Extended Commentary: Critical Race Theory, Identity Politics, and the Problem of Social Solidarity.

The November 2021 election cycle was the first time that the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in K-12 schools emerged as a prominent issue for voters. According to Ballotpedia, a political tracking website that compiles information about elections across the United States, seventy-six school districts in twenty-two states featured candidates that took a stance on CRT or the teaching of race. (1) Arguably the most talked about election featuring CRT was the Virginia gubernatorial race between Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate, and Terry McAullife, the Democratic candidate. Youngkin's closing arguments in the campaign included a call to ban the teaching of CRT and in particular Toni Morrison's Beloved, the Pulitzer Prize winning novel about the brutalities of slavery, which also contains scenes about sex, violence, infanticide, and bestiality. In this regard, a Youngkin campaign ad aired toward the end of the campaign featured a woman expressing her concern that her son had been assigned to read Beloved in his high school Advanced Placement English Literature class. (2)

Youngkin won the election by two percentage points, and exit polls found that concerns about education, along with the economy and jobs, were the most important issues on voters' minds. (3) While other factors may have been more determinative of the outcome--mainly, issues related to the national political scene (4) -- McAuliffe appeared to be caught flat-footed about how to respond to the charges against CRT. In the second and final debate of the campaign, he said, "I'm not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decision.... I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." Youngkin seized on the latter statement and accused McAuliffe of not listening to and being out of touch with parents. As he said, "What we plan on doing is making sure that schools are teaching our children how to think and not what to think, that... we're engaging with parents and listening to them." He also weaved into the fabric of parental concerns issues related to transgender bathrooms and mask and vaccine mandates in schools. (5)

However long CRT remains a prominent issue in political campaigns, conservative activists of the political right have made their intentions clear. (6) Christopher Rufo, a senior analyst at the Manhattan Institute, a "free market" think tank, who was one of the chief architects of Donald Trump's now-rescinded executive order banning CRT and diversity training in all federal programs, puts it bluntly:

The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think "critical race theory." We have successfully frozen their brand... into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural... constructions that are unpopular with Americans... under that brand category.... Critical race theory is the perfect villain. (7) In turn, defenders of CRT on the political left insist that it is not being taught in K-12 schools and that right-wing activists are engaged in a dangerous game of misrepresentation and censorship. (8)

In this article, I engage this debate by clarifying what CRT is and how it is applied and practiced. I situate the controversy in terms of the broader politics of identity among both the political left and right in the United States, as well as the more general problem of social solidarity and the challenge of incorporating diversity and multiculturalism in today's racially polarized political environment.

What is Critical Race Theory?

CRT was developed in the 1970s by a group of left-leaning, Black lawyer-civil rights activists and law professors, most notably Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell. (9) In its origin it was an outgrowth of a more general branch of legal scholarship known as Critical Legal Theory (CLT), which challenged the idea that the law was objective and above politics and bias (10)--for example, that judges, including U.S. Supreme Court judges, are politically neutral. (11) CRT offered itself, too, as a critique of CLT for its neglect of race in its analysis of law and society.

The general thrust of CRT is its postulate that the law is not neutral, or colorblind, with respect to matters of race; and that racism is endemic, or systemic, in the legal system. (12) It challenges the view, expressed by the Roberts Court, for instance, that there is no longer any need for special protections against racial disenfranchisement and voter suppression. (13) Discrimination in the criminal justice system is also typically offered as an example of systemic bias, although one need not invoke CRT to make this observation, which is well documented in the mainstream criminology literature. (14) Other areas of discrimination include, but are not limited to, bias in housing, banking and government loan programs, and hiring. (15) Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic refer to such matters as "materialist" components of CRT, because they involve practices that affect the physical circumstances of people's lives. (16)

In addition to materialist components, Delgado and Stefancic identify "idealistic" components of CRT that focus on such matters as prejudice in interpersonal interactions and speech, representations of race in popular culture, and educational curricula. Here, corollary elements of CRT that have proved especially controversial revolve around concepts such as whiteness, white privilege, implicit or unconscious bias, and micro-aggressions; and that implicate White people in the ongoing oppression of Black people and other people of color. (17) A backlash against this part of CRT should not have been unexpected.

When defenders of CRT say it is not taught in K-12 schools, they are in some ways evading the issue, as conservative commentators are quick to point out. For example, columnist Marc Thiessen cites a memo issued by the state superintendent of public instruction in Virginia that encouraged the use of CRT training materials. (18) In Virginia's Loudoun County, which Thiessen describes as "ground zero in the debate over the role of parents in their kids' education," the school district paid $314,000 to The Equity Collaborative (TEC), a consulting firm that aims to put CRT into practice to build "more equitable learning environments." (19) In its presentation entitled "Introduction to Critical Race Theory," TEC instructs teachers that racism is "an inherent part of American civilization" and that ideas such as "colorblindness, the neutrality of the law... and equal opportunity for all" serve to preserve "whites' power and strongholds within society." (20) Thiessen objects that "children are being instructed by teachers trained in CRT to see everything through the prism of race... and to believe that society is divided into two classes--oppressors and oppressed--and that which you are is determined by the color of your skin." Conservatives also have raised objections to the use of surveys that have been given to students that purport to measure "white bias" and more generally, according to CRT critics, advance the idea that White people should feel guilty about the advantages they have reaped from the sins of history. (21)

Defenders of CRT often dismiss these complaints as a product of White people's fragile racial egos, which makes them uncomfortable and defensive when talking about race and mistaken in their belief that race doesn't matter anymore and that we live in a colorblind society. (22) More sympathetically, liberal columnist Esther Cepeda writes:

I get it. No one wants to have a super thorny conversation with their kids about why a lot of the wealth of our nation came from exploiting the people who lived in North America before the "pilgrims" showed up and by enslaving people who never intended to be relocated here.... It's awkward to attempt to reckon with things that happened... [long] ago and don't feel like they have any real impact... today.... [But] it shouldn't be a big deal to admit your life is better in this country because you have the power that comes with visibly belonging to the dominant group in the nation. (23) Indeed, as historian Heather Cox Richardson observes, any credible account of U.S. history must begin with the acknowledgement that "America began with a great paradox: the same men who came up with the idea of constructing a nation on the principle of equality also owned slaves, thought Indians were savages, and considered women inferior.... For the Founders, the concept that 'all men are created equal' depended on the idea that the ringing phrase 'all men' did not include everyone." (24) The task before us still remains the realization of equality for all.

In my view, law professor Randall Kennedy is one of the most balanced observers of the CRT controversy. (25) On the one hand, he adamantly objects to anyone who attempts to vilify or demonize CRT "thinkers who are trying to deepen, sharpen, and reframe ways in which racial matters are portrayed and discussed... [and] who would challenge the...whitewashed fable of American exceptionalism"--that the United States has always been and still is the greatest country in the world. (26) On the other hand, he is willing to critique CRT acolytes when they, in his estimation, overreach. He notes, for instance, that journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones's claim in the Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times "1619 Project"--that protecting slavery was a primary "motivation behind the American colonists' move to secede from the British empire"--has been disputed by historians. (27) He also is skeptical of diversity or sensitivity trainings that "can be tendentious, overbearing, and even coercive," as well as of the "notion that there has been no appreciable advancement by Black people since 1950." He believes it is "a mistake to refrain from publicly...