Over the past year, right-wing activists and the Republican party have launched an aggressive attack on public education. Since January 2021, 37 states have introduced legislation or taken other actions that restrict teaching critical race theory and/or limit discussions of sexism, sexual orientation and racism in the classroom. Many of these laws target funding for school districts or threaten to extract money from school employees for failing to comply with the policy.
A large number of the proposed bills prohibit teachers from talking about diversity and inequality in so-called “divisive” ways or taking sides on “controversial” issues. Many of these bills also ban books in school libraries that address gender identity and sexuality, bolster parents’ rights to review curriculum and instructional material and impose restrictions on what school sports teams transgender students can join.
Although critical race theory is not taught in any U.S. public elementary, middle or high school classes, GOP activists are using the graduate-level course as a key talking point in their long-running culture war designed to sow fear and division and win votes. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Angela C. Robinson, a retired Connecticut Superior Court judge, who is now a visiting professor at Quinnipiac University School of Law where she teaches evidence and critical race theory. Here, Judge Robinson explains what critical race theory is, and why she believes it’s become a top right-wing target.
JUDGE ANGELA C. ROBINSON: Critical race theory is really an academic movement that takes place in graduate school. You know, there are very few undergraduate colleges that even offer a class called critical race theory. I think the latest stats show only about 300 colleges in America offer a critical race theory classes. And that’s out of about 4,000 colleges and universities.
So it’s really something you’re going to encounter at the graduate school level. And it is a movement that seeks to understand the interplay of the law. Initially, it started in legal academia on race. So when it was founded in 1989, it was to try to understand what role the law played in maintaining and defining race in order to disrupt racial hierarchy.
So it is not about trying to establish a hierarchy of one race over the other. It’s very much about trying to dismantle the hierarchy altogether. But essentially it is an approach, a movement, a perspective that says we have to address the issue of race in order to really achieve equity in our country.
SCOTT HARRIS: It’s true that there are literally no elementary, junior high, middle school or high schools that teach critical race theory. Tell us about what you think the motivation and the goal is here of activists on the right and Republicans generally taking a very hard position against critical race theory when it’s not even taught in public schools.
JUDGE ANGELA C. ROBINSON: Thank you for underscoring that. It is absolutely not something that is taught in primary or secondary school. I think really this is a movement to try to stop conversations about race. I think it’s a way to try to maintain a status quo where a certain kind of education and a certain kind of perspective is presented to the exclusion of others and unfortunately, we’ve seen this happen before.
Race is used as a tool that is often used to divide us. And now that we’re getting to the point of actually beginning to teach and look for the truth of our racial history as a country, there’s great resistance to that.
SCOTT HARRIS: What about pushing back? What do you think parents and other people in their own communities who are confronting prohibitions on the teaching of anything to do with America’s racial history, slavery and the civil rights movement, on and on and on? What should people in communities be doing to push back against the folks who want to see these things censored from school curriculums?
JUDGE ANGELA C. ROBINSON: Well, I hope that most well-meaning, well-informed parents are going to push back against censorship in general. And so that, I think, is the first step, because we should not become a society that only allows certain voices and certain perspectives to be taught if we want to be enlightened. But the other thing I think parents can do is become better informed about race themselves. We really do not formally educate ourselves about race and race history.
And I think in order to actually come back and push back again, you need to be armed with facts. And so, I’m working on a book now on critical race theory for the nonacademic, for people who want to learn more about it.
And one of the chapters that I talk about is dismantling myths, legends, and lies. And so when we begin to actually just go back and learn our history and learn the myths that we’ve been taught, we can begin to talk back to some of the people who are arguing against what they call critical race theory.
SCOTT HARRIS: Judge Robinson, at the same time, we’ve seen this push against critical race theory in the teaching of race relations and racial history in America, we’ve also seen blacklists of books being pushed by folks who want to see books removed from school libraries and the prohibition of all manner of discussion of race, sexual preference, and a whole range of issues that are very much at the forefront of the Republican culture wars.
JUDGE ANGELA C. ROBINSON: I really never thought I’d live to see the day when we would be having such a serious discussion about censorship. And one of the things I think is very dangerous about it is that it is a gateway. So we hear a lot about the movement against critical race theory. But what we hear a little bit less is that most of the bills and legislation that are being passed at the state level are not only trying to ban critical race theory, but any discussion about sexism or patriarchy.
And so, the attacks are not just to stop talking about race. They’re to stop talking about sexism. They’re to stop talking about gender identity issues. I hope we mobilize and confront the efforts to silence and censor, because I’m an educated person and I think education leads to liberation. My job is not to try to persuade you that you should adopt a critical race theory perspective. My job is just to show you what it is and then you can look and determine for yourself.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Judge Angela C. Robinson (26:00) and see more links in the Related Links section of this page.
