Episode 3: What’s the problem with critical race theory?

In this episode, we dive into the topic of critical race theory and its relevance to secular homeschooling. We explore how specific language choices, like "woke," can trigger emotional responses without a clear definition. Critical race theory is actually an evaluative tool that examines the impact of race on individuals and society, highlighting systemic racism and the need for equity. Through our conversation, we emphasize the importance of teaching history through different lenses, including critical race theory, to create safe and inclusive spaces for all homeschoolers.

Transcript: Episode 3

We use an automatic transcription app for our podcast, which makes it possible for us to include transcripts for our podcast episodes — but it does sometimes make weird errors! We do edit it, but I’m sure we miss things sometimes.

Blair: [00:00:00] I was looking at critical thinking, critical race theory, and we're going to talk about that today. And, I don't know why, my brain thought, "I wonder what those words are that Sarah Huckabee Sanders is all up in arms about."

So, I was just reading it, and I think it's really interesting. Huckabee Sanders to be more specific about things like, not birthing person, birth mom, birth mother, not menstruating person or people, but she wants us to say woman or women in there. So she's really arguing that, and actually that's interesting, it's sort of a critical thinking where she is saying I want these terms defined And I want them not defined in a way that, is more neutral.

But, this is really interesting here. [00:01:00] I'm reading a tweet. It's on X or whatever. Maybe they're not tweets anymore. I'm the first woman to lead my state. Fine. Biden is the first man to surrender his presidency to a woke mob that can't tell you what a woman is.

I find that really interesting because the word woke, when you define it, is actually similar to critical race theory. It's Wait, isn't woke just people who want to have the sort of conversations you and I have? There's no definition. They don't define woke. They use it to trigger an emotion with no definition of what woke is.

And so I think it's really interesting that Huckabee Sanders in the same situation where she is saying we need to use more specific and accurate language. And then she [00:02:00] puts it under an umbrella of the term woke.

Amy: Woke is so funny to me because what is the opposite of woke? Unconscious? What does it mean?

Blair: It's so weird. It used to be you're liberal. And I actually wrote a little mini, I put it out on Facebook. It was like, what being liberal means to me. I said being liberal means things like, I want health care for everyone.

Even if you don't agree with me, even if you don't support that position. I want you to be able to have health care. I don't want you to get cancer and that bankrupt you and your whole family. It was really interesting when I started writing down what it meant to be liberal.

It just means that you want there to be more fairness, more equity. [00:03:00] Anyway, so we didn't introduce ourselves . In case you don't know me, I'm Blair Lee. And this is how I start a lot of conversations, especially with my dear friend, Amy Sharoney. 

Amy: Welcome to Secular Homeschooling with Blair and Amy. This is episode three, recording Saturday, October 21st, 2023.

And as Blair told you, we're talking about critical race theory and how it fits into a secular homeschool. Before we jump in Blair, I'm just going to make our regular disclaimers. First of all, Blair and I recognize that being able to homeschool is a privileged position. I know that most homeschoolers have to make some tradeoffs to make it work.

But we know that being able to do that is a privilege, and that we're speaking from a position of privilege. We are also both cis, white, middle class women, and while I think the [00:04:00] patriarchy has definitely worked to make our particular lives harder, We have also benefited from and continue to benefit from the white patriarchy, which is what we think gives us an obligation to do this, to resist in public, where we can do it pretty safely and we can do it for people who can't do it safely and for people like us who are still learning and wanting to do better.

I think you hit the nail on the head, Blair, where people use critical race theory as this catch all term for stuff I don't like and they're not actually defining it. 

Blair: it's the same thing with the word woke, liberal, all of these get a knee jerk reaction. This is where it's really important that when we use these terms, we define them. So I, in preparation for this, I went and found a very simple definition.

When you bring critical thinking to something, like we're gonna [00:05:00] do with critical race theory, you don't have to agree on the way you're defining it, but you need to be aware how each of you is defining the term.

Here's a short definition, grabbed from online. CRT, as it's commonly referred to, is critical race theory. It is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. Hey, wait a minute, wasn't controversial for all those years. I think it's really important to know how long it's been around.

