Georgetown prof admits to being critical race theorist, says parents just don't 'understand' CRT
The professor wrote in 'Politico' that opposition to CRT is 'a disinformation campaign designed to rally disaffected middle- and working-class white people against progressive change.'
The piece echoes similar claims made by Ibram X. Kendi earlier this year in an interview with 'The Guardian.'
Georgetown constitutional law professor Gary Peller argued in “Politico” on Wednesday that politicians and media outlets are misrepresenting critical race theory to engage disaffected White people.
The piece is titled “I’ve Been a Critical Race Theorist for 30 Years. Our Opponents Are Just Proving Our Point For Us.”
“As a law professor closely associated with the critical race theory movement for more than 30 years, I am astonished,” Peller wrote. “Most academic work never gets noticed at all, and ours is being publicly vilified, even banned. While we wrote footnotes and taught our classes, did our ideas become the new orthodoxy in American society and the foundation of K-12 education, as our critics charge?”
“Hardly,” he concluded.
“CRT is not a racialist ideology that declares all whites to be privileged oppressors, and CRT is not taught in public schools,” he continued. “But over the past nine months or so, first slowly in right-wing media conversation and now quickly in state houses and even mainstream newspapers, conservative activists have branded all race reform efforts in education and employment as CRT — a disinformation campaign designed to rally disaffected middle- and working-class white people against progressive change.”
Peller elaborated that Critical Race Theory is an academic movement arguing that institutions in the United States continued to perpetrate racism even after the civil rights movement — an explanation similar to the one contested by millions of parents across the United States, including an African-American father from Illinois who explained that he earned two medical degrees despite his disadvantaged upbringing.
Boston University professor Ibram X. Kendi recently employed a similar rhetorical tactic as Peller — namely, by insisting that millions of parents across the United States are racist for opposing critical race theory.
“I do think there’s a concerted backlash from people who recognize that this time last year a growing number of Americans were either speaking out against racism or growing an awareness of the problem of racism,” Kendi told The Guardian last month.
Campus Reform asked Peller whether he agrees with Kendi’s assertion that many parents oppose critical race theory because they dislike having their own racism identified. Peller explained that his simple answer is “no,” as he thinks “they have been presented a false picture of CRT.”
Peller also denounced the notion of “colorblindness” because “being conscious about race is the only way to tell whether the situation of the Black community is improving or not.” He remarked that there is no objective idea of “merit” that could rise above “racial and other forms of social power.”
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @BenZeisloft
