Education

Meet 2 professors studying the faculty who teach critical race theory where it’s under fire

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Kaleb Briscoe’s and Veronica Jones Baldwin’s introduction to critical race theory came years ago when they were in graduate school.

Briscoe, now an educational leadership professor at Mississippi State University, and Jones Baldwin, a counseling and higher education professor at University of North Texas, both anchor their scholarship in diversity and institutionalized racism. 

They found critical race theory — a decades-old academic framework that examines racism’s structural nature — matched their interests. They said it still guides their teaching practices today.

What was, however, a relatively obscure school of thought has over the last 2 1/2 years been catapulted onto a national platform and demonized by conservatives. They say it encourages divisiveness and teaches White people to feel shame for sordid parts of history in which they played no part. 

Kaleb Briscoe

Kaleb Briscoe

Courtesy of Kaleb Briscoe

 

Policymakers from Congress down to local K-12 school boards have proposed and sometimes passed measures aimed at curtailing instruction of critical race theory, as well as broader topics linked to race, diversity and inclusion. 

Briscoe and Jones Baldwin want to know more about how these limitations trickle down into the K-12 and college classrooms. 

They are in the early phases of research, supported by a $50,000 Spencer Foundation grant, to study legislation nationwide, how lawmakers publicly present critical race theory, and their core arguments against it. The professors’ respective institutions also chipped in funding. 

Veronica Jones Baldwin

Veronica Jones Baldwin

Courtesy of Veronica Jones Baldwin

 

The duo is also interviewing faculty members who use critical race theory in their work and teach in states where such restrictions have arisen. They seek to encapsulate experiences of educators whose pedagogy has been harmed by anti-critical race theory policies. The project is called “Resistance or Racism? Unpacking Critical Race Theory Bans in a Sociopolitical Era of Anti-Racism.”

The professors intend to start presenting findings as early as next spring. Publication in a journal, involving a robust review process, will take far more time. 

Critical race theory “is all about capturing counternarratives, and the knowledge of those experiencing inequities, through their lens and their viewpoint,” Jones Baldwin said. “We want to break those dominant narratives in education.” 

A history of critical race theory

Critics say conservatives often distort critical race theory as an academic boogeyman — conflating it with subjects like diversity and unconscious biases — without publicly delving into its history. 

The conservative Goldwater Institute labels it as “a worldview — that believes all the events and ideas around us in politics, education, entertainment and the media, the workplace, and beyond must be explained in terms of racial identities.”

But critical race theory is more nuanced and continues to evolve. It first arose in the late 1970s and 1980s among legal scholars who sought to dissect White backlash against the civil rights movement. Congress had extended cornerstone protections in housing and education to Black Americans, but these were “temporary ‘peaks of progress,’ short-lived victories that slide into irrelevance as racial patterns adapt in ways that maintain White dominance,” as Derrick Bell, an attorney and one of critical race theory’s founders, described them.

Over time, critical race theory transcended the legal discipline into other subject areas, and became most known for its tenant that racism is systemic rather than merely relational.

It did not morph into a Republican buzzword until 2020, though, after then-President Donald Trump issued a September executive order barring diversity training among federal contractors and grant recipients, which public and nonprofit private colleges took to apply to them.

Almost immediately, amid fear of having their federal funding seized, some colleges began to pause their inclusion efforts.

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