JWW ON CRITICAL RACE THEORY PART II: TAKING ON THE MYTHS

Our last post laid out the definition of critical race theory (CRT) as developed by the legal scholars who’ve led and participated in the CRT movement since its inception in the mid-1980s.  We explained the differences among us about interpreting the definitions offered bythose scholars and we set out CRT’s six most fundamental principles for considering racial issues in legal contexts. Now we take on perhaps a bigger task – sorting through the misinformation about CRT perpetrated not only by right wing zealotseager for an attack on any effort at understanding the true history of race in America and its impact on our laws and norms, but also by ordinary people who’ve bought into the disinformation campaign now swirling around CRT.

CRT has become shorthand for every program, every effort aimed at uncovering America’s true racial history. Those

squawking loudest about CRT don’t want to uncover that history in hopes of maintaining the status quo. We think it important that Americans know CRT isn’t the enemy and that laws aimed at keeping the truth about our history hidden do liberty, justice, and equality no favors.  

The Myths

As we explained last time, right wingcommentators like Tucker Carlson and Mark Levine have blasted out dire warnings about what CRT could do to our society. Those warnings rest on falsehoods and myths the right has pushed about CRT:
·    Schools are using CRT to teach childrento hate America – as we pointed out, hardly any elementary or secondary schools incorporate CRT into their curriculum. More importantly, CRT does not advocate hating America. Only law schools (and maybe a few graduate schools) would dare trying to teach the complicated concepts that go with real CRT. We’ve watched the eyes of college graduates glaze over when we’ve delved into detailed CRT analysis. This may represent the most dangerous and outrageous falsehood ginned up in the current craziness.  

·    CRT “disregards” the idea all people are created equal -- buying into this mythdemonstrates the distinction between CRT’s real focus and what the right claims it does. Our study of original works describing or applying CRT makes clear this notion hasno basis in fact. We suggest anyone adhering to this idea read Derrick Bell’s Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. The book endorses no such idea. Bell helped popularize the concept of CRT in the American lexicon during his distinguished academic career. 

·    CRT is inherently divisive – parents objecting to CRT have advanced this noble sounding idea in opposition to teaching CRT in schools.As we’ve pointed out, nobody is teaching CRT in schools, except perhaps colleges, law schools, and professional schools.  We suspect this kind of criticism actually aims at preventing a more honest picture of America’s racial history. Those who object to such honesty should at least get their facts straight. If they don’t want more honesty about America’s racial history, they should say so, not blame a theory they understand marginally or not at all.

CRT has come to encompass all efforts at greater honesty about America’s history withrace. Conservatives have tried equating CRT with the 1619 Project, an award-winning journalism program developed by the New York Times that promotes a more realistic look at how slavery,in particular, actually unfolded and affected race relations in America. The right hopes Americans can’t tell the difference between CRT and other anti-racism efforts.

What the Fight Really Means

We see it as unfortunate that CRThas become a  bogeyman/whipping boy in the culture wars. CRT has a meaningful place in legal scholarship. It represents the work of some of America’s best legal minds on a topic that has troubled this nation since its inception. If our grandchildren attend law school, we know they’ll still learn about the law and the impact of racial considerations on the law. They may find CRT useful in grasping that subject.

By grabbing on to CRT, an obscure, decades-old legal theory that only the most elite academics fully understand and making it the whipping boy for simmering racial grievance, the right has found a way to take attention from its failings of leadership and its lack of ideas for governing.   Republicans apparently have given up on being a party of ideas. They offer nothing at the federal level

and only voter suppression at the state level. Republicans now care about little more than acquiring and keeping power. If they have ideas about moving America forward on tough issues that affect people’s lives – health care, finishing the job on the, pandemic, infrastructure, climate change – they aren’t telling us about them. Instead, they’ve ginned up this CRT dust storm.  Such side shows demonstrate their immaturity and unfitness to lead.

 

·  CRT involves making white students hate themselves and their ancestors – CRT tools and principles offer methods of analysis of how law operates in our society and how racism often influences law. That’s a far cry from indoctrinating someone to hate themselves.

 

What they won’t find helpful is the debate that erupted over CRT in 2021. That debate concerns politics, not legal analysis. Republicans, looking at a shrinking portion of the electorate (remember, they’ve lost the popular vote in every presidential election since 1988 except one) apparently feel they must do two things : (1) keep their base agitated and (2) troll for more angry white voters potentially attracted to their grievance politics. Misrepresentations about the meaning and purpose of CRT offer the best possibilities.

