Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education is what the graduate students I'm working with at the University of Redlands will be reading and discussing this week. It's by Professors Ladson-Billings and Tate of the University of Wisconsin. It's about twenty-five years old. Critical Race Theory is nothing new. It's just that we've attained a critical mass and society is startin' to act.
The article is not so much about race relations as it is about social inequities brought about by the intersection of race and PROPERTY RIGHTS. Ladson-Billings and Tate emphasize that CRT may be considered an analytic tool through which we can understand social as well as school inequities.
Too often, the matter of American society being BASED on property rights is missing when discussing social inequities. You know why? Because that would reveal the nature of racism as systemic, socialized, institutionalized, and structural. It has little to do with individuals or skin color. And yet, why do so many of my friends and colleagues forget that part? Could it be that the rich of the nation, by way of their corporations and businesses and foudnations, etc., are controling the messaging so that our amygdalas are piqued by a horrendous act of injustice and our attention distracted each time we come close to the topic?
This fight at this moment is about generation after generation of ethnic minorities in the USA (and just about everywhere else, too) being blocked from participating in the insitiutioanlized economy of their fellow countrymen; being denied access to services and goods BY THEIR GOVERNMENT.
Yeah, I encourage my students to develop their "critical lense" and to be deeply familiar with critical social theory as they prepare to enter the nation's classrooms because race continues to be a significant factor in determining social and financial inequity in America.
#decolonize #EducationalJustice
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