CRT examines how the concept of race has shaped our laws and the experiences of all people. In evaluating the validity of CRT, consider:
- American chattel slavery was a de jure institution built on race.
- At the end of slavery, emancipation was undermined by the passage of Jim Crow laws, which discriminated on the basis of race.
Legally sanctioned bigotry and race-based violence shaped my family’s lived experiences and life choices.
The interconnection between race, law, and experience can be seen throughout our history and remain present today. Ironically, even the bans on teaching CRT provide proof of the theory’s validity.
CRT is primarily taught in higher education, and I have not seen it taught in any school district in which I’ve worked. However, as an educator, I promote teaching history that allows our children to see the beauty and blind spots of our democracy.
A more perfect union is what the founders of our nation wanted. To achieve this, we must teach in a way that calls attention to the long-established systems that reinforce racism and uphold racial inequity.
A pedagogy grounded in racial justice benefits all students because it allows them to:
- Become critical thinkers who can empathize with people different from themselves.
- Compete in the global society as individuals who are knowledgeable about the lives, experiences, and cultures of others.
- Actively respond to and engage with racism and other issues that challenge our democracy.
As Rocio Inclan, senior director of the National Education Association’s Center for Social Justice, states, “Racial justice is not an add-on to the curriculum. It is the way that you teach when you center on the students and when you center on the truth. [The end result] is a system where the vision and promise of public education is actualized.”
Exactly 100 years separate when my great-grandfather Lodrick Jr. left Georgia and when I returned to support the Atlanta Public Schools in breaking historical patterns of inequity that have resulted in too few children succeeding. My family’s history is intimately connected with the educational realities that I am grappling with today.
As educators, we are charged with creating engaged citizens who uphold our democratic and pluralistic ideals. Through our classroom praxis, we create citizens who understand our motto of E pluribus unum and who value liberty and justice for all.
Therefore, if we want to create a more perfect union, we must start in the classroom, and we must indeed teach to change the world.
Tauheedah Baker-Jones, Ed.L.D. ’21, is the Chief Equity and Social Justice Officer, Atlanta Public Schools.