Critical Race Theory For (and Against) Children
Having persuaded many adults of the merits of critical race theory, its advocates have begun to teach it to children by means of books. There is a picture book to be read to toddlers, Antiracist Baby (2020) by Ibram X. Kendi. And there are several books to be read by children: This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do the Work (2020) by Tiffany Jewell; Black, White and Beyond: Racism and Intolerance Made Plain and Simple for Kids (An Anti Racist Children’s Book (2020) by Vera Heath; Stamped (For Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You (2021) by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds; and The Antiracist Kid: A Book About Identity, Justice, and Activism (2022) by Tiffany Jewell.
The Claim to Systemic Racism
In these books, children are told that “the world is sick; our societies are being torn apart in hatred and violence” because of “the evil called racism.” The United States in particular is a deeply and systemically racist country: “From the beginning, racist ideas have been stamped into the United States—into the Constitution, laws, policies, practices, and beliefs.” With “racist attitudes being our everyday normal,” “people and our institutions create a solid structure of racism through policies, rules, and opportunities that give more resources to one group than to another.” To bolster this claim to systemic racism, contemporary American life is described in terms befitting the Jim-Crow South: “Racism is everywhere. Racism is in every town, city, state, and country. Racism is in hospitals and schools, museums and libraries. Racism is at the parks and aquariums.”
Further, “our racist ways of existing” “affect all of our lives in a very real and hurtful way every day.” There is “systematic oppression of BIPoC folx [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color folks],” who, it is said alarmingly, are “harmed, oppressed, and killed every day.” Indeed, the child of color is told in no uncertain terms that you are “living in a society that does not want you to exist.” What will impressionable children, especially children of color, make of such horrors?
This gruesome image of “our racist society” is supported by an assortment of “absolutely true facts,” which, however, are unsubstantiated and dubious. For instance, the main reason that Americans sought independence from Britain was to maintain slavery as their “cash machine,” when they were faced with the prospect of slavery being outlawed by Britain. “To be black is to always be perceived guilty even before trial.” “Doctors in America treat Black and White patients differently, even when they have the same health issues.” “Immigrants being denied healthcare due to lack of citizenship” proves “that there is a long history of racism in medicine.” And the movie “Planet of the Apes put the racist fear of the ‘dark’ world rising against the White conqueror on the big screen,” so that people would be “comparing Black people to monkeys and apes.”
Disparities in attainment, such as the facts that “while 69% of white people own homes, only 44% of Black folx do,” that “the median white family [has] 41 times more wealth than the median Black family,” and that “less than 20% of teachers . . . are Folx of the Global Majority,” are solely attributed to racist discrimination to the disregard of any other factors, such as socio-economic circumstances, personal preferences and cultural characteristics. The same holds true of the claims that “our schools [are] more segregated today than they were during the time of legal segregation,” and that “there are still all-White (or almost all-White) neighborhoods and schools and still Black (or almost all-Black) or non-White neighborhoods and schools,” as if such segregation were entirely due to racist discrimination.
Contemporary laws and policies are construed as racist on the mere grounds that they supposedly have negative consequences for black people, combined with the imputation that these consequences are intended. For instance, the “Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act by the administration of Bill Clinton” in 1994 “ caused the largest increase of the prison population in United States history,” consisting of “mostly Black men. Which reinforced the racist ideas that ‘Black people are violent’ and that ‘Black people are mostly criminals.’” In 2002, “racists found a new way to make public education a weapon” in the standardized testing made mandatory by the No Child Left Behind Act, for “test results in underfunded and segregated schools . . . [were] used to support the age-old racist idea that Black people aren’t as smart as White people; that Black and White people are biologically different.”
Overall, anything problematic in connection with people of color is solely attributed to the systemic racism that allegedly pervades American society. It is true, of course, that there are still people in American society—mostly whites—who harbor racist ideas and, to a lesser extent, behave accordingly. However, the claim that American society is shot through with policies and institutions that intentionally oppress people of color and make it systemically racist is plainly false. This falsehood is suggested first by the flawed empirical support provided by these books, as shown above. Second, if the United States were really such a horrible place for people of color to live, then why would so many of them—tens of millions—have moved here voluntarily in the hope for a better life?
Third, the claim to systemic racism is disproven most directly by the many institutional measures taken by government, schools, colleges, and corporations to advance people of color. Affirmative action in hiring and college admissions are normal practices. Standardized admissions tests, if they are allowed at all, are often ‘race-normed’ to benefit people of color by lowering their thresholds. There are many grants for students of color that cover tuition and living expenses. School curricula not only stress non-discrimination and multiculturalism but have embraced many ideas from critical race theory. DEI offices in government and corporations promote diversity, equity, and inclusion by training employees and punishing offenders. State licensing requirements mandate implicit bias training. And many high-ranking politicians and government administrators have embraced the claim to systemic racism put forth by critical race theory.