The core idea is that race is a social construct and we'll get in. Sorry to keep interrupting everyone. So I'm going to use some terms that we will have to define later on. The core idea is that race is a social construct and that racism is not merely the product of individual [00:06:00] bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.

That, that actually is the short definition. Now, Amy, a lot of people would say there's more to it. 

Amy: I think it's important to just say really quickly what critical race theory is not, right? Critical race theory is not trying to make people feel guilty and terrible about slavery.

Honestly, we should probably all feel bad about slavery. It was terrible. I think we should feel terrible about that so that we never do it again. But that's not what critical race theory is about. It's not about what people like to call America bashing. In fact, I think you could argue that critical race theory is fighting something that is inherently un-American: The idea that people shouldn’t have equal access [00:07:00] to the benefit of being a citizen of the United States. It's not designed to pit white people and people of color against each other. It does encourage students to identify and critique the causes of social inequalities in their own lives.

So thinking that way may very well make you become an anti racist, or it may want to make you work for social justice, but it is not anti racist or social justice inherently, because what it really is an evaluation tool, a way of looking at different subjects, and in that way, I think the easiest way to understand critical race theory is to look at it just the same way that you would look at any lens, any critical lens that you use to work, look at a text. So maybe you've used a feminist lens before, or a queer lens before, or a historical lens before. Critical race theory is just a lens that [00:08:00] recognizes that systemic racism is part of U. S. history and challenges the beliefs that allow systemic racism to flourish.

Blair: I love that you use the term critical race theory is an evaluative tool.

That really looks at how a person's race affects them, not just individually, and not just as the prejudice that they've been exposed to, but is this system unfair to them overall and in general and the legal system and policies? I think it's really important that we understand policies in the context of educational policies because the education system favors [00:09:00] people who live in wealthy districts and just the entire way that people get funding favors people in wealthy school districts.

I live in San Diego County and there's a couple of areas in the county that everybody wants to live in, because the school districts are better. When everybody wants to live in an area, the home prices go up. And we continue by using property taxes as a way to fund our schools.

 It's important that when we talk about policies, we understand we're talking about the incarceration rates and we are talking about adequate health care. Do you live in a food desert or not? 

There are people that grow up in food deserts and live in food deserts their whole life. 

Amy: And that's the problem is that these things are systemic. So you can't afford [00:10:00] to buy a house in the part of town that puts you in the district of the really great school so you don't get to go to the really great school, so you don't get to go to a really great college, so your kids don't grow up in a place where they have access to the very best school.

And so this is — Racism ends up being generational, it's generational racism, and in the United States we have generations of people who've been marginalized legally and politically and socially, and it's not an easy thing to fix, there's no easy way to catch them up to other people.

They are disadvantaged because the system has disadvantaged them. And how do you restore that advantage? That is like a big question of critical race theory is[00:11:00] grappling with this grappling with white supremacy in the past, but also in the present because the past and the present are tangled up together when it comes to racism and laws and systems here in the United States have been built on so many layers of white supremacy that racism is something that most people of color experience every single day.

And that most white people honestly just take for granted.

Blair: When I was in college I read a book in a teacher education program called Ain't No Makin It. It was eye opening. What Ain't No Makin It talks about is what you're talking about, Amy, is that we don't understand how cultural capital works. Those of us who go to college, who got good educations. We grow up in families [00:12:00] where it's not just the assumption that you're going to go to college or that you're going to graduate high school. It's that your parents, the people who surround you, understand what it takes to do that. What it takes to be successful doing it.

And that's the premise of Ain't No Making It. When the author went out and interviewed people , he found that they have the exact same dreams, someone who lives in a low income area, they have the same dreams for their children as the people who live in the wealthiest district do.

People love their children. They have dreams for the success of their children and, the problem then comes to what the author calls cultural capital, where the difference is understanding what it takes not just to get to college, but to be successful in college, because there's actually a huge dropout rate in [00:13:00] college.

