https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/01/critical_race_theory_wrong_for_k12_education.html
Critical Race Theory (CRT), a relatively young legal theory that has been circulating in legal academic circles since the 1980s, suddenly burst on the scene of public consciousness in the past year. It continues to be a topic of controversy due to its being advocated for inclusion in K-12 instruction. As with other subjects that become political footballs, CRT elicits very strong views — especially among those with minimal understanding of the theory. Unless a person has taken the time to earnestly read source materials from CRT’s original authors, it is all too easy to fall into one camp or the other — while still remaining in the dark about its meaning.
Here I would like to provide some insights about CRT and encourage reading original source materials by authors such as Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado. A great start would be Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement by Crenshaw, et al. What you will find is that CRT writings are not light reading by any means, but scholarly and heavily academic, as the expected audience is other legal scholars and academics. Yet grappling with these works is a necessary investment if you truly want to have an informed perspective regarding CRT. You will likely come away with a conclusion that what has been labeled and promoted as “CRT” in K-12 education has virtually nothing to do with the theory as put forward in the key writings of its authors.
Last year we heard the continual refrain, even from the highest levels of government, that CRT is needed for K-12 students because it teaches about slavery and racism in our history. The problem with this assertion is CRT is not something you would look for in a history book because it is not an account of specific events of the dark history of slavery and Jim Crow in America. Rather, CRT is based on legal theory from the perspective of the role of law in the treatment of people of color. Specifically, CRT examines how the law, since the founding of the country, has been both central and complicit in upholding white supremacy throughout its history in terms of social domination and subordination of people of color.