The Daily - The Debate Over Critical Race Theory

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

In Loudoun County, Va., a fierce debate has been raging for months inside normally sleepy school board meetings.At the heart of this anger is critical race theory, a once obscure academic framework for understanding racism in the United States.How, exactly, did critical race theory enter American public life, and what does this debate look like on the ground?Guest: Trip Gabriel, a national correspondent for The New York Times. Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: In a culture-war brawl that has spilled into the country’s education system, Republicans at the local, state and national levels are trying to block curriculums that emphasize systemic racism.More than 20 states have introduced legislation restricting lessons on racism and other so-called divisive concepts.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, the intensifying national battle over critical race theory. I spoke with my colleague, Tripp Gabriel, about how a once obscure academic concept became a political rallying cry and is now at the heart of America's racial reckoning. Plus, the indictment of the Trump Organization.

It's Friday, July 2nd. Tripp, tell me about these school board meetings that you have been watching. So school board meetings tend to be very sleepy, hours-long affairs in most American school districts. But in Loudoun County, which is in the suburbs of Northern Virginia, the school board meetings in the last few months have been fiery and incendiary affairs. I will campaign against anyone and everyone who attempts to indoctrinate my children into the most racist of racist ideas. And the words that they've thrown out have been accusing the school district of practicing racism been accusing the school district of practicing racism

and accusing the school district of penalizing their children for being white. I will do everything I possibly can to fight to the bitter end until you prove to me that you are not teaching my children that they are racist just because they're white. Accusing the school district of being woke. You are now teaching, training our children to be social justice warriors and to lose our country and our history. Held captive to far left and even communist

and Marxist ideas. This is indeed American version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The critical race theory has its roots in cultural Marxism. It should have no place in our school. And what's driven this, Michael, is the issue of critical race theory, which has been injected into this school district in the suburbs in a very impassioned way lately. And what exactly is critical race theory?

It seems to have arrived with tremendous force in our national discourse, but without much of a definition or framework for examining how systemic racism is woven into American law and institutions and how those systems perpetuate an uneven playing field for people of color. And where does the theory come from? What's its backstory? It originated in the 1970s and the 1980s in law schools and was associated originally with Derek Bell, a professor at Harvard Law School. When I went to law school, the sense was that, well, with discrimination based in law being condemned by the Supreme Court, it was all over. And Bell's thinking behind what eventually became identified as critical race theory came out of the Civil Rights Movement. race theory came out of the civil rights movement. He and other academics were looking at cases like Brown versus Board of Education and the historic laws that passed in the 60s about voting rights,

about fair housing, about civil rights in general. And they were asking themselves, why had that not instantly created a fair and equal society in the United States? And well, now we see that that was wrong, that that was far, far too optimistic. And it seemed to me that racism is a permanent part of the American scene. And the concept was put forth that racism is not just an individual prejudice that Black Americans may experience on a daily basis, but that racism can be baked into institutions. It can be structural or systemic. And so how does this pretty high-level theory trip leap out of the academic world

and into the national vocabulary? It was pretty obscure in graduate schools for decades, but one of the earliest moments when it surfaced in public life was in the early 1990s. From NBC News, this is Today with Bryant Gumbel and Catherine Couric. And good morning. Welcome to Today on a busy Friday morning. You know what our top story is? Lani Guinier is in our Washington newsroom. We'll be talking with her. When President Bill Clinton nominated a law professor named Lani Guinier to the Department of Justice

and she had been associated with the ideas behind critical race theory. Fairness requires that we identify the racial cleavages that exist in our society in order to remedy them. So Republicans vigorously attacked her and many Democrats felt that

her views on how racism affects our democracy would actually make her a politically risky candidate. Claiming Guineer's writings lent themselves to views that he could not embrace, the president cut her loose rather than fight a divisive battle on Capitol Hill. And President Clinton actually ended up withdrawing her nomination. Hmm. So pretty early on, there's a sense among the political class, and especially those on the right, that this is a taboo concept seen as kind of out of bounds, out of mainstream. That's right. And when does it next emerge? So as we all know, last year, the country underwent a profound racial reckoning after the murder of George Floyd by police. And as part of that reckoning, some companies and government agencies increased their efforts to