In addition to these direct efforts, federal, state, and local governments also provide substantial support to the poor—and thus to people of color—through thousands of welfare programs: Medicaid, Obamacare, Children’s Health Insurance Program, food stamps, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, student Pell Grants, Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, etc. The magnitude of these support measures can be seen from the fact that such government programs provided an average annual transfer payment of $45,389 to every household in the bottom 20% quintile of earned-income in 2017, with the result that these households’ after-tax income amounted to no less than 75.6% of the after-tax income of households in the 40% to 60% quintile, which represents the middle class.
None of these counterfactuals are even hinted at in these children’s books, obviously because they don’t fit the narrative of critical race theory. But this doesn’t detract from the fact that its claim to systemic racism in American society is false. Indeed, given the amount of obfuscation that goes into the making of this claim, it deserves to be called a myth.
Categorizing People by Their Identities
To make children aware of their “identity,” that is, “everything that makes you who you are,” critical race theory teaches them that “if you are white, upper middle class, cisgender, male, educated, athletic, neurotypical, and/or able-bodied,” you are in the box “we call ’the dominant culture.’” Otherwise, “if you do not fit in this box, you are considered to be part of what’s called the ‘subordinate culture’” of the “systematically oppressed.” The categories of the systematically oppressed are many: “Black, Brown, Indigenous People of Color of the Global Majority, queer, transgender, and nonbinary folx, and cisgender women, youth, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, and non-Christian folx, folx living with disabilities, those living in poverty and many more.”
Since identity determines whether one belongs to the oppressors or the oppressed, it is a most serious matter for children to determine their identity, especially their racial identity. More precisely, children are to choose their identity because critical race theory holds that identity is ultimately a matter of consciousness. While drawing an “identity map” in school, Shawn thus decides to use “he/him pronouns” and to be a “black cis boy,” who “lives with his two moms.” Ruby prefers to use “she/her pronouns” and sees herself as “multiethnic.”
Children, who are by nature color-blind and perceive each other as potential playmates and friends, are thus divisively told to put themselves and others into categories that are often in conflict. Children of color, in particular, are taught to think of themselves as inherently oppressed and thus to fear and resent white people as their oppressors. And white children are made to feel collectively guilty for racist acts they could not possible have committed.
A decisive factor in the identity game is power. Those whose identity places them in the subordinate box suffer oppression because they have been deprived of power by the system. Comically, we thus read that “children, teenagers . . . are oppressed” because they “have very little to no legal power in the United States.” Less comically, these books depict power as something that children ought to desire and exercise. Already, “Antiracist Baby is filled with the power to transcend.” The older child is told that you “will challenge racism . . . and use your power against it.” Indeed, children are taught that power equates to happiness: “words . . . can make us feel happy, like we have power” and “sad, like we do not have power.” Rather than teaching children that conflicts can be resolved by reason and civility, these books thus give them a bleak view of life as a struggle for power. Or, as one book puts it bluntly, “a war between the Black and White.”
Finally, according to these books, race is not a biological fact but a “social construction” made up by Europeans, who used it to justify their oppression and enslavement of people of color. Yet rather than deconstructing this oppressor-generated concept to teach children in liberal manner that all human beings ought to be respected as persons regardless of their race, these books double down on categorizing and dividing people by their racial identities. Thus, they lapse into a contradiction: when affirming the humanity of people of color, they stress that human beings sharing 99.9% of their genes, so that “no one should be judged at first glance on the basis of the color of their skin”; yet, when arguing that people of color are inherently oppressed and ought to be liberated, they make race an essential aspect of identity, for “if you claim to be color-blind, you deny what’s right in front of you” and reinforce racism by your inaction.
Cultural Relativism and the Sin of Assimilationism
Another aspect of this concern with differentiating people by their identity is a strong rejection of the norms of mainstream American culture: “The dominant culture,” that is, “people who are white, middle class, Christian, and cisgender . . . have established behavior, values, and traditions that are considered acceptable and the ‘norm,’” but “there really is no such thing as a normal way to be.” This denial of normality is intended to free children of color from the perceived need to conform to white ways and looks, by, for instance, straightening their hair. However, as with cultural relativism in general, this denial also makes people of different identities less able to understand each other. In other words, if there is no normal way, then society lacks the convergent behavioral expectations that enable people to get along and cooperate for mutual benefit. Critical race theory thus undermines the shared culture that holds American society together.
This rejection of mainstream norms comes out most strongly in the books’ condemnation of “assimilationists.” Assimilationists are said to be people of color who adopt values and behaviors from the white, dominant culture and thereby reinforce its racist ideas. In contrast, “antiracists” are people who consistently identify racism, take actions to dismantle it, and reject white culture in entirety because of its thoroughgoing racism. Indeed, critical race theory considers assimilationists to be racists because they are on the wrong side of the racist-antiracist dichotomy, which consists of the supposed fact that one is either “racist or antiracist—there’s no neutrality.” The blunt and tendentious question posed to children, “Do you want to be a segregationist (a hater), an assimilationist (a coward), or an antiracist (someone who truly loves)?” thus implies that both segregationists and assimilationists are racists.
