Critical Race Theory: Strawman or Truth?
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The first step in truth and reconciliation is truth. But the radical right fears that slippery slope. So they attack the truth in the form of a “Critical Race Theory” strawman they’ve created in their own minds. Few can articulate the details of what they are attacking or support the flaws in their own whitewashed version of history. Most of what we call Critical Race Theory isn’t a theory at all, it’s what happened. But the radical right has a one-drop aversion to these truths:
- In 1860, the economic value of slaves in the United States exceeded the invested value of all of the nation’s railroads, factories, and banks.
- After the civil war, freed slaves were promised a stretch of coastal land from South Carolina to Florida’s St. John’s river, each family would be given 40 acres and a mule. This policy was intended to “to break the back of Southern slaveholders’ power.” It never happened.
- When black Americans were able to vote, they elected black politicians and came close to having political power until the white wealthy males banded together to form the KKK, engaged in voter intimidation, Jim Crow laws and voter suppression which continues to this day, 156 years later.
- After the civil war, the south engaged in a propaganda campaign to rebrand slave-era Dixie as a gentile lost paradise. The new industries of radio and Hollywood helped spread this propaganda with blackface minstrel shows, D.W. Griffith’s The Clansman (rebranded as Birth of a Nation), The General, Song of the South and Gone with the Wind.
- Sundown laws and similar racist laws provided many excuses to arrest black Americans. Thousands were lynched but prison labor was a valuable resource so white men were deputized to capture black men for this profitable business.
- More than 1 million black Americans were inducted to serve in the U.S. Armed forces during WWII making up more than 10% of inductees. 2000 black Americans served at Normandy and 900 at Iwo Jima. But very few black Americans had leading roles… or any roles in Hollywood war movies.
- Less than 0.2% of Veteran’s Administration (VA) loans went to black veterans even in northern suburbs in New Jersey and New York. In Mississippi in 1947 that number was 2 in 3200 loans or 0.0625%.
- GI Bill educational loans were also denied to more than a million black American veterans, very few colleges accepted blacks at that time.
- The first U.S. city school districts desegregated in the 1970s. This means no black American of baby boomer age or older has had the same educational opportunities as white baby boomers.
Assuming that racism ends tomorrow on July 4, 2021- the first black Americans to grow up and thrive in a racism-free America will be eligible to retire at 55 in 2076. They can finally celebrate a racism-free education, work, housing and justice system 300 years after our nation’s founders wrote:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
When people attack “Critical Race Theory (CRT)”, ask them for evidence showing that these facts are not true. They won’t be able to articulate these details or support it with anything other than what they heard from white supremacists. It is impossible to talk about true U.S. History without talking about the history of slavery and racism. The fact that we’ve danced around the elephant in the room for more than 400 years makes it no less real.
Ex-president Trump and his radical-right friends don’t want Americans to know what really happened. Their wealth and worldview are built on a foundation of lies. Truth unites American patriots and makes us stronger. It gives depth to the love of our country. We learn to respect and compassion for the generations of Americans who have faced these obstacles. True patriots can handle the truth of U.S. and strive together to make this great nation grow nearer to the promise of equality and justice for all.
