Critical Race Theory (CRT)
15 states have recently introduced bills barring teachers from using CRT and other anti-racism resources, including the Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times “1619 Project”.​
Why Race Matters
Chief Justice Taney - The 1857 Dred Scott Decision.
Chief Justice Robert B. Taney wrote the infamous decision in the Dred Scott v. Sandford supreme court case that passed by a 7-2 margin. The Dred Scott Decision held that Congress had no authority or power to prevent the spread of slavery into federal territories and that, at the time of the country's founding, African Americans were not U.S. citizens nor was such citizenship contemplated.
Roger Taney’s legacy was made by the Dred Scott decision. When the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill in 1865 to commission funds for a bust of Taney to be placed in the Supreme Court along with his predecessors, Senator Charles Sumner argued against it, calling the Dred Scott decision “more thoroughly abominable than anything of the kind in the history of the courts.”
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Taney, the twenty-fourth justice and fifth chief, was the first of thirteen Catholic justices. Currently, five of nine justices are Catholic.
Racism & White Supremacy Influenced Policy in Government.
The 1857 Dred Scott Decision is the only one to be overturned by a civil war. In that decision, the Court ruled that a person of African descent could never be a U.S. citizen and, so, could not petition the courts for freedom from slavery.
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The lies in the Dred Scott decision are the same lies we see today where black communities are continuously placed into a negative framework. Our historical leaders did more than just "believe" that blacks were inferior, they effectuated a series of institutions to reinforce their sentiments.
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Which is why Critical Race Theory (CRT) is so important.
Action Items
​1. Follow and support Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s @kimberlecrenshaw work with African American Policy Forum @aapolicyforum, where they are actively tracking anti-CRT legislation at aapf.org/truthbetold
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2. Research anti-CRT legislation in your state and call your representatives to urge them to vote it down. Go to bit.ly/CRTbreakdown​​
CRT Defined
The critical race theory (CRT) movement is a collection of activists and scholars engaged in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power.
The movement considers many of the same issues that conventional civil rights and ethnic studies discourses take up but places them in a broader perspective that includes economics, history, setting, group and self-interest, and emotions and the unconscious.
Unlike traditional civil rights discourse, which stresses incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.
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Source: Delgado, Richard. Critical Race Theory, Third Edition. NYU Press. Kindle Edition, p. 3.
Books/Videos/Podcast
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1. Critical Race Theory: A Primer (Concepts and Insights), by Khiara M. Bridges
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2. Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement, by Kimberlé Crenshaw
3. Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education, by Gloria Ladson-Billings and William F. Tate.
4. Who's Afraid Of Critical Race Theory- What A Day Podcast