 If you recognize that cultural capital has an effect, and if you come to fairly acknowledge the advantages your great grandparents had and their kids had and their parents had, you're still, are still, or the disadvantages, either way, still affect you today, it calls into question the argument that you just need to work hard. And if those people don't see the same advantages, it's not about race. It's that they didn't work as hard as you to get where you are. I think that's a pervasive myth .

What do you think, Amy?

Amy: It's a myth that white people tell because we do have that advantage, right? Not every single person, but it is easier and historically it has been much easier here in the United States for a white person to achieve [00:14:00] the capitalistic version of success. It's much, much harder for some other people. And it has been impossible at certain times in US history.

I think about early US history before the Declaration of Independence, when everybody was trying to figure out the problem of free Black people, and in some states they were just like, you know what, we should just make it so that free Black people can't own anything. They would take property that had belonged to free Black people and give it to poor white people.

Those people, had land then, and they had a better life for their children, and their children had better opportunities because of that. The roots of this kind of racism stretch so deep that we can't even really calculate it. We can't even say here's the advantage that a white person in 2023 has because there are so many layers and [00:15:00] twists and turns to all those roots.

One thing that we tend to do is, as a society, point to stories of people of color who've done extraordinary things, right? Who've succeeded against all odds, and that is really amazing. But I think that we forget that for a person of color, just to be on a level with their white counterpart, most of them would have had to overcome so many things that the white person in the same position they are, wouldn't have had to, generationally and individually. 

Blair: Yeah.

This is where CRT talks about the legal system and policies. Our legal system had policies that would allow someone, just because they were white, to prevent someone of color from having certain [00:16:00] advantages or access that the white people had. I find it boggling. 

Let me ask you, Amy, do you think you should teach CRT, or should you teach through a lens and use it as an evaluative tool, but do you need some historical context to do that? 

Amy: I think there's a misconception that people who care about critical race theory are teaching critical race theory to kindergartners.

Right? That's not actually happening. Kindergartners are not learning about the way that structured disadvantages stretch across U. S. society and are embedded in U. S. systems and policies. You're not teaching a kindergartner that. But the truth is that if you look at history with as [00:17:00] wide a perspective as you possibly can, you don't have to go chasing critical race theory. Critical race theory is Hi, I'm here. At every stage of U. S. history, what you were saying about the way that people are ignorant about this, a lot of that is intentional because one of the most effective things that the wealthy 3 percent did in U. S. history is they convinced poor white people that enslaved Black people were their enemies? That they were better than them. And they did this for a very obvious reason, which is this wealthy 3 percent is screwing over the poor white people, and they're screwing over the enslaved people, and there are a lot more poor white people and enslaved people than really wealthy white people.

And it's in their best interest to make sure that [00:18:00] they don't ever join together to take them out. 

Blair: I want to broaden that because there were Indigenous people. I think we need to refer to this as people of color. What happened with Indigenous people. The U. S. government, they'd get treaties, and then they would rewrite them. 

Amy: In terms of racism and systematic discrimination, absolutely. I just think that it's important to recognize that Indigenous people were not citizens of the United States. They were their own individual nations, with their own laws and government. So the United States in imposing all of these things on them, was treating them like second class citizens when technically and in every way that's not what they were. Technically and practically they were their own individual nations And I feel like [00:19:00] sometimes the way that we talk about that, we kind of skirt around that issue, I just want to make sure that I am recognizing that they occupied their own space as political entities.

Blair: So one of the key claims is that race is a social construct. Race as a social construct has come out of science. Scientists feel that when we talk about race, we should be talking about ancestry. 

Amy: A social construct is just something that we, as a group of people in society, have made up, right? Something that we've invented to categorize things.

Blair: So Amy and I in our critical thinking are agreeing on that, correct? 

Amy: Yes. Okay. Yes, absolutely. 

Blair: I'm going to give you systemic racism, you already defined it.

Amy: Systemic racism is really just the idea [00:20:00] that all the systems in the United States, the legal system, the political system, the education system, the health care system, the prison system, that all of these systems are built on a foundation of white supremacy. And because of that, all of these systems are necessarily disadvantaging people who aren't white.

