Racial injustice exists across the U.S. — including SLO County. Banning CRT makes it worse
I am a white woman and the parent of two local elementary school children. It is important to me that they learn the history of their nation.
When a school board seeks to ban something from its curriculum, I am on high alert. The recent decision to ban Critical Race Theory from the classroom by the Paso Robles Joint Unified School District sounds the alarm, to be sure.
Though the definition of Critical Race Theory is under debate, it seems pretty simple to me. If I had to boil it down to one sentence, it would be this: CRT looks at racism in terms of systems rather than individual bias.
Racism against BIPOC folks isn’t the twisted playground of a prejudiced, evil few. CRT moves away from identifying who is “racist” and who is not. It doesn’t focus on good guys and bad guys, does not seek to vilify any specific group or induce generational shame. Despite what the Paso Robles Joint Unified School District would have us believe, CRT does not take sides.
Instead, it looks at racist systems that are — indisputably, factually, traceably — baked into our nation’s development.
Examples include, but are by no means limited to the fact that, according to The White House Historical Association, “enslaved laborers participated in every stage of building construction” on the United States White House, and the fact that, up until its abolition, slavery carried the U.S. economy to the tune of $3.5 billion dollars. Yale history professor David W. Blight says that made slavery “the largest single asset in the entire U.S. economy ... worth more than all railroads, more than all manufacturing, all other assets combined.”
Slavery is no longer legal, and Jim Crow may be dead, but their legacy is palpable. So what does systemic racism look like? Here’s an example that hits close to home for me.
The house my husband and I bought three years ago in San Luis Obispo has what’s called a “racial covenant” on it, as do most of the homes in our neighborhood. When the development began in 1940, our deed said no one other than a white person can live on our land with the notable exception of domestic servants.
This is an excerpt from our actual deed:.
“No persons of any race other than the Caucasian race shall use or occupy any building or any lot, except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by servants of a different race domiciled with an owner or tenant.”
Yes, such discrimination was made illegal with the Fair Housing Act of 1968, but because people of color couldn’t own homes here until well into the mid-twentieth century, they couldn’t earn equity here, couldn’t pass wealth down to children here, couldn’t get a foothold here, etc. Real estate is the primary way people accumulate and pass wealth in this country. The result? People of color don’t live in our neighborhood, and are 10 times less likely to be able to afford a home here if they want to move in.
If you bought a home in our development in 1940, were you automatically racist? Not at all. But the policy was written to “run with the land” “forever” (actual words in our home deed) and it had the desired effect. It will for generations.
That is systemic racism: the laws have changed but the effects remain, with real consequences. CRT just connects the dots.
Of course, as in any facet of education, there will be teachers who understand and teach CRT concepts well, and those who don’t. There will be as many approaches to teaching CRT as there are teachers. This is to be expected. Educating and supporting our educators is key.
Lately I’ve seen many proponents of banning CRT in Paso Robles invoke Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., calling for unity. But Dr. King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
We see this injustice in neighborhoods across America. We see it in the appreciation of homes in previously covenanted neighborhoods; in the property taxes that go to those neighborhoods’ schools; in the funds raised by high-resource PTAs in those neighborhoods for field trips, art and music teachers. Even when racist policies disappear, the exclusion and poverty they wrought live on.
Undoing the effects of systemic racism feels like a Sisyphean undertaking. But refusing to acknowledge that systemic racism even exists makes it an impossible one.
There is no unity without accountability. We can’t be united states without looking at the legacy of America’s racism. Banning the inclusion of CRT-style curriculum amounts to nothing less than censorship, and the proof will be in the pudding: If we can’t be humble enough to teach our children the hard truth of our shared history, if we can’t be flexible enough to look squarely at it, what kind of coddled, entitled, misguided generation will we raise?
Jaime Lewis is a writer in San Luis Obispo. With RACE Matters SLO, she produced the film “Restrictions Apply: A short documentary about racism in the happiest city in North America.”
This story was originally published September 7, 2021 at 10:43 AM.