Can someone simply explain what is this critical race theory?
> Simply put, critical race theory states that U.S. social institutions (e.g., the criminal justice system, education system, labor market, housing market, and healthcare system) are laced with racism embedded in laws, regulations, rules, and procedures that lead to differential outcomes by race.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/07/02/why-are-sta...
Put another way, it's allowing the possibility that systems themselves can be racist.
However, I think you will find that the definition is heavily swayed by your political bent (especially if you are a politician).
It's much too weak a phrasing to say that it only "allows for the possibility." Its core doctrine is that 1) the idea of race itself is a social construct used to oppress/exploit, and 2) laws and institutions are racist and function to create and maintain inequalities.
I'm reminded of this aphorism: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.".
Similarly, while cops might arrest/stop the people they see breaking the law, if they're disproportionately patrolling minority-majority neighborhoods there will be an unequal effect.
> cross-disciplinary intellectual and social movement of civil-rights scholars and activists who seek to examine the intersection of race, society, and law
In the country where I was brought up that was just part of history/society classes instead of a separate thing, but racial tensions in the US seems more extreme than anywhere else so maybe that's why it exists as a separate thing?
In the same way that number theory is its own thing, and algebra is its own thing, and you might take separate classes on each; algebraic number theory is its own thing and you probably wouldn't take a class on it before grad school.
It's a tool used by some politicians to paint the other side as insane radicals. Insane news stories are pointed at and accused of being a result of CRT, and of course their own side would outlaw it.
That's why they ban books without even saying which books are banned: so they are seen as taking action against the enemy, CRT. In reality there is perhaps some corruption and they want to help a specific publisher.
In all actuality it is the idea that race doesn't exist, it's just something made up by people to exploit other people with different skin color.
The cognitive dissonance you experience is because there is no specific individual supporting these competing ideas.
Critical race theory (CRT) is a cross-disciplinary intellectual and social movement of civil-rights scholars and activists who seek to examine the intersection of race, society, and law in the United States and to challenge mainstream American liberal approaches to racial justice. The word critical in its name is an academic term that refers to critical thinking, critical theory, and scholarly criticism, rather than criticizing or blaming people.
A key CRT concept is intersectionality—the way in which different forms of inequality and identity are affected by interconnections of race, class, gender and disability. Scholars of CRT view race as a social construct with no biological basis. One tenet of CRT is that racism and disparate racial outcomes are the result of complex, changing, and often subtle social and institutional dynamics, rather than explicit and intentional prejudices of individuals.
CRT scholars argue that the social and legal construction of race advances the interests of white people at the expense of people of color, and that the liberal notion of U.S. law as "neutral" plays a significant role in maintaining a racially unjust social order, where formally color-blind laws continue to have racially discriminatory outcomes.
Again, don't care one way or the other but I'll take the "bait," if it was never designed for the citizenry, why is it being taught in elementary, middle and high schools, or is it?
As an aside, police are allowed to lie about evidence when interrogating suspects. Police are allowed to interrogate children without their parents consent or knowledge. Police are allowed to confiscate any cash they find in your car during a routine traffic stop without due process. This is typically done to bolster police budgets. I deem these as a way more important reforms that people are distracted from thinking about with this new wedge issue.
That's the question, isn't it? We're being told that it is. We're told that 42 out of 54 rejected math books "incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies, including CRT." Of those 42 books, how many included CRT and not some other "prohibited topic" or "unsolicited strategy"? Doesn't say. What does an example of a math book including CRT even look like? Doesn't say.
And as much as I agree with your aside... this was done by the Florida Department of Education and textbook review is within their mandate and abusive policing is not. While I wish it wasn't a partisan issue, it seems that everything is a partisan issue these days, even chicken sandwiches.
Conservatives news sources spend alot of air time on the idea of this happening than reality. The general idea is that they don’t like unpleasant history for their children, that they preemptively call revisionist. This has now become a boogeyman in conservative leaning states and affecting real world things.
Perhaps we should also remind people that there's plenty of black folks outside the U.S. too. U.S. history is only a tiny, even negligible fraction of history taken as a whole.
The post was pretty clear about which subsets we are talking about, the adjectives used (black American) were very intentional.
We have international history courses as well. Most countries focus on their own history for sake of time.