Disadvantaging people who don't fit into the neat white box. When we talk about systemic racism, we're talking about racism that we take for granted because it's part of our everyday lives. 

Blair: For Caucasian people in the United States, that has really led to white privilege. We don't even recognize it. Who will sell you houses, whether you can, Get a good loan on a [00:21:00] house or a car. It turns out that, African American women pay more, they get higher rates on their loans, so comparing their credit to mine, for example, I would get a better rate on any loan than an African American woman, every single thing being equal. That is white privilege that I would never recognize.

 I honestly think that's one of the most important reasons for teaching about these issues, is so you're aware.

Amy: Absolutely, because I will say that I had to work to understand the privilege that I have as a white woman because I have been a woman in the sciences. We have both been women in the sciences. And that is not necessarily an easy position and I was pretty convinced for a lot of my [00:22:00] life that I understood what it was like to be a marginalized person in a group. I guess, there are levels on which we can all understand that, there are levels on which we've all experienced that, but the everyday benefits of my whiteness. It took me a while to recognize what they were because, as you say, I absolutely took them for granted. I took it for granted when I got pulled over by a police officer because my tag sticker wasn't updated that I could cry and he would let me off.

And he did, right? I never had to think about that. I did. I forgot to put my sticker on. It was very upsetting for me. I was six months pregnant and my brain was fried and I just cried and the police officer was so nice to me, but that is not the experience that a lot of people have with police officers.

My privilege protected me from knowing that for a really long time. 

And so I think this is so important because, if you are still learning. How to [00:23:00] talk about critical race theory, or how to recognize systemic racism in your own life, and how to like, talk to your kids about it, and explain it to them, and it's something that you're still figuring out.

Congratulations, because it's something you're going to be figuring out for the rest of your life. That's what it means that it's a process and not a result, right? Critical race theory is not a place that you're going. Where you're like, ha, I've reached critical race theory, yay, I win! Critical race theory is a process.

It's a journey that doesn't end, that you keep taking. And just like any journey that you take every day, you start to notice more and more things along the way, right? And with that, you become a more aware person in the world, but you're never going to stop.

Blair: In order to change that, we have to be aware that it's happening. And that's why I find this worth talking [00:24:00] about.

And that's why I find it so offensive that people are insisting that we reject it. Because in order to change this, it's going to take a society, and it's certainly going to take the white people in the society, standing up and saying, can we change this? Can this be fair? Can it not be harder to live in this world, in this country, if you're not white?

I think one of the things we can do with our kids, with young kids, not teaching CRT, but, as you teach them in history, I think it's okay to say to young kids, how would you feel? Trail of Tears, wow, what would it feel like if the government said you [00:25:00] couldn't live in, I think it was mainly in Georgia, it was one of the key states, that you couldn't live here anymore, but that they would give you land somewhere else, and you had to pick up and all of you had to move.

That you weren't really given a choice 

Amy: at gunpoint. 

Blair: What would that mean? And I think that if your kids old enough if your child's old enough to learn about Trail of Tears or something They're old enough for you to talk to them about what it must have been like.

 What must it have been like to be an enslaved person? You don't have to, if they're young, you don't have to say, and have your own children stripped from you and sold , So that you never saw them again. I think if they're old enough to hear the [00:26:00] history They're old enough for you to start asking them big questions. 

Blair: Has this changed now, of course that someone's enslaved has changed, but I think you can make some parallels to ways that their life still isn't fair, equitable, fair is such a tame word for what we're talking about. 

Amy: I know, it's, there, there really are no good words for it because it is, like fair is how many pieces of Halloween candy you get, like you and your brother or sister, who gets the most pieces, like how do you divide them evenly, that's fair, but who gets to have health care.

Who gets to, have a job that pays all of your bills? Those things, that's not even about fair. That's so fundamentally, yeah. 

Blair: Okay, Amy, what are the counter arguments? What are the counter arguments [00:27:00] that, that support rejecting critical race theory?

Amy: One of the big counter arguments against critical race theory is the idea that it just causes more racial distancing, right? It just makes people feel like they're on opposite sides. 