People say America needs two vibrant political parties. At some level, that’s true. It doesn’t need this Republican Party.    

MOVING AHEAD WITH A JANUARY 6 SELECT COMMITTEE PROBE

DEMOCRATS TAKE THE HIGH ROAD AND

DO WHAT NEEDS DOING

                                                

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) has moved ahead with plans for a select committee that will investigate the January 6 insurrection at the U.S.

Capitol. Pelosi named eight committee members and designated Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson the chair. She  took the action following a June 30 House vote, mainly along party lines, favoring establishment of such a panel. That, in

turn, followed Senate rejection of a bipartisan, 9/11-style commission that would have investigated the events of January 6. Five people died as a result of the riot, including a police officer.  The dangerousness and brutality of the insurrectionists become more evident with each Justice Department release of new January 6 video.

Despite our preference for a bipartisan commission, we say Democrats have taken the only reasonable course Republicans left to them. It was a step they had no choice but to take. Congress had to fulfil its obligation to investigate what happened and decide who’s ultimately responsible.

A fierce urgency demands that  Congress find out who bears responsibility for the January 6 insurrection. In a democracy, not moving forward with an investigation of a matter like this would have been a dereliction of duty.

After Senate Republicans nixed the bipartisan commission option, only the select committee approach remained.  Republicans can complain all they want about the “partisan” nature of a select committee inquiry, but they could have prevented this circumstance. They declined the bipartisan commission under pressure from former President 

Donald Trump, who wants  nothing that might pin the blame on the person likely most responsible -- him. Republican fidelity to Trump’s wishes eviscerates the party’s viability as a defender of democracy and the nation’s most cherished ideals.       

 

The Urgency

Anyone who looks at the video or reads the published accounts of January 6 can only conclude that what occurred was an insurrection in the classic sense of the term – an effort at overthrowing the democratically expressed will of the people. We contend those who won’t recognize the events of January 6 as such now stand as opponents of democracy and are at war with the United States. A functioning democracy seeks out and holds accountable people who did what the insurrectionists did.

Fidelity to core American values requires that both

the general public and elected officials pursue full accountability for those who orchestrated and participated in what happened.  The public should, through social media, blogging, letters to the editor, and every other legal means, promote the need for that full accountability.

Meanwhile, elected officials owe a duty because of an oath they must uphold. That oath obligates them to protect and defend the United States Constitution. Those who won’t do that should resign their offices.

No one should believe the forces unleashed that day will just disappear. Trials of some of the 500 people already charged may tell us something

about the continuing threat posed by the right wing, white supremacist groups believed at the center of the January 6 riot. Trials, however, with their focus on the guilt or innocence of individuals, can never reveal the whole story of something like January 6.  That limitation makes the work of the select committee essential. It must find out who bears responsibility and let the nation know. Then, the country and its government can take steps that would prevent a repeat.

 

Committee Membership

Pelosi’s selection of Republican Representative Liz Chaney of Wyoming generated the most attention

among the members named. Republicans kicked Cheney out of her leadership role in their caucus because she voted in favor of Trump’s impeachment. She was one of two Republicans who backed a select committee

investigation (Adam Kinzinger of Illinois was the other). Chaney’s been adamant that Congress should get to the bottom of the January 6 incident.

In addition to Chairman Thompson, Pelosi put three Californians, Zoe Lofgren, Adam Schiff, and Pete Aguilar on the panel. Florida’s Stephanie Murphy, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, and Elaine Luria of Virginia round out the group.

That left the question of who, if anyone, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy would name.

McCarthy led the Republican complaints about “partisanship” in the process. His whining sounded hollow, given the fact he rejected the bipartisan commission, despite having gotten everything Republicans asked for in talks that led up to the vote on the measure that would have created a commission.

Thompson indicated the select committee won’t waste time getting to work. Its first hearings could come before the end of July. We’d welcome that. We believe those unwilling to find out what really happened now stand in opposition to democracy. The sooner Congress and the public can call out

exactly who falls into that category, the better. Are we or are we not a democracy? Congress bears the responsibility, starting with the work of this select committee, of providing us with an answer to that central question.

