The corollary principles of CRT include:
First, the rejection of concepts such as “objectivity” and “truth” as white constructs. According to two leading CRT proponents, Gloria Ladson-Billings and William F. Tate, all “knowledge” and “truth” is relative: “truths only exist for this person in this predicament at this time.”[2] This is how many schools around the country are trying to apply CRT principles to subjects such as math and the sciences, which they believe have hitherto been grounded in racism. The fact that there are performance disparities between races in subjects such as math and the various sciences is all the proof necessary to declare that truth-bearing and reality-oriented subjects such as math and science must be racist and therefore in need of curricular reconstruction.
Second, the repudiation of all the core values, principles, virtues, and institutions associated with the West, such as equality, liberty, individual rights, private property, merit, work, personal responsibility, equal protection under the law, neutrality, due process, federalism, freedom of speech color blindness, constitutionalism, separation of powers, and, most of all, capitalism because white people identify with them. According to the Seattle educators, racist values include “emphasizing individualism” as opposed to collectivism and having “a future time orientation.”[3] In other words, you are a racist if you like to plan ahead.
Third, the assumption that virtually everything good or great produced by Anglo-European culture and its American offshoots is inherently racist and built on the slave labor of others, and therefore must be deconstructed, dismissed, or destroyed. Racism is everywhere, and it has infected everything. It’s in western painting, music, architecture, literature, philosophy, etc., which means that Michelangelo, Beethoven, Christopher Wren, Jane Austen, and Aristotle must be abandoned or forgotten. CRT rejects all that is good and great in Western Civilization.
Fourth, the demand that “critical” education be used to delegitimize, subvert, and overturn American society. Critical Race Theory is concerned first and foremost with turning students into advocates, activists, and change agents pushing a political agenda defined by radical egalitarianism. This means that CRT is not concerned with having students learn the great body of knowledge developed in the West over the course of several thousand years; it’s goal is to destroy all knowledge generated by white, cis-gendered, heterosexual men and replace it with a kind of politicized learning that seeks to transform society. According to education activist Christine Sleeter: “Working for social justice—redistribution of the world’s resources—is at the heart of what multicultural education should be about.”[4]
How did Critical Race Theory go from being a crazy theory taught in America’s law schools to being the hegemonic curricular framework for America’s government schools? More to the point, how was CRT smuggled into America’s government school system? What are the institutions that are delivering CRT to America’s children?