The Roots of ‘Critical Race Theory’

June 29, 2021   |   By Frederica Freyberg, PBS Wisconsin

From PBS Wisconsin’s Here and Now program:

FREDERICA FREYBERG:

Meanwhile, earlier this month a group of state Republican lawmakers introduced legislation that would prohibit public schools, the UW and tech colleges from teaching critical race theory, a decades-old academic theory that holds that racism is systematic, built into societal institutions since the days of slavery. Gloria Ladson-Billings is one of the academics who first applied the critical race theory to her education policy research. She’s an emerita professor at UW-Madison and now the president of the National Academy of Education. But how does critical race theory cross over into today’s politics? To that, we ask Emeritus Professor John Witte. He’s a UW-Madison education policy expert who says the concept is widely misunderstood. And they both join us now and thanks for being here.

JOHN WITTE:

You’re welcome.

GLORIA LADSON-BILLINGS:

A pleasure.

FREDERICA FREYBERG:

Well, first to you, Professor Ladson-Billings, in layman’s terms, what is critical race theory?

GLORIA LADSON-BILLINGS:

It is an attempt to begin to understand racial disparity. If you look over the history of the nation, we started out in 1600 up into the mid-20th century literally saying that the reason that there were racial disparities is because there were biological and intellectual deficiencies. We’ve finally put that myth to rest and eugenics has fallen out of favor. I would say in the next few years we began to look at issues of equal opportunity. So we had the Brown decision. Certainly we had Reconstruction, we had the Brown decision, the civil rights movement, the Voting Rights Act. So we’ve had opportunities but they all get rolled back. We can show you clearly in the history of the nation that we roll those back. So critical race theory is yet another way to think about how do we understand racial disparity.

FREDERICA FREYBERG:

So Wisconsin U.S. Representative Glenn Grothman has introduced a bill banning its teaching saying the purpose of this retelling of American history is to try to set American against American, he says, and that, “the CRT curriculum that enlightened educators are regurgitating teaches our children hate – to hate each other and hate their country. There are no boogeymen holding people back because of where they or their ancestors are from.” Professor Ladson-Billings, what is your response to that?

GLORIA LADSON-BILLINGS:

The boogeyman is that CRT is in K-12 schools. It’s there as much as unicorns are there. It is not taught in the curriculum and I would probably advise Representative Grothman to go up Bascom Hill and look at the plaque about sifting and winnowing which sites an 1894 report that says this is a state that will not prohibit the search for the truth. They didn’t want Professor Ely in the 1800s to teach socialism. I’m very heartened by the fact that we had the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley said the other day that he had read Mao Tse Tung. He’d read Lenin. He’s read Marx. It didn’t make him a communist.

FREDERICA FREYBERG:

Does critical race theory teach to hate white people?

GLORIA LADSON-BILLINGS:

Absolutely not. In several of the interviews that I have done before I’ve done interviews with print reporters, I’ve sent them articles I’ve written and then when they contact me, I said, what in the article says that you should hate white people. They all agree, it’s not there. It is not there.

FREDERICA FREYBERG:

Professor Witte, we know that President Trump banned any federal training in critical race theory, white privilege or other what he called propaganda. A ban that is now rescinded but was that directive the genesis of politicizing critical race theory?

JOHN WITTE:

Oh, yes, it was. That and of course January 6th. It goes back to the whole problem, starts with January 6 and then Trump gets involved. But there are misunderstandings about — very different misunderstandings about what it means, I think. While Gloria I think has laid it out accurately, different people just simply interpret it differently. So the people that are proponents of it, again they point to the historic origins of it, slavery, and they also argue that it’s still a present problem now with inequities. The difference is that the opponents say that there’s a blame game here, that the current generation is somehow to blame for what happened historically and it’s their responsibility to rectify it. That’s where you get the huge divide and you get the very strident differences between those positions.

FREDERICA FREYBERG:

So what should we make of the way that proposals to ban critical race theory as a school subject are sweeping the nation?

JOHN WITTE:

Well, my view has been that because of the differences in opinion what it means, you should be very ginger about teaching it. I would not introduce it to elementary students or even middle schools. I do think it should be introduced in high schools because it’s part of current events. It’s all over the newspapers. It’s all over the news. It’s going to be all over this show tonight. And I hope that there are some high school kids out there watching and reading those things. I think there you can discuss it in a reasonable manner. But again, you got to approach it in a gingerly manner because you can get very bad feelings on both sides, both for African-Americans and for white people.

FREDERICA FREYBERG:

Professor Lawson-Billings, is it part of school curriculum now at the K-12 level?

GLORIA LADSON-BILLINGS:

It is not. It is not. I would not even introduce it in high school. It’s a theory. Who needs theory? Graduate students. Having spent 27 years on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, I never introduced it even to undergraduates. I worked with graduate students who are looking for a theoretical frame to bolster an argument and that’s where it resides.

FREDERICA FREYBERG:

Professor Witte, you have said you think actually a different term altogether should be used to discuss racial disparities. Why?

JOHN WITTE:

I would drop critical race theory and find other terms – whatever the faculty member prefers to deal with it – racial differences, inequities in race — however they want to phrase it. I don’t think — I disagree with Gloria here. I don’t think you should avoid it. Now, that’s partly what I do. I bring — for my whole career I’ve brought in controversial — the most controversial things I could find. We talked about abortion for example at the undergraduate level, very heated issues. I talked — I studied vouchers, educational vouchers, very heated issue in the education world. I talked about it straightforward and both sides given. I think the same thing should happen here. I think again you have to be very sensitive to doing it. I agree with her there. I agree with that because you got to always watch the faces of people to see who’s being harmed and who’s getting very angry. You can tell that when you have a discussion in the classroom. You can see it and watch for that.

FREDERICA FREYBERG:

I want to ask one last question quickly of you, Professor Ladson-Billings. Apart from the brouhaha over critical race theory, what is the importance of teaching culturally accurate history?

GLORIA LADSON-BILLINGS:

I’ve been very fortunate as the current president of the National Academy of Education that we have just put out a report on civic discourse and civic reasoning. That’s the place where I think we have to go as a nation. As John mentioned, January 6 showed us clearly we don’t know how to sit down and talk when we disagree. So that’s the work that we have to do, is figure out how do we have civil discourse, even when we don’t see the world the same way.

FREDERICA FREYBERG:

We need to leave it there. Professors, thank you very much for your insights.

GLORIA LADSON-BILLINGS:

Thank you.

JOHN WITTE:

Thank you.