Quick take.
By
October 2, 2021, 6 AM, and November 30, 2021, 1:35 PM.
Fights about how to understand America's racial history are nothing new, and neither are moves by politicians to dictate what schools teach. The debate over critical race theory has merged with the debate over what students hear about it. The theory's detractors say they are trying to protect children from anti-White indoctrination, while their opponents argue that they are attacking a caricature of the concept to frighten or enrage White voters.
The history of racism and how race has shaped attitudes and institutions are two of the main points of critical race theory. It often overlaps with discussions of systemic racism, the ways policies, procedures and institutions work to perpetuate racial inequity even in the absence of personal racial animus. The theory can be used to understand the fact that the typical White U.S. household has seven times the amount of wealth of the average Black one. The U.S. government started marking Black neighborhoods in red ink on maps in the 1930s as a warning of credit risk. Home ownership has been the biggest source of wealth for the middle class, and still feels discriminated against four decades later.
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