Blair: Okay, so it's not that it's not a thing, it's that it will make the divide bigger. 

Amy: It makes racism worse, right? 

Blair: Probably because it makes people of color angry. It's turned me into an anti racist. These conversations what do you think about that, Amy?

Amy: I teach a critical thinking class at for middle schoolers this year. And we are reading the book Stamped by Ibram X. Kendi. And we were reading the young adult version, which is co authored by Jason Reynolds, [00:28:00] and it's a great book.

I highly recommend it for your middle school and high school home school. For you Stamped from the Beginning, which is his adult version of the book, is just amazing. But anyway we were reading this book and one of the things that came up is that talking about slavery In school, people were worried because it made white children feel bad.

So we were trying to unpack this together, and we came to the conclusion that slavery should make people feel bad. There's nothing wrong with feeling bad about slavery. But the reason that people don't want their children to think about it is that they don't want them to come home and think that their parents are racist because they haven't talked to them about it and they don't care about it.

And I thought that was a very interesting take from my little sixth and seventh graders. They were really perceptive and they really saw that feeling bad [00:29:00] about the institution of slavery can make you a better person, it can make you choose different things so that's not the legacy that you leave to future generations but If your parents and the adults in your life Are not anti racist then you coming home and talking about that stuff might be very upsetting to them because it's going to sound like you're calling Them a racist because you are because you're pointing out their racist thinking 

Blair: So, Are there other counter arguments? 

Amy: Let's see.

Other counter arguments. The one thing is that it's just a way to pick on the United States. It's a way of saying the United States isn't really democratic. Look how terrible the United States is. And that's not what history is about. The United States has done good things and bad things.

And racism is one bad thing, but it definitely doesn't mean that the United States isn't the [00:30:00] best country in the world. 

Blair: So it's a nationalist take. And the other reason I think to reject critical race theory without clearly defining it is, in an election, it will get some people to the ballot box. 

That's something we really need to be thoughtful about as we weigh in on these issues. I think it's why we should start making people define terms. I think it's why critical thinking it comes all the way back to critical thinking. I think it's why critical thinking is so important Define woke, define liberal.

 Critical race theory what is it about? What are the premises of it? I think when someone is up in arms against something, that it is [00:31:00] really important to insist that they define it, certainly before you get into a conversation with them. 

Amy: And that's what I think is so important when we talk about critical race theory, is that, again, it's not a lesson that you're teaching your kids.

It's not here's the story of the Civil War. Here's the story of critical race theory. Here's the story of the Kennedy assassination. Critical race theory is one way to look at history. And it's a good way, and a useful way, and an important way. But you should be looking at history lots of different ways.

And critical race theory should absolutely be one of them. It's so surprising to me because all it is doing Is asking you to look at history, or science, or literature, whatever, anything through this perspective of how might systemic racism have affected this. And, I, it's hard for me to understand [00:32:00] how that's controversial.

Because it's just asking you to think about something. It's not saying that you have to believe it. It's not saying that you have to act on it. It's not saying that you have to do anything with it. I think a lot of people would be inspired to think and act and do things with it because I think it feels really important when you study that way.

But there's nothing implicit in CRT that says, Oh, we have to change, you have to change things, you have to start behaving in a different way. It's just asking you to look through a lens. It's like asking you to step up to this telescope and look at everything that you thought you knew and see it from a different angle.

Blair: Honestly, to look at it. Honestly. I think that the people who originally proposed critical race theory really hoped that it would be eye-opening and that it would be beginning of a conversation. But I also think that they hoped [00:33:00] that this would be a way that created a more equitable society.

So that policies and the legal system was more equitable. So that it, so that we had the same treatment, fair treatment for all people. 

Amy: Let's acknowledge that critical race theory, they didn't call it critical race theory. But. People of color have been talking about this idea for a really long time.

If we go back the early 20th century, we see W. E. B. DuBois talking about it. We see Fannie Hammer, Fannie Lou Hammer talking about it. If we go back even further to the 19th century, we see Frederick Douglass talking about it. Sojourner Truth talking about it. People of color have been asking us for a very long time to look at history [00:34:00] through their eyes and experiences, which is what Critical Race Theory is really about.

