What is Critical Race Theory?

Is “critical race theory” a way of understanding how American racism has shaped public policy, or a divisive discourse that pits people of color against white people? Liberals and conservatives are in sharp disagreement.

The topic has exploded in the public arena this spring—especially in K-12, where numerous state legislatures are debating bills seeking to ban its use in the classroom.

In truth, the divides are not nearly as neat as they may seem. The events of the last decade have increased public awareness about things like housing segregation, the impacts of criminal justice policy in the 1990s, and the legacy of enslavement on Black Americans. But there is much less consensus on what the government’s role should be in righting these past wrongs. Add children and schooling into the mix and the debate becomes especially volatile.



School boards, superintendents, even principals and teachers are already facing questions about critical race theory, and there are significant disagreements even among experts about its precise definition as well as how its tenets should inform K-12 policy and practice. This explainer is meant only as a starting point to help educators grasp core aspects of the current debate.
Just what is critical race theory anyway?

Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.

The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others.

A good example is when, in the 1930s, government officials literally drew lines around areas deemed poor financial risks, often explicitly due to the racial composition of inhabitants. Banks subsequently refused to offer mortgages to Black people in those areas.  TO READ MORE ABOUT CRT, CLICK HERE...

10 Things About Martin Luther King Jr.

Baptist minister and social activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) dedicated his life to the nonviolent struggle for justice in the United States. King's leadership played a pivotal role in ending entrenched segregation for African Americans and to the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Read on to discover more facts about the life and legacy of the civil rights icon.

1. King's Birth Name Was Michael, Not Martin
King was born Michael King Jr. on January 15, 1929. In 1934, however, his father, a pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, traveled to Germany and became inspired by the Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther. As a result, King Sr. changed his own name as well as that of his five-year-old son.

2. King Entered College At the Age of 15
King was such a gifted student that he skipped grades nine and 12 before enrolling in 1944 at Morehouse College, the alma mater of his father and maternal grandfather. Although he was the son, grandson and great-grandson of Baptist ministers, King did not intend to follow the family vocation until Morehouse president Benjamin E. Mays, a noted theologian, convinced him otherwise. King was ordained before graduating college with a degree in sociology.

3. King Received His Doctorate in Systematic Theology
After earning a divinity degree from Pennsylvania’s Crozer Theological Seminary, King attended graduate school at Boston University, where he received his Ph.D. degree in 1955. The title of his dissertation was “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.”

4. King’s 'I Have a Dream' Speech Was Not His First At the Lincoln Memorial
Six years before his iconic oration at the March on Washington, King was among the civil rights leaders who spoke in the shadow of the Great Emancipator during the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom on May 17, 1957. Before a crowd estimated at between 15,000 and 30,000, King delivered his first national address on the topic of voting rights. His speech, in which he urged America to “give us the ballot,” drew strong reviews and positioned him at the forefront of the civil rights leadership.

5. King Was Imprisoned Nearly 30 Times
According to the King Center, the civil rights leader went to jail 29 times. He was arrested for acts of civil disobedience and on trumped-up charges, such as when he was jailed in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1956 for driving 30 miles per hour in a 25-mile-per-hour zone.  TO READ ABOUT THE OTHER FIVE THINGS, CLICK HERE...

A Conservative Liberal's Opinion

 

I was raised a Democrat by my Democratic parents and I remained a Democrat until 1980 when I earned an MBA from the Babcock Graduate School at Wake Forest University and realized that the economic policies of the Democratic Party were not conducive nor were they in line with our Free Market Enterprise System and Capitalism.

Yes...  it is true that Capitalism has created a multitude of Millionaires and Billionaires but it has also created the most POWERFUL ECONOMY in the world and that is not an easy task...

However, I still hold onto many of my liberal beliefs that have nothing to do with the economy because I believe that people have RIGHTS that should not be enfringed... like the right to choose or the right to own a firearm or the right of free speech and religion.

Most Importantly, I believe that our FEDERAL GOVERNMENT should NOT TELL its citizens what they can or cannot do.  I also believe in a small government, low taxes, a strong military, and a viable educational system that is focused on the retention of knowledge and not on grades.  I am totally opposed to debt or increasing the debt to provide services to the citizens just because a group of people think we should regardless of the cost.

We should provide only those services that we can afford and as long as we can afford them, then we should provide as much as we can, to show the rest of the world that the USA is a great place to live, work, raise a family, and retire in.

• What the Democrats are doing is not just WRONG but economically FOOLISH...  
• What the Democrats did in Afghanistan tells our allies that the USA cannot be trusted...
• What the Democrats are doing by allowing illegal aliens to enter the USA shows a complete disregard for our laws...
• What the Democrats have done when it comes to defund the police is idiotic but moronic as well and shows a complete lack of judgement and insight...
• What the Democrats have done with Critical Race Theory has and will continue to increase the bitterness and divide that already exists between blacks and whites in this country...
• What the Democrats are doing by using Capitalism to pay for Socialism is irresponsible given that no socialistic country has ever been successful...

It is doubtful that the Democrats will ever change their mindset of their party platforms...  so, my return to the Democratic Party will never take place in my lifetime...

It is a shame that I feel this way because I affiliated with the Democratic Party not because of my parents influence on me but because of John F. Kennedy...  the democratic party today is not anywhere close to the democratic party of JFK...  and that mistake will never be corrected as long as its present leaders continue to believe the way they do.