Image of Professors Jonathan Collins, Mahasan Offutt-Chaney, and Lynne Joyrich

Professors Jonathan Collins, Mahasan Offutt-Chaney, and Lynne Joyrich Photo: David DelPoio

Humanities & Culture

An Academic Theory Goes Unexpectedly Viral
Brown scholars on Critical Race Theory, the most divisive topic in American education

By Ivy Scott ’21 / January–March 2022

January 4th, 2022

Opponents argue that it teaches white children to hate themselves. Advocates say it is the key to replacing the colorblind fairytale of American excellence currently taught in many schools with the vivid reality of our nation’s painful yet powerful history.

Critical Race Theory began as a hypothesis put forth by legal scholars in the 1970s that racism
might be more pervasive—and more insidious—than people previously dared to admit aloud. It was discussed mostly in grad-school settings until 2020, when conservative activist Christopher Rufo argued that CRT was the nefarious force behind what he termed “segregationism, group-based guilt, and race essentialism”—against white people, being taught to white children.
As a guest on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show on September 2 of that year, Rufo called CRT “an existential threat to the United States.”

A new battle in the culture wars was on, with the rapid passage of anti-CRT laws across several states in the months that followed. In October 2021, a Texas school administrator instructed teachers that according to new state law, they were required to present “multiple views” of the Holocaust. Other states have specifically banned use of the New York Times’s 1619 project, focused on the consequences of slavery on American history, in public schools. Three Brown academics explore the nation’s latest political football (one other, who has spoken out against CRT, declined to speak to the BAM for this story).

Same pushback, new name

“In history, there is often this discourse that, by extending rights to Black Americans or other students of color, we are taking rights from white students,” says Assistant Professor of Education Mahasan Offutt-Chaney, whose research focuses on the historic intersection between education, race, and social policy. “You started to see this conservative pushback against desegregation in the 1970s. For example, the idea that integrating Black students into white schools was robbing white students of their opportunity to choose their neighborhood or choose their peers—that kind of controversy parallels this recent iteration that we need a more colorblind curriculum, and that by discussing race, we are pushing harm onto white students.”

To parents who argue that it’s too soon for their elementary-aged children to learn about racism, Offutt-Chaney counters that if there’s no age requirement for experiencing racism, there shouldn’t be a requirement for discussing it. “This idea that we shouldn’t teach a curriculum that captures how racism works is to say that only certain children are allowed some level of innocence, that there’s this white innocence that should protect and preserve only white children, when everyone else has to live and see this every single day. Children are capable of understanding any level of injustice, and educators don’t want to teach these things to espouse hatred, but to espouse a deeper level of engagement.”

“They have evacuated the ‘theory’ from Critical Race Theory and totally reversed the issues of race and what we’re being critical of… to make it seem like CRT is an absolutely solidified list of accusations that victimize white people.”

The role of TV pundits

Professor Lynne Joyrich ’84 AM, ’90 PhD, graduate studies director in the Department of Modern Culture and Media, offers a reality check for anyone who feels personally offended by the idea that racism is inherent to our sociopolitical systems: “The right-wing media interpretation of systemic racism is that it means blaming every single [white] individual, and that is in fact the opposite of what systemic means: looking at how systems operate—it’s not at all about individuals being racist.”

Joyrich, who watches a lot of Fox News, points out the careful techniques used to simplify and vilify this nuanced academic theory. “The strategy of the media is to make it individualized to pull you, the viewer, in,” Joyrich says. On-air personalities use persuasive techniques such as looking right at the camera and using the second person or “we” voice, she points out. “They do this sleight of hand to create a link between themselves and the viewer, and it produces this effect of people becoming very concerned and then arguing about [CRT] at their local city council and school board meetings. They have evacuated the ‘theory’ from Critical Race Theory and totally reversed the issues of race and what we’re being critical of… to make it seem like Critical Race Theory is an absolutely solidified list of accusations that victimize white people.”

For Joyrich, this is “a story not only about our culture’s inability to think coherently about questions of race,” but also about the power and impact of mass media. “By using these conventions that they know appeal to people,” she says, “they have created this terrifying image of something that’s a figment of the media, and what goes by the name ‘Critical Race Theory’ in academia is something totally different from that figment.”

Just tell the truth

One of the fundamental goals of a good education is to “raise our kids to tell the truth,” says Assistant Professor of Eduction Jonathan Collins, who specializes in education policy and political behavior. And if honesty is important, he says, “that has to be also apparent in what we do with our school curriculum.”

Reflecting on one of the focal points of the CRT debate, Nikole Hannah Jones’s 1619 Project for the New York Times, Collins cites Jones’s story of Isaac Woodard, a Black man who received a battle star after four years in combat during World War II, but was still beaten blind by police on his way home. “He’s a part of this larger lineage of helping to build this country, yet when we look at how history is typically taught, we tend to focus only on a narrow few,” says Collins. “People want to further this narrative that democracy was this beautiful and picturesque development, but that’s not true. So honesty also helps us to understand how we can better perfect the union.”