raise awareness of implicit bias. They sent employees to diversity trainings, books like White Fragility and How to Be an Anti-Racist became bestsellers. But these anti-bias trainings and books and efforts to have more frank discussions about racism in America also provoked a degree of anger and a backlash among conservatives. It's at this point that critical race theory became a rallying cry,

which traces really to a single conservative activist named Chris Ruffo, who was given a megaphone by Fox News. And who is Chris Ruffo? Ruffo, who lives in the Seattle area, is a former filmmaker who became an activist writing for fairly obscure conservative publications. And last year, he began publishing reports about diversity trainings in workplaces and schools. And last year, he began publishing reports about diversity trainings in workplaces and schools. For example, he reported that the city of Seattle had invited white city employees to a training program that urged white workers to examine their, quote, complicity in the system of white supremacy. He went on to report on diversity seminars in the U.S. Treasury Department and other federal agencies in recent years. And at a certain point in early U.S. Treasury Department and other federal agencies in recent years. And at a certain point in early September...

So today we've asked Chris Ruffo to walk us through some of what is happening here. You should know the details. Tucker Carlson has invited Chris Ruffo to appear on his Fox News show. You know, Tucker, this is something I've been investigating for the last six months, and it's absolutely astonishing how critical race theory has pervaded every institution in the federal government. And there, Ruffo explained that these diversity trainings were driven by critical race theory. For the millions of viewers of Tucker Carlson's show, that may have been the very first time they'd actually heard the term.

Conservatives need to wake up that this is an existential threat to the United States. This is an existential threat to the United States and the bureaucracy... What is Chris Ruffo saying is the problem with these trainings and with this concept of critical race theory? I broke the story on the Treasury Department, which held a seminar earlier this year from a man named Howard Ross. And he told Treasury employees essentially that America was a fundamentally white supremacist country and... Treasury employees essentially that America was a fundamentally white supremacist country. He's saying that the intent of critical race theory is to inculcate a collective guilt among white people that they are responsible for the unequal outcomes in American society.

And asking white employees to accept their white privilege, accept their white racial superiority, privilege, accept their white racial superiority, and accept essentially all of the baggage that comes with this reducible essence of whiteness. And that white people are being pressured into owning this guilt through these trainings in corporate settings and in some cases in school settings. So in his telling, critical race theory is something that is inflicted upon white America in a way that creates shame, guilt, discomfort. And that's his problem with it. Correct. And beyond just complaining about critical race theory on Fox, Ruffo came prepared to the interview with Tucker Carlson to make a direct appeal to President Trump. a direct appeal to President Trump.

The president of the White House, it's within their authority and power to immediately issue an executive order abolishing critical race theory trainings from the federal government. He called on President Trump to issue an executive order. That it's something that he's denounced, this kind of Black Lives Matter and neo-Marxist rhetoric, but it's time to take action

and destroy it within his own administration. Huh. And so what happens? It turned out Donald Trump did see the episode on Fox News. Critical race theory and the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda. and ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together. And a few weeks after that... That is why I recently banned trainings in this prejudiced ideology

from the federal government and banned it in the strongest manner possible. President Trump signed an executive order curtailing diversity trainings in the government. The executive order prohibited trainings that would suggest that, quote, an individual by virtue of his or her race or sex bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. Today, I'm also pleased to announce that I will soon sign an executive order. President Trump also announced a commission which was to create a curriculum of so-called patriotic education for American schools, one that would reject the idea of systemic racism in U.S. history.

It will be called the 1776 Commission. And Michael, this was pointedly a response to the 1619 project that colleagues of ours at the New York Times had published in 2019 on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved people to America. Right. And that was an effort to reimagine the sweep of American history through the lens of anti-Black discrimination. And it became overnight controversial with conservatives. And so what is the result of these efforts that Trump put forth to curtail critical race theory at the federal level?