THE PRESIDENT’S LIEUTENANTS

WORKING IN A SHAME FREE ZONE

It was a sad sight -- President Trump’s top aides, one by one,

shamelessly verifying his calm and stable demeanor after he stormed out of a May 22 infrastructure meeting with Democratic Congressional leaders. The spectacle made us wonder why Trump’s assistants stick with him when faced with such demeaning duty. We have no special insight into this, though all three of us formerly held formal or informal positions beside high level state political leaders. That experience provides a reference point for understanding what seems a humiliating assignment.

In considering why Trump’s top aides, many of whom strike us from afar as at least capable of rationality, remain loyal and will humiliate themselves, we offer three broad explanations. First, we suspect, some act out of self-interest; they care most about keeping their jobs. A second group may work in awe of the aura that goes with holding a White House staff job. Finally, some may have ideological reasons for their attachment to Trump and will pay any price for advancing that ideology, including serving a President who habitually lies and demands participation in, support for, and endorsement of his lies and other destructive behavior. 

Keeping the Job

We know little about the economic circumstances of Trump’s staff people. Though many of his cabinet officers are multi-millionaires, younger staff aides like news secretary

Sanders defending Trump anti-Jewish statement Mar2019

 (Click here to view ABC News video)

Sarah Huckabee Sanders often come from more modest situations. Having a White House staff job may represent a life-long ambition. For a person so motivated, even the likelihood of easily finding another job wouldn’t stop that individual from doing self-demeaning things that assure keeping the dream job.

Someone who grew up in      Republican politics, always hoping they could serve in a presidential administration, might have difficulty leaving a White House staff job, regardless of economic consequences or personal humiliation. For such a person, the question becomes, “How high do I have to jump?” We don’t know how many, or which, of Trump’s aides fall into this category, but we’re sure some must. We certainly saw such people in the political organizations in which we worked.  

The White House Aura

This idea resembles the previous one, but isn’t identical. We saw people taken by the majesty and prestige of working in a governor’s office, so we can only guess how strongly that might motivate in the White House. These people may not have even needed the job; they just wanted the ego boost they got from being around power and seeing themselves at the center of something important. 

We’re reminded of a scene in the very last episode of the award winning television series The West Wing. With the Bartlet Presidency over and a new President inaugurated, Chief of Staff C.J. Cregg walks out of the White House where she encounters a man and his young child. The man asks Cregg, played by Allison Janney, if she works at the White House. She answers, “No. No, I don’t.”  The man shakes his head in awe and says, “Must be something.” That kind of reverence undoubtedly motivates some people, allowing acceptance of even the kind of degrading experience Trump put his staff through after that infrastructure meeting.

Ideology

These people fall into two distinct groups but, conceptually, the

same thing motivates them. Eric Hoffer described them in his famous book, The True Believer.  They hold a rabid commitment to an ideological agenda and nothing else matters much. A single issue motivates some, while support for Trump’s general nationalist ideology drives others. With both groups, Trump’s behavior doesn’t matter, as long as he pushes the agenda.

All of us know people, conservative and liberal, who care so much about a given issue – or set of issues-- they’ll put up with anything

from someone who supports their position. That attitude lets evangelical Christians tolerate Trump’s sexual conduct, see, e.g., the Access Hollywood tape, in exchange for his appointment of

right wing judges they believe will curtail women’s reproductive freedom. We could list other obsessions – clipping the wings of the Environmental Protection Agency,  tax cuts, keeping immigrants out of the United States -- that might justify accepting otherwise objectionable aspects of Trump’s behavior.

Some see this as analogous to the left’s willingness to overlook Bill Clinton’s sexual transgressions and subsequent acts of perjury in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Woodson finds the analogy applicable. Henry doesn’t, believing the harm Trump is doing to the country places his sins in a unique category. Rob also rejects the analogy, arguing Trump’s requirement that his staff publicly testify to his intelligence and calm demeanor fundamentally differs from the Clinton situation.

Whether or not Bill Clinton’s staff made a similar moral compromise as Trump’s, we recognize all three reasons we’ve offered might entice acquiescence by those in Trump’s orbit to his demands for public endorsements of his conduct. Our reasons are not mutually exclusive. One can want badly to keep one’s job while sticking around because of an ideological commitment; the aura that goes with working in the White House isn’t inconsistent with staying there for either of the other reasons. Regardless of why, Trump’s lieutenants must stand up and salute when the boss demands it, no matter how demeaning doing so appears. The current group seemingly follows his orders without shame. We all agree about one thing. The American public deserves more from its public servants.