson won his parliamentary vote on foreign aid this week. The world has lost. British foreign policy has lost. The Prime Minister has dealt a self-inflicted mortal blow to his much-vaunted Global Britain policy; damaged Britain’s standing in the world and achieved a likely pyrrhic victory. The final vote was 333 to 298 to cut £4 billion out of the overseas aid and to tie any increase to economic recovery at some ill-defined date in the future (most experts say at least five years). It is estimated that the cut will result in the loss of 100,000 lives and severe malnutrition for millions. However, it will appeal to Boris’s new found electoral base in the North of England whose long-ignored voters have argued for years that charity begins at home. But it will have a negative impact on a growing number of well-established conservative voters in Tory strongholds in the south, southwest and southeast of England. Foreign aid cuts on their own won’t swing them away from their tribal roots, but the Boris package as a whole is losing its appeal. The key is the prime minister’s penchant for ignoring the law and parliament in pursuit of political gain. British aid had been allegedly set in the concrete of British law at 0.7 per cent of GDP. Boris’s decision to reduce it to 0.5 percent is just another example of his eagerness to ignore the law and parliament and rule by decree. This is unlikely to sit comfortably with a growing number of well-educated, elite-minded voters in the south of England.

Tom Arms

Tom Arms is foreign affairs editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and is based in London. He has nearly half a century’s experience of world affairs, and has written and broadcast for American, British and Commonwealth outlets. He is the author of “The Encyclopedia of the Cold War,” “The Falklands Crisis” and “World Elections on File.” His new book “America: Made in Britain” is due to be published in October.

The post Observations of an Expat: America’s Original Sin first appeared on Sindh Courier.