Almost nothing. I mean, on President Biden's first day in office, he rescinded the executive order and he canceled the 1776 commission. But at that point, the cat was out of the bag. Critical race theory. Critical race theory. Critical race theory says every white person is a racist. Instead of being used as a way of reexamining the past, critics will argue it's being used

as a tool to accentuate a cultural divide. With several states and localities moving to ban critical race theory from curriculums. Critical race theory had escaped into the conservative media, And Fox News has aired in the last several months literally hundreds of segments critical of critical race theory. It's been picked up by Republicans in state legislatures around the country who've introduced bills to limit or ban critical race theory's influence, primarily in schools. And interestingly, a lot of the language in those bills

echoes the language that was in Donald Trump's original executive order about critical race theory. Trip, is everything that you're just describing here, what Chris Ruffo is saying on Fox, what the Fox hosts are saying, what President Trump is articulating in his executive order, and what these state lawmakers are putting in these bills, is what they're all talking about actually critical race theory? Are they representing this in an accurate way? Not in any sense that the academics who initiated and studied critical race theory would likely recognize, but that's beside the point. Critical race theory has been turned into a political

cudgel by the right. And the first person to admit that is Chris Ruffo. This is a tweet that he wrote in March. He said, we have successfully frozen their brand, critical race theory, into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic And more and more people across the country, particularly parents, have been speaking out to denounce it. And it kind of reminds me of the Tea Party a decade ago. And it kind of reminds me of the Tea Party a decade ago, these grassroots gatherings of conservatives furious about the federal government. And we're seeing that at the local level in a place like Loudoun County, where school board meetings have become venues for enormous anger. It's not at big government, but it's at critical race theory. We'll be right back. So, Tripp, what do we need to know about Loudoun County, Virginia,

to understand why this battle, the battle over critical race theory, is playing out there? So, Loudoun County was just primed for this kind of confrontation over critical race theory is playing out there. So Loudoun County was just primed for this kind of confrontation over critical race theory. It is a county in northern Virginia that has experienced enormous demographic change over the last decade or so. Tech companies like Amazon have come in and have attracted more college-educated residents, have attracted a much more diverse group of residents, many more immigrants from abroad. That has shifted the politics from a county that used to vote consistently for Republicans to one that now votes consistently for Democrats. And that has shifted the demographics

of the school district from a majority white school population to a population that is no longer majority white. And as the school district has tried to reckon with some problems that came up as its population diversified, a backlash was generated by primarily white parents who perceived critical race theory as influencing and changing the way the school did business in ways that they disapproved of. And what was the trigger in Loudoun County for that backlash? So in 2019, the school district commissioned reports which showed some real discrepancies in how students of color and white students were faring in the school district. Students of color were disciplined at a higher rate than white students, for example.

Students of color were disciplined at a higher rate than white students, for example. Black and brown students graduated with advanced diplomas at a lower rate than white students. And a consulting group came in and held a series of focus groups and reported that minority students complained about the pervasive use of racial slurs and insults directed at students of color. So the school district looked at these issues and episodes not as isolated events, but as systemic. That is, they were part of a pattern caused by differences in how black and white students were treated. And what is their response to that? Administrators adopted what they called a plan to combat systemic racism. And it calls for things like banning the wearing of Confederate flag on students' clothes. The school district agreed to apologize for a history of having run in segregated schools.

But the biggest change that was introduced was really trainings of teachers and how to be sensitive to students of different backgrounds. And it calls for things like mandatory teacher training in, quote, systemic oppression and implicit bias. It called for teachers to develop, quote, a racial literacy. So as the school district rolls out these efforts to address racial issues in the district, a large group of parents rejects it and says, we're not having this. This is not what we want in our school district. And they form groups on Facebook to push back against it. They attend rallies. A teacher in the district speaks out in conservative media, denouncing the mandatory trainings as a kind of reverse racism. Ultimately, you know, the school board meetings become extremely contentious with scores of parents showing up to voice their disapproval and unhappiness.

