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Early access to July 12, 2021 edition
Critical Race Theory, or CRT, is everywhere all of a sudden. Having made its way from elite academia to K-12 public education, it came to the attention of the Trump Administration last year and quickly became a bogeyman of the political right. From there, state legislatures began crafting bills that would ban the “divisive concepts” allegedly embedded in CRT-based curriculum. But the bills have only added to public confusion over what CRT really means and partisan media coverage has whipped up the whole debate into something resembling a moral panic.
Dr. Erec Smith is a professor of Rhetoric and Composition at York College of Pennsylvania and has written extensively about race and its role in pedagogy and public debate. He talked with Meghan about the origins of CRT, when it can be useful, how it’s often misapplied and, above all, how most of what’s got people so upset these days has little to do with CRT in the first place.
Guest Bio:
Erec Smith is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric at York College of Pennsylvania and focuses primarily on the rhetorics of anti-racist activism, theory, and pedagogy. He is a co-founder of Free Black Thought, a website dedicated to highlighting viewpoint diversity within the black intelligentsia. His latest book is A Critique of Anti-racism in Rhetoric and Composition: The Semblance of Empowerment.
Relevant links:
Newsweek: Why I Still Talk To White People About Racism
Quillette: Towards Practical Empowerment