Define "systemic"
Systemic racism exists and CRT studies its effects
Photo Credit: FairFightInitiative.com
Issue #266 OpEd February 27, 2023
systemic racism (n):
discrimination or unequal treatment on the basis of membership in a particular ethnic group (typically one that is a minority or marginalized), arising from systems, structures, or expectations that have become established within society or an institution.
Government leaders and others who are trying to whitewash American history think that they can make people believe that there has never been "systemic racism" in the United States.
They are deliberately neglecting to realize that from the very first day that the United States Constitution went into effect in 1789, laws were made to disenfranchise certain groups from full citizenship and from enjoying the full benefits of living in America.
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Let me count (some of) the ways:
Black men didn't gain citizenship until 1865, 76 years after the Constitution was made the law of the land.
Before and after the 13th Amendment, so many laws were passed to suppress Black people and other non-whites from learning to read, going to school, getting jobs, getting personal or business loans, living in certain areas, shopping in stores, going to public libraries or swimming in public pools, and so on.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882.
Entire prosperous Black business areas were bombed out of existence for decades after Reconstruction.
Native Americans weren't granted citizenship until 1924.
Japanese Americans were incarcerated in concentration camps in 1942.
Non-white veterans were excluded from taking advantage of the educational and financial benefits of the "G.I. Bills" after World War II.
Schools were segregated and Black people and others either weren't admitted at all, or their numbers were severely limited and they had to sit in separate areas.
Black people were killed when they tried to vote, patronize certain shopping areas, or go to certain schools.
Restrictive housing covenants existed to keep Black people and most other non-whites in certain poorer areas and unable to receive equal treatment and financial governmental help for their neighborhoods.
Thousands of Black people were lynched or otherwise murdered because they tried to exercise their right to vote, tried to attend segregated schools, or just tried to exist.
Those laws were "on the books" until the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. That is almost TWO HUNDRED YEARS of deliberate, legal, and systemic racism since 1789.
Today, laws are being passed by many Republican state legislators to roll back decades of voter rights.
Republican governors, legislatures, and school boards are restricting by legislation the teaching of Black History, calling it divisive and of "no educational value," and even going as far as saying that the only continents that "count" are Europe and North America (excluding Mexico, of course).
Republicans are also putting into place laws and regulations that discriminate against LGBTQA+ citizens, falsely claiming that drag show entertainers are pedophiles and "groomers," and trying to outlaw drag show actors.
Critical Race Theory is a set of scholarly treatises that examine the long-term and ongoing effects of systemic racism
Just as with the word "woke," racists in this country have co-opted the title "Critical Race Theory (CRT)" to mean anything and everything having to do with teaching the true and complete history of systemic racism in this country.
Actual Critical Race Theory critiques how the social construction of race and institutionalized racism perpetuate a racial caste system that relegates people of color to the bottom tiers. CRT also recognizes that race intersects with other identities, including sexuality, gender identity, and others.
CRT recognizes that it is the systemic nature of racism that bears primary responsibility for reproducing racial inequality.
CRT recognizes that racism is not just in the past. CRT acknowledges that the legacy of slavery, segregation, and the imposition of second-class citizenship on Black Americans and other people of color continues to infiltrate this nation.
CRT seeks to recognize the historical centrality and complicity of law in upholding white supremacy in the United States.
Most importantly, Critical Race Theory is studied only in law schools and some PhD-level graduate programs. It is not taught in master's degree programs, in undergrad programs, and certainly not in K-12.
However, systemic racism still influences public and private education in the United States.
According to the American Bar Association: the limitations of legal interventions have led to current manifestations of racial inequality in education, including:
The predominance of curriculum that excludes the history and lived experiences of Americans of color and imposes a dominant white narrative of history.
Deficit-oriented instruction that characterizes students of color as in need of remediation.
Narrow assessments, the results of which are used to confirm narratives about the ineducability of children of color.
School discipline policies that disproportionately impact students of color and compromise their educational outcomes (such as dress code policies prohibiting natural Black hairstyles).
School funding inequities, including the persistent underfunding of property-poor districts, many of which are composed primarily of children of color; and
The persistence of racially segregated education.
What are your thoughts about systemic racism and the efforts to whitewash/eliminate Black History by calling it “CRT?”
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