Today is Tuesday, June 22nd, 2021, and I'm calling to order the fourth Tuesday school board meeting. I'd like to start off by thanking staff for facilitating... So all this anger culminated in the last school board meeting of the year. They have said shut up or get out to those who object to their equity and inclusion efforts. 250 people signed up to speak out about what they view as the influence of critical race theory alongside some other issues that have come up in the district. And what are the critical parents saying at this meeting?

They're angry at what they perceive that their students are being taught. Why is active grooming of our students allowed to take place under your watch? Why is indoctrination allowed to take place under your watch? They talk about students being indoctrinated into a view of America in which white supremacy was built into the Constitution and that American institutions perpetuate inequality and racism. If average outcomes of different racial groups are not equal, does LCPS conclude this is the result of racial discrimination?

If so, you are implementing the Marxist CRT ideology. Will you answer the question? A lot of parents connect that to Marxism or communism, the idea that we don't have a society of equal opportunity and that the solution to it has to be an equality of outcome. This board has a dark history of suppressing free speech. One man gave a very impassioned comments. You're teaching children to hate others because of their skin color.

I am disgusted by your bigotry and your depravity. It got so unruly that right after he spoke, the board voted to curtail the public comments to end them early. Madam chair, I move to end public comment. Thank you. The motion carries nine zero. Public comment is now ended. We will move to our next agenda item. But the spectators refused to clear the room, and one man was arrested for disorderly conduct, another was cited for trespassing. Wow.

The discord has become so angry that there's been an ongoing effort in the county to recall the majority of the school board members. Hmm. And Tripp, what has been the response from the school board to these angry meetings, to all this rancor? Do they talk at all about backing away from these plans to address racial problems that they found in the school system?

Or are they sticking with this plan? What's happening? They're sticking to their guns. I do not believe I can let the disruption that occurred in our boardroom this evening go unanswered. At the last school board meeting, the board chair, Brenda Sheridan, pushed back. But opponents of the school board who are pushing false stories about critical race theory have severely hurt our ability to do the jobs we were elected to do. She described how frustrating and scary it was for board members who had received death threats. We recently saw KKK flyers in Fairfax. Our own school board members are receiving graphic threats via email

and voicemail, and parents who support our work are afraid to speak up. She described critical race theory as a complete distortion of what was taking place in the curriculum and in the administration of the school district. And despite what the fear-mongering media tells you, no, critical race theory is not being taught in our schools, period. Aiming to make our schools a political battleground will not silence the work for our students. We will not back down from fighting for the rights of our students and continuing our focus on equity. At this point, is what's happening in Loudoun representative of what's happening around the

rest of the country? Is it an outlier at this point? Is it a forerunner of what we expect to happen elsewhere in the coming months? Is it a forerunner of what we expect to happen elsewhere in the coming months? So Loudoun County is the most extreme or dramatic example of how critical race theory has become a flashpoint in a school board. But we're seeing other examples of it around the country in school board elections and school board meetings. Attacks on critical race theory have become pretty common. It's also filtered up into politics more broadly. There's a Virginia governor's race this year in which critical race theory has become an issue. You know, candidates running for United States Senate on the Republican

side have introduced critical race theory as a key motivator to win primary races. It is a culture war issue that the right has discovered is a powerful motivator of its base electorate. And I fully expect this is an issue that will play a role in the midterm elections next year in all kinds of races. Chip, as I think about the history of this theory that you have just told us and how this is all playing out right now, I'm struck in a way by just how much the critics of this theory, or what they understand this theory to be, are kind of putting their cards on the table and saying openly, this concept and what it represents scares us. It makes us uncomfortable.