Ultimately, Collins argues that an honest telling of American history also empowers students from every background to believe in—and work for—a more equitable future. For kids who don’t feel like the system is working for them, he says, “there’s a way we can look at the American story and say, ‘Well, actually, that’s the way this country has evolved and pressed forward.’ The Revolutionary War is the result of folks who felt like the British system wasn’t working for them. The civil rights movement was a function of people who felt, and were very adamant in showing the rest of the world, that the system wasn’t working for them.”

“As a student, you need to be able to see yourself in people who made really tough decisions to speak truth to power,” he says. How will the next generation know they can be the change they wish to see in the world “if we don’t have some kind of curriculum in place that allows kids to see that?”

“I always thought this conversation should not be about whether or not we seize this history,” Collins adds. “The question really should be, how do we go about doing so? How do we make sure that our kids can have generative and civil conversations about acknowledging the truth of the nation?”

What do you think?
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It seems like many who disagree about CRT get labelled ‘racist’ and all debate shuts down.

—Neal Marrano ’83

First, the tragedy of Mr. Woodward happened in 1946 and is a poor anecdote for that reason.

Second, I have seen a four-year-old studying his copy of Anti-Racist Baby, which has a nine step program for overcoming the r-word. This book is evidence the theory has escaped from the laboratory and is in general circulation. It contains some of Jesus’s words but without the redemption and peace which can follow. Rather it tries to make children suspicious and judgmental (say, if one does not confess properly) which will not lead to a “deeper level of engagement.” It tries to rob ALL children of their innate innocence, openness, and joie de vivre. Be bred to “make society transform” and “knock down cultural blocks,” says the book. Zealotry belongs to adults, not babies. The r-word has become a pejorative. Let’s try to live a POST-r life.

—David A. Sorber ’74 Marco Island, Fla.

The faces of the three professors in the photo that accompanies your story suggest that they find Brown an unhappy place to work. Assistant Professor Offutt-Chaney seems particularly bleak. In her world, “white students” with their “white innocence” are pitted against “everyone else”—apparently brown, yellow, red, and multi-racial, as well as Black students—none of them allowed the “white innocence” that they have “to live and see every single day.” And because “everyone else” sees early in life the “white innocence” that results from racism, schools ought to be allowed to teach children about racism early in life. With that prescription, she takes all childhood innocence off the table. No wonder she is bleak. What makes “white innocence” even more unjust is that white students apparently have the “opportunity to choose their neighborhood,” one that apparently excludes “Black [with a capital B] students.” But students do not choose where they live; their parents do. And note that “everyone else” turns out to be a cover for “Black.” Brown, yellow, red, and multiracial students have vanished from her argument. In the end, it’s white privilege versus Black victimhood. Thirty percent of America is missing. If Professor Offutt-Chaney has the data to support the loose generalizations about the role of race in American education that gird her battlefield agenda, she does not share them.

—David Josephson Brown Professor Emeritus of Music Providence

I read carefully the article on Critical Race Theory because I believe it deserves serious consideration, especially given the tragic history of Black people in America. It doesn’t follow that I have to agree with the need to teach it. My understanding is that CRT is encouraging public schools to learn about racism. This seems like a goal fulfilled long ago. In my average public school in suburban New Jersey, in the 1960s, a teacher read to us about the Middle Passage, and many Black authors were made available, including Richard Wright, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Piri Thomas, and of course James Baldwin, whose books were assigned and discussed in English classes. Also, the idea of “systematic racism” is foreign to me. To find it in the State Department, where I worked for 30 years, you would have to identify programs, plans, budgets and personnel engaged in this systematic activity. You won’t find that, but you can easily identify systematic anti-racism: Pell, Rangel, Pickering, and Payne grants; the Office of Equal Opportunity; the Diplomat in Residence program; and more recently, the Diversity and Inclusion Office and an advisor to advance DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). If one argues that young children must be taught about racism because they might experience it, then learning about how their electronic gadgets work must also be on the curriculum, precluding class time for basic math and reading. Finally, I don’t believe that American children are taught their history as “a beautiful and picturesque development,” as Jonathan Collins says. I was taught about slavery, the Civil War, and the civil rights movement. America may have been born with the original sin of slavery, but has made huge progress in addressing historic injustice, and it seems that the CRT movement fails to acknowledge that. I agree with what Angela Merkel said about her deeply scarred Germany: “I love my country with a broken heart.”

