5.2 | a history to be ashamed of

V | CRITICAL RACE THEORY

CRT tells us that oppression is the bedrock of society. Racism is a specific example, but CRT is not limited to race. According to CRT, racism gives us a visceral experience of systemic oppression because it is so pervasive in America and has been throughout its history.

America’s history with racism is not subjective. It is objectively factual.  Most readers will know our history with slavery and the lead-up to the Civil War. During Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws and the doctrine of “separate but equal” handed down by the Supreme Court were in place for almost 100 years. Whitecapping and lynching remained a problem throughout the southern United States for a long time. Miscegenation policies and laws were in effect in many parts of the country until the early 2000s. As recently as 2009, a justice of the peace in Louisiana refused to issue a marriage license to a black man and a white woman on the grounds that he was worried about their children’s future.

Some towns in America were known as “sundown towns,” communities that excluded blacks and other minorities using laws, harassment, or violence. I have a friend who was born and raised in Comanche County, Texas. On the county courthouse there hung a plaque that read “n*****, don’t let the sun go down on your back in Comanche County.”

In the infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford Supreme Court case, the court ruled that slaves aren’t citizens; they’re property. President Woodrow Wilson was deeply racist. After black athlete Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, he was snubbed by President Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt only invited white Olympians to the White House.

In 1873 in Colfax, Louisiana, it is estimated that up to 153 black militia men were killed by members of the KKK and former Confederate soldiers. Eric Foner, a Civil War historian, called the Colfax massacre the “bloodiest single instance of racial carnage in the Reconstruction era” (Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution; 1863-1877 2014, 457). It is hard to estimate how many people were killed because so many bodies were thrown into the river during the riot.

In 1917, the East St. Louis riots killed 150 black people and left 6,000 homeless. In 1920, the Ocoee massacre in Florida saw more than 30 black people killed and most black-owned businesses razed. It was called the "single bloodiest day in modern American political history" by the Institute for Southern Studies at Ole Miss.

In 1921, 300 black people were killed and 10,000 were left homeless in the Tulsa race massacre. In 1923, the entire town of Rosewood, Florida, was annihilated by a mob of several hundred white people.

This is a map of Dallas from 1937.

In the lower left corner of the map is a key related to different grades of housing. The red on the map indicates an area that banks and city planners had designated as unsafe for commercial and residential real estate. If a community was red, it was deemed hazardous to live and work in. A person who wanted to live in this part of town or start a business there either would not be able to get a loan at all or experience a predatory rate on their loan. It just so happens that the majority of the communities that were “redlined” were communities predominantly filled with people of color.

It is clear to me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that systems of oppression exist and have existed. But is the entire system and fabric of society oppressive? The assertion that CRT makes is not that there are systems of racism or oppression. CRT’s claim is that racism – and oppression – are ubiquitous. In everyone, everywhere, all of the time.

The 1619 Project, founded in 2019, is a great example of a Critical Theory perspective on both race and systemic oppression. The 1619 Project is named after the first recorded time that African indentured servants came to the shores of America at Jamestown, Virginia, in August 1619. As we know, eventually, indentured servitude was replaced by chattel slavery, the complete ownership of one human being by another. All of this is factual based on recorded history.

The biggest claim of the 1619 Project was not that 20 indentured servants from Africa came to America. It was that the founding of the United States was for the purpose of slavery and that the Revolutionary War was fought not for freedom from Britain, but to create a nation based in and around slavery. What does Critical Theory teach us? We’re either oppressed or oppressors. The 1619 Project asserted that the United States is a nation created primarily for the purpose of preserving slavery. The creator of the project received a Pulitzer Prize for her work.

Many historians and researchers across the spectrum of history and the humanities disagreed with this claim. Allen C. Guelzo, a leading Civil War scholar and professor at Princeton University, went so far as to call the entire project a conspiracy theory. (1)

The New York Times received enough negative feedback from noted historians to cause them to publish a clarification in the notes of the 1619 Project that there is little to no evidence of the colonists being motivated to declare independence from Britain to preserve slavery. (1)

The 1619 Project, regardless of its flaws, succeeded in raising a question regarding America: Does America exist for the right to individual freedom as we’ve been taught for 250 years? Or does America exist for the preservation of slavery?

Settling this question is important because worldviews matter. A CT approach to race must show evidence that the entire system is, and always has been, racist. It must do this in order to confirm the worldview that we are either oppressed or oppressors. The founding of America, according to the 1619 Project and CRT scholars, is proof that this is a nation created for the purpose of oppressing people of color. Here is their worldview: White people are oppressors. White people founded America for the purpose of oppression. Through the 1619 Project, Critical Theory and CRT are given a platform to expand on the presumed definition of the goal and purpose of the United States.

Enter the year 2020. The 1619 Project is painting a picture of America as fundamentally oppressive and racist. In May 2020, the tragic and unjustified killing of George Floyd by a white police officer occurs. Black Lives Matter, an organization founded in 2013, begins to grow at a rapid pace. Black Lives Matter, a grassroots movement, gathers momentum as well. BLM, however, is not one entity. It is two different things with the same name. One is a movement and one is an organization.

The Black Lives Matter movement says something that we all can and should support, that the lives of black people have worth and value.

The Black Lives Matter organization says the same thing. But it also says a lot of other things that are hard to support. All three of the founders have made claims of being “trained Marxists.” One need simply to read their statement of beliefs to see a worldview rooted in Marxism and Critical Theory. The founders’ beliefs are no longer listed on their website, but you can find an archived version of their beliefs page here.

The tension between the movement and the organization has been immobilizing for many people. If I have a Kingdom worldview, I should not align myself with an organization that is founded in opposition to that worldview. BLM is one such organization.

However, if I am against the organization, I run the risk of seeming like I am against the movement. But if I say I’m for the movement, it seems like I am also for the organization. Those with a Kingdom or non-CT worldview are put in a no-win situation.

CRT and its proponents, including the Black Lives Matter organization, want us to agree with them that America is oppressive and has always been oppressive. The only way to fix it is to tear it down to the studs and rebuild. If we don’t agree, we are either racist ourselves or are attempting to perpetuate the oppression of minoritized groups.

Critical (race) theorists would have us believe that racism and oppression are just as prevalent today as they were in 1619. Why? Because they believe the foundation that supports the Western world, specifically America, is oppression. They would argue that it always has been and always will be, until we overthrow the system and remake it.