My problem with CRT is not that it teaches the often sordid history of racism, racial injustice and violence, and the history of systemic racism in the USA. My problem arises when all of US history, society, and government is to be considered only in terms of racism, that every trend of American history, culture, legal and economic structures is explained only in terms of racism. And that the primary if not the sole determination of a person's character is their race.
Race and racism has been an important factor in America. But not the only one. Dividing up America into good races and bad races is racist.
How do we counter the belief that whites (especially those from norther Europe) are the good race and all the others are bad?
Do we do that by inculcating the belief that whites (especially those from northern Europe) are the bad race and all the others are good, the darker the better?
White Supremacy is bad and needs to be counteracted, I whole heartedly agree. But do we drive out racial stereotyping by simply substituting other racial stereotypes?
To counteract "White Supremacy" means that whites are knocked down a few pegs. To level the playing field means that those who have had advantages might have to give them up.
How do we teach American history and not turn the whites (at least some of them) into the evil racists that they were?
You put your finger on a key point here, a crucial point. Some whites were evil racists. Some whites are evil racists. That needs to be recognized and taught. An American history that ignores that is a false history. An example of pseudohistory that needs to be exposed, denounced, and refuted is "The Lost Cause of the Confederacy." To teach that is to teach lies.
But to teach truth would include not only that some whites were (and are) evil racists but some whites were (and are) not evil racists. American history, all history, is not black and white (bitter irony of the cliche acknowledged). There are good people and bad people. And even good people sometimes do bad things. Is it racist to recognize that for all the good that Dr. Martin Luther King did and said, he also did some bad things as well - like being unfaithful to his wife? That for all the bad that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson did as slave owners, they also did some good things and that both the good and the bad need to be recognized.
Perhaps simply stated: We teach that we do not live in what's often called, "a black and white world." There's a whole bunch of gray in the real world.
Can we admit that being white in America gave us some privileges that others did not have?
I have yet to have it clearly stated just what privileges I have being white. Without a doubt, POC have been discriminated against, and that has made being successful harder and generally speaking they have had more to overcome. That discrimination and the effect of that discrimination needs to be worked against.
But does that mean that white privilege means that whites automatically succeeded? I don't think so. Brian, did you achieve whatever measure of success in life that you achieved without hard work, without effort, simply because you are white? (And are you an evil racist simply because you are white?)
White privilege means that whites don't have as difficult time succeeding as others. I'm certain that if I were black, life would have been more difficult for me. One example might be: would the congregations have called me as their pastor if I were Black? (None of the seven congregations I served had any Black members.)
Frankly, I didn't have work all that hard. Studies came easy. My folks had their own business, so I didn't even have to apply to work there. They paid for college and grad school for my brothers and me. We didn't struggle financially to get through college. I don't believe any of us had college debts like our children did.
Another often overlooked part of our history was the massacre of Chinese. I knew of the one in Rock Springs, WY (1885), where he had lived, where 28 (and some reports list 40-50 killed); but when looking for information on this, I discovered a 1881 Chinese massacre in Los Angeles, and one in Eastern Oregon in 1887.
There are dark events in American history and they need to be acknowledged. Is that the entirety of American history? Is that all that is important to recognize about American history? Must we either only teach the good things about America or only teach the bad things about America? Shouldn't we teach and recognize both? Isn't that the way with every country and every people, that they have been and done good things and bad?
It has been the failure to acknowledge those dark events in American history that, I believe is at the heart of the critical race theory. The white majority has often tried to keep education silent about those dark events that portrayed (some) whites in a very bad light.
Similarly, in another discussion, the "winners" of the theological wars have often tried to keep the "losers" silent. It even went as far as 12th century scholars changing the female Junia into a male, Junias, because they believed an apostle could not be a woman.
To counter the argument that she was esteemed
by the apostles, rather than she was an esteemed apostle, John Chrysostom wrote about her in his commentary: "Oh, how great is the devotion of this woman, that she should be counted worthy of the appellation of apostle!" [
Hom. Rom. 31). So, that view is not something novel in the 21st century.