—Ken Moskowita ’82 AM Yokohama, Japan

The unexpected article on Critical Race Theory presents a one-sided description of the tenets of and the opposition to Critical Race Theory. The BAM article suggests Critical Race Theory is nothing more than an alternative curriculum for a grade school history course which provides “...an honest telling of American history,” and opposition to Critical Race Theory is nothing more than the misguided protests of those unable to grasp the intricacies of this “nuanced academic theory” and who incorrectly take personal offense to being labeled as systemic oppressors based on the color of their skin. In fact, there is a concern that “Critical Race Theory is an insidious and racist Marxist ideology spreading throughout our culture and society” with the purpose and effect of dividing our society based on race. While the BAM article suggest “...it began as a hypothesis put forth by legal scholars in the 1970s” (presumably referring to Derrick Bell, a Harvard law professor), its origins have been more accurately traced to Herbert Marcuse who was a German-born Hegelian-Marxist ideologue of the Franklin School of political theorists which is the source for the term “critical theory.” None of this fuller discussion, or at the very least alternative view, is mentioned or even suggested in the BAM article. What is more alarming is there is at least one Brown University academic with a different point of view who was not comfortable expressing his/her views. This raises the disturbing questions whether the culture at Brown stifles dissent or prevents the expression of alternative views on the subject of Critical Race Theory and perhaps other academic subjects.

—Edward Magee ’67 Lutherville, Md.

Thanks for writing about CRT, but I hoped for more details about the fundamentals of the theory and its origins. I understand that it is an outgrowth of Critical Legal Studies at Harvard Law and have a vague idea that it ties racial injustice to institutionalized racism, but what is the crux? Wish this article had been a bit more of an explainer.

—Stephanie Robinson ’87, ’88 AM McLean, Va.

[This] states that “one other [Brown academic], who has spoken out against CRT, declined to speak to the BAM for this story.” It is hard for me to believe that nobody could be found to give an opposing opinion. On the other hand, it seems like many who disagree about CRT get labeled “racist” and all debate shuts down. I have seen mixed race couples complaining at school board meetings that their child has come home and told them that their white mother, or white father, is “bad.” White children are also being told they are “bad,” while non-whites are made to feel like “victims.” Obviously, some elementary school teachers are not teaching CRT appropriately, or maybe they are. Maybe an “academic theory” should be debated in graduate school and not in kindergarten. We are not doing a good job teaching our kids to read, write and do math. How can we think “CRT” can, or should, be taught to kids?

The 1619 Project was also mentioned in the article. Many distinguished historians have reviewed and debunked the main points of that project. Again, another viewpoint would have been appropriate.

—Neal Marrano ’83 Athens, Ga.

I lived under segregation with hatred and bigotry in Tuskegee despite the fact that the largest economic force was a VA for Black patients barred from white hospitals. We were able to act for ourselves. We fought back. Gradually we had victories over racism. Dr. King’s lawyer, Fred Gray, who was also Rosa Parks’s lawyer, lived next door to me for 30 years. I got to know him well. They both would have rejected CRT. Dr. King urged us to be colorblind when it comes to judging and dealing with others. CRT is the opposite. Racism and bigotry never die. CRT mirrors those evils. Focusing on skin color reminds me of being kicked out of stores, theaters, and other places because I was the “wrong color.” King’s work was not in vain. Even the mayor of Montgomery is now Black. Much in our history is shameful and inhumane, but we are not frozen in time. No other largely white nation has twice chosen a black man as leader. CRT has many things right about slavery, bigotry, overt racism, and the like. But it’s wrong to racially stereotype blacks and whites in today’s world as CRT does.

—Daniel Thompson ’70 Atlanta

I think all I learned from this article is what the interviewees say CRT isn’t. The title of the article is misleading. This follows the same thing we see on both sides of the media these days with both sides talking past each other. Perhaps a longer space is needed for a fuller explanation of what CRT is (and isn’t). I can’t wait to read it and learn.

—Thom Heckard ’84 Virginia Beach

I thought this was a very good article, which was accurate and which fairly criticized Fox News and Christopher Rufo. However, I thought it was not balanced and failed to identify valid criticisms of CRT. I thought it was a bit chilling and upsetting to read that a Brown prof “who had spoken out against CRT declined to speak to the BAM for this story.” CRT raises complex and nuanced issues which cannot be developed in a short comment but suffice it to say that I much prefer the traditional civil rights discourse to the CRT approach (especially relating to legal theories), although I think CRT raises many valid points. With respect to Professor Offutt-Chaney’s comments on teaching elementary school children to learn about racism, I wonder what he thinks about the teacher who tried to do some role playing exercises in which the black kids were supposed to be slaves and the white kids were the owners? The teacher got fired.

—Chuck Wolf ’72 Oak Park, Ill.

I had my first exposure last year to environmental justice. Discussions made me very uncomfortable, but I now realize that this should be expected when dealing with matters that are complicated and difficult. Racism is clearly one of those matters. I feel strongly that in order to effect improvement, one needs to actively seek and to know the truth, even though the truth may be difficult to accept. The intent of CRT is not to demean but to elevate.

—Don Williams ’70 Plymouth, Mas

The article in BAM about the CRT debate was interesting. I encourage those interviewed to assemble pro- and anti-CRT people to have a discussion, not a debate. If moderated well, they may find they have a lot more in common about teaching history than they thought. And from that will come collaboration and progress and improved understanding.

—Bary Neagle ’69 Atlantis, Fla.