We fear what it means to be thinking about this and teaching it, how it makes us feel, how it might make our children feel. Because critical race theory, whether it's being accurately portrayed here or not, they seem to be saying it's asking us to do something, and that something is to give up certain visions of the United States and of themselves that they have been taught for a really long time, right? The United States is equal and fair and meritocratic and they seem to be saying that is hard and we don't want to do it. Michael, there's a genuine conflict in our country

on how to understand the idea of systemic racism. Very few Americans would deny that slavery and the century of segregation and Jim Crow were shameful chapters in U.S. history. But things get sticky when the concept of systemic racism is introduced, and people feel that they're being asked to accept that America is racist to the root in its institutions. So I think that's what's at the bottom of this.

It is the sense that, yes, we do recognize that America has many dark chapters in its institutions. So I think that's what's at the bottom of this. It is the sense that, yes, we do recognize that America has many dark chapters in its past, but no, we're not on board with the conclusion that America is inherently or systematically racist, and that as people within that system, we all bear some collective responsibility for how it continues to create an unequal playing field for people of color. So at its core, this is about whether a large group of Americans, a group that is mostly white but not just white, can or should accept the idea that racism is not merely historical, not a relic, but something very present and systemic and something that everybody needs to take responsibility for. Yes, I think that's right.

Mm-hmm. And they seem to be saying in this critique of critical race theory, CRT, that the answer is no. That's right. But Tripp, as a country, and you documented this in the description of how Loudoun County changed, more and more Americans are accepting that idea

and understanding that America's long-held image of itself as fair, as meritocratic, as present-day, not systematically racist, is incomplete or flawed. And that's what we saw over this last year of protests and racial reckoning. So it feels like that discomfort and that backlash from some Americans will presumably be a fact of life for quite some time. So Michael, President Biden recently went to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Thank you.

Please, if you have a seat, sit down. To mark the 100th year after the Tulsa race massacre in 1921. For much too long, the history of what took place here was told in silence, cloaked in darkness. And in his speech there, he talked about systemic racism. Right. What happened in Greenwood was an act of hate and domestic terrorism with the through line that exists today still. And he described the massacre of African Americans in Tulsa as having been driven by a hatred.

And that hate became embedded systematically and systemically in our laws and our culture. Which the president said had influenced and continued to influence American institutions. Mm-hmm. We can't just choose to learn what we want to know and not what we should know. And so to hear the President of the United States express that idea and knowing that a

increasing number of Americans likely do feel the same way about American history, if this concept makes another large group of Americans uncomfortable, that discomfort is not going to be fading away. That discomfort is going to be a defining element of our social and political life for a very long time. Chip, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you, Michael. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. On Thursday, the Manhattan District Attorney charged the Trump Organization with running an illegal 15-year-long scheme to help its executives avoid paying taxes by concealing their benefits. As part of the indictment, one of those executives, the company's chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, was charged with failing to pay taxes on $1.7 million in perks, including cars and an apartment that should have been reported as income. The indictment of Weisselberg is widely seen as an attempt to gain his cooperation

in a larger case against former President Trump himself. But the odds of his cooperation are uncertain. Weisselberg, who has worked with Trump for decades, pleaded not guilty on Thursday and vowed to fight the charges. And in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court has upheld voting restrictions in Arizona, signaling that challenges to a wave of new Republican laws making it harder to vote will face a hostile reception from the court's conservative majority. For Democrats, the decision was a closely watched test of whether the Voting Rights Act of 1965, already weakened by the Supreme Court, could be

used to fight state restrictions on voting by arguing that the laws disproportionately hurt minority voters. Today's episode was produced by Diana Nguyen, Nina Potok, Sydney Harper, Eric Krupke, and Luke Vanderplug, with help from Stella Tan. It was edited by Anita Bottigio, engineered by Brad Fisher, and contains original music from Mary Lozano and Dan Powell. The Daily is made by Lisa Tovin, Rachel Quester, Lindsay Garrison, Annie Brown, Claire Tennisgetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon-Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Chris Wood, Jessica Chung, Stella Tan, Thank you. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly.

Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Theo Balcom, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Sophia Milan, Des Ibequa, Erica Futterman, Wendy Doerr, and Elizabeth Davis-Moorer. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Tuesday after the holiday.