To teach children that assimilationists are cowards and racists is harmful because there are many norms and behaviors of white culture that not race-specific, let alone racist, but simply represent standards of human decency and common morality, as well as requisites of success in a modern economy and society. For instance, respecting one’s teacher, waiting to take one’s turn, being courteous, avoiding foul language, not lashing out violently, etc. are not “internalized racist ideas in communities of color,” but necessary ways for people of all backgrounds to thrive together. To teach children of color the opposite tends to trap them in the self-defeating rejection of what is often described as ‘acting white.’
In the extreme, this anti-assimilationist rejection of the common morality can lead to the outright justification of criminal behavior. Thus, we read about the LA race riots of 1992 that “black Americans were . . . so pained and angered” by the police beating of Rodney King” that they took over neighborhoods in Los Angeles and expressed their frustrations . . . Frustrated, angry, and unheard, Black people burned stores and took merchandise.” In other words, children, and especially black children, are taught that violence is justified when one feels sufficiently frustrated, angry, and unheard.
Martin Luther King, Jr., who advocated non-violence and in liberal fashion wanted everyone to be judged by character rather than skin color, is thus conspicuously absent from a list of “activists and change-makers” and, indeed, is referred to as someone “who at times expressed assimilationist” ideas. Likewise, Barack Obama “had moments when he expressed antiracist thoughts. But, under pressure, he also fell back on assimilationist ideas,” such as, presumably, telling black men to father the children they sired.
Turning Children into Antiracist Activists
Beginning in the crib, children are tasked with abolishing the systemic racism that supposedly pervades American society: “Antiracist baby is raised to make society transform.” This transformation entails a serious duty for the child, who is bluntly told that “You are accountable to moving the moment forward to justice and liberation.” In particular, “being aware isn’t enough. You must take action.” Since “remaining silent . . . is not an option,” the child is told, “Be loud! Take up space!” Overall, you must “grow into your activism” and “resistance,” so that you can “disrupt” and “stand up to the adults” to “help to dismantle and work toward ending racism.”
For instance, when a child of color feels her body tense up when a white woman says that “social justice is an idea,” the child should say, ”I’m calling you out. Justice is not just an idea. It’s a necessity for life.” Or, when confronted with a liberally-minded teacher who says, “Well, I don’t see color. Race isn’t really an issue in my classroom,” the antiracist child should “interrupt” and “call her out” by exclaiming, “That’s not okay. . . . By working to actively not see the race/skin of your students and their families, you are denying them . . . their racial and ethnic background. . . . Your classroom only teaches the dominant culture of white supremacy.”
Indeed, the child is charged with making antiracist revolution: “Don’t be afraid of . . . the hurricane binding your liberation with mine . . . It is your cosmic task . . . You are an anti-racist youth. You live in justice and in truth. Don’t be afraid of the rage that will erupt . . . Don’t be afraid to disrupt. Agitate the system and be abrupt.”
According to liberal thought, children ought to be free to develop without being overly shaped by their parents and teachers. Critical race theorists pay lip service to this idea when it suits them, namely, when telling children that they are free to choose any identity, reject the norms of a supposedly racist society, and stand up to adults. Yet, in their obsession with racism, they feel justified to mold innocent children into foot soldiers of their antiracist revolution. In so doing, they prematurely politicize the young and yoke them to a gratuitous adult endeavor.
How Critical Race Theory Harms Children
Critical race theory takes a harmful approach to child development. Children are given a thoroughly false image of the contemporary United States as a deeply racist society, whose institutions are intentionally designed to oppress and injure harm people of color. Speaking of nothing but horrors, this image is bound to traumatize children, especially children of color who are made to fear for their lives. In other words, critical race theory teaches children a myth—the myth of systemic racism—rather than preparing them for the real world.
The divisive categorization of human beings into antagonistic identities robs children of their natural and beneficial color-blindness, deprives them of their innocence, and needlessly makes them distrust each other. The false claim that there is no normal way of behaving makes it harder for them to grow into adults that work together. The false claim that the standards of mainstream culture are white and racist invites children of color to behave dysfunctionally and lessens their chances to thrive in American society. Denouncing people of color who embrace mainstream ideas as cowardly assimilationists pressures children to become antiracist extremists.
Instilling in children the false belief that society is a power struggle between oppressors and oppressed detracts from the very real possibility of a harmonious society based on rational and civil ways of conflict resolution. Collectively identifying white people as the oppressors teaches children to believe in collective guilt, and collectively identifying people of color as the oppressed reinforces the debilitating belief in perpetual victimhood that many of them unfortunately hold.
Finally, while teaching children to defend themselves against truly racist treatment is valuable, brainwashing them to become strident antiracist revolutionaries severely curtails their developmental freedom, sets them up for unnecessary conflict with adults, and prematurely burdens them with unwarranted political struggle.