Blair: It just comes down to fairness and it just comes down to the system not, disempowering people, so that when we then say, this is the path I used, it's a potential path, that the people who look at that and think, I'd like to go there too, don't have obstacles because of the color of their skin. 

Amy: It is a big topic and I think that one that's so important to understand ourselves so that we can then talk about it with our kids. So Blair, I thought here before we go, we could talk about a few resources that we like for talking about critical race theory.

I might steal yours, I have a little list here, do you want me to go [00:35:00] first? Okay, so I always recommend the 1619 Project from The New York Times, which looks at the way that the history of the United States is a history of slavery. Along those same lines, I mentioned Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped From the Beginning.

There are incarnations of that for every age. There's a young readers version, a middle grades vision, a young adult version, and an adult version. I think all of them are fantastic. I recommend them all. Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote Between the World and Me, which I think is that 21st century James Baldwin look at how racism impacts people individually.

And then finally, I really like the 13th, the documentary by Ava DuVernay. I think it's a really good look at sort of What the 13th amendment did and [00:36:00] did not accomplish. Now, all of these texts that I'm recommending are texts that use critical race theory to look at parts of history. So they're not critical race theory books.

They're books about history, but they're using critical race theory to interrogate the historical narrative. 

Blair: Between the World and Me, I love. One of the things that was a technique that I used when he was in high school. I would read a book and I would make notes in the book, and then I would give the book to him.

And when he was reading, he would go through, and he was required to answer questions, to come make his own notes. That was how we did literature. And Between the World and Me was one of the most powerful books we [00:37:00] did that with because in addition to being an important topic, Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of the most fantastically talented writers I have ever read.

I actually also like including some fiction. Yeah. Beloved, Why the Caged Bird Sings is, I think, memoir. I think that those are really important. I love the books that Amy mentioned. 

Blair: I really think that one good way to teach this is to read first person accounts. For my son and I, we read a lot of books from Indigenous authors. The Rez Road we really liked. Those sorts of books that just tell life, a slice of life, and then have conversations about the people. [00:38:00] Because what I think is one of the most important things that we didn't talk about is in addition to acknowledging the bias and prejudice that these people that are not white deal with, I think we need to bring a component that helps our children get to know them better to do that. I think that a book like The Rez Road does a really good job of highlighting life on a certain reservation.

And I think we need to help our kids get to know these people so they care about them. It's much harder to other someone who you feel a connection to. And I think. You can help your children feel connected to all the people of the world.

And I, I actually think that's one way you can address some of the issues. I do want to point out [00:39:00] that one of the reasons that Critical Race Theory is being rejected is that when you don't teach something, how important could it have really been? 

Amy: And I want to say, I think that the big reason to teach your kids about critical race theory, to use it as a lens to look at the world around you, is because if, I think that most of us care a lot about making secular homeschool spaces that are safe for everybody, where People who don't look like you can walk into your space and feel like they belong, and it is impossible to do that if we are not aware of the barriers that get in the way of that for people, right?

So critical race theory very practically teaches us things not to do. It teaches us how not to set up an inclusive [00:40:00] community. So I think like that if no other motivation you have, make creating safe spaces for all secular homeschoolers a reason to work through critical race theory with your kids.

Blair: The motto of your homeschool could be no cognitive dissonance here. That's the motto of Amy's school. No cognitive dissonance. 

Amy: We work hard to do that, but honestly, I feel like I learn more every year about how to do it better. I feel like I'm nowhere close to doing it as well as I want to.

And I guess I may feel that way for the rest of my life, and I'll keep working at it. 

Blair: That's life in progress. 

Amy: We will be back next week, with. scintillating conversation about secular homeschooling, which we will leave you wondering what it is.

We too wonder. If, as always, if you have suggestions or [00:41:00] ideas, shoot us an email, leave us a comment. We'd love to hear from you. And that is a wrap for episode three of Secular Homeschooling with Blair and Amy, brought to you by SEA Homeschoolers and home/school/life.