According to the progressive watchdog Media Matters, Fox News mentioned critical race theory close to 1,900 times during a three-and-a-half-month period in 2021. 42 states have passed bills or taken other steps in order to limit the teaching of critical-race theory and other issues related to systemic inequality in the classroom since January 2021. 17 states have successfully placed restrictions upon educators. Critical race theory, until the recent media explosion, was an obscure and niche academic theory.
Stanford Center for Racial Justice Faculty Direct Ralph Richard Banks presented recently at Stanford’s Alumni Reunion Weekend to explain critical race theory and its significance. Banks explained that the conversation was intended to promote the SCRJ’s “North Star”, which is democratizing knowledge through demystifying what has become a political buzzword.
Banks was referring to critical race theory as a method of understanding and dismantling the role of racism in American society, both past and present. Banks laughed that it was named because it is a critical theory and involved race.
When Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer, killed George Floyd, many of us became critical race theorists. Banks said that we all started asking ourselves, collectively, “How can this be happening in 21st century?”
This is the “spine” of critical race theory. Banks stated that this is an attempt to explain why, ten years after segregation was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown V. Board of Education there was less integration throughout the South than people in the auditorium. The incarceration rate of Black Americans has risen dramatically since the Civil Rights Act was passed in the civil rights era. It’s a zoomed-out attempt to answer the question about how the U.S. can appear superficially to be moving forward without materially changing.
Banks teaches a critical racial theory course at Stanford Law School. He explains how it was created in the 1970s by thinkers such as Derrick Bell. This American lawyer and civil rights activist and Harvard Law School’s first tenured Black professor, is the founder of the course. Bell criticized the U.S.’s role in rights and its dominant narrative about progress. He argued that racism is so deeply embedded in America that it cannot be changed by legislation or an opinion of the Supreme Court. Prince Edward County, Virginia, chose to shut down its schools instead of integrating.
This idea that racism is innate and not ephemeral in American society became a political football, being played back and forth between opposing forces. Critical race theory is fundamentally asking us to embrace the complexity of society rather than choose a polarity.
Banks referred to this theme throughout his talk. He cautioned against picking one side of the critical racism debate over the other, as if the perspectives of progressivity vs. racism as the defining theme in American history were diametrically opposite. Instead, he encouraged attendees to consider the legitimacy of both narratives and that the U.S. could simultaneously be a country of freedom and of racists. This duality should be the focus of discussions about critical race theory.
Banks suggested that we should avoid finger-pointing in our conversations about race or racism. Instead, Banks recommended that we focus on the systems. Recognizing that the most urgent problem is not the individual players but the rules we have inherited, is key to this approach.
Banks stated that this dialogue is becoming more important in light of the country’s extraordinary economic inequality. Banks concluded his talk by warning that we cannot overcome this inequality without addressing its race dimensions. We can’t also address its racial aspects if we are polarized. The role of critical race theory should not be an obstacle to productive discussions to close the gap between what we have and what we want.
Banks sees this as a world in which we can “look different but not be different.”