What is critical race theory, the concept Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wants to ‘abolish’?

A Fort Worth school board meeting was roiled last week by protesters demanding an end to critical race theory.

The meeting came days after Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill banning the teaching of critical race theory in Texas classrooms. Abbott later placed the issue on the agenda for the legislature’s special session, saying he wanted lawmakers to go further to “abolish” critical race theory.

But researchers who deal with critical race theory in their work say the concept is being misunderstood and misconstrued.

Kerry Goldmann, a lecturer in the University of North Texas’ history department, said critical race theory is a theoretical framework that helps researchers look at how racial inequity has been built into American social systems over time, and how that inequity affects those social systems today.

For example, a researcher might use critical race theory to examine housing policy, Goldmann said. That researcher would look at the beginnings of housing inequity in the Jim Crow South, then follow through to redlining policies that denied loans and refinancing to homeowners in majority-Black neighborhoods during the New Deal and for decades after, then to how those policies led to urban decay. Although those policies are long gone, they still affect housing patterns and wealth distribution today.

Critical race theory started as an intellectual movement in the 1970s that attempted to explain why much of the progress gained during the Civil Rights Movement had either stalled or reversed over the decade that followed it, Goldmann said. It attempted to look at racism not in terms of personal prejudice, but rather how policies and social systems are set up in a way that disadvantages nonwhite people, she said.

Part of the problem in the current debate around critical race theory comes out of a conflation of terms, Goldmann said. She’s heard people use the terms “critical race theory” and “anti-racism” interchangeably. But those are different concepts, she said. Anti-racism focuses on the individual. It calls on people to reflect on their own biases and how structural racism has affected their lives. Critical race theory has little to do with the individual, and focuses instead on larger structural issues, Goldmann said.

“The people talking about it haven’t really read into it, so it’s become this kind of bogeyman,” she said.

Education leaders in Fort Worth and across the state have repeatedly said that critical race theory isn’t taught in K-12 classrooms. But Fort Worth Superintendent Kent Scribner told the Star-Telegram last month that teaching US history or social issues would naturally involve conversations about race.

Teachers need to be able to present a well-rounded historical education, he said. Scribner, who along with Dallas Superintendent Michael Hinojosa co-wrote a letter last month opposing the bill, said the debate around critical race theory “seems like a solution in search of a problem that doesn’t exist.”

But dozens of speakers at a Fort Worth school board meeting Tuesday called critical race theory divisive and accused schools of trying to indoctrinate children into a racist ideology.

Speaker Amy Curry said she’d taught her boys that racism is evil. Critical race theory would have them believe that they’re inherently racist, she said, and it would have Black students believe they’ll never be anything but oppressed victims. She said the concept sets America back decades.

“We should talk about our history. It’s not altogether pretty,” Curry said. “But teaching children to view everything based on skin color destroys Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream.”

Keffrelyn Brown, a professor of cultural studies in education in the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Education, said critical race theory can provide a lens to help researchers see structural racism and account for it.

Brown, who spoke during an online panel discussion organized by the nonprofit Education Writers Association, said she has used critical race theory when looking at the narratives in US history textbooks about violence against Black people. Critical race theory provided a framework to help her recognize what the way those stories are presented says about racism in education, she said. She’s also used the framework when looking at the experiences of students, particularly students of color, in teacher preparatory programs.

Brown said she doesn’t think it would make sense for classroom teachers to try to teach critical race theory, or any other theoretical framework. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t help them understand their students and the material they teach more clearly, she said.

“Critical race theory doesn’t need to be taught in school as a specific theory, but it helps us to understand race and racism,” she said.