The economic elite have successfully fabricated a new moral panic to further their political agenda: critical race theory, a discipline that studies how social structures like laws affect the livelihoods of certain racial identities.
The charge against critical race theory gained enormous traction when conservative pundit Christopher Rufo appeared on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” in summer 2020 to claim that critical race theory had “pervaded every aspect of the federal government” and was “being weaponized against core American values.” After Rufo’s appearance, Fox News mentioned critical race theory in its news segments nearly 4,000 times and made patently false claims about the discipline that have since become popular.
As a result of the controversy, 33 states have alarmingly either moved to restrict or ban the teaching of critical race theory in schools. Academics, as educators, have a responsibility to combat the repression of critical race theory along with misinformation surrounding the discipline. They should do so by institutionalizing critical race theory into their curricula. This is especially true of academics at GW, an institution that has a history of being influenced by economic interests. For example, GW’s Regulatory Studies Center, a University research center funded by Koch Industries and Exxon Mobil, almost universally “advocates against environmental regulation and relies primarily on researchers with ties to groups funded by the Koch family.”
The attack on critical race theory is a part of a larger effort to defund and restrict access to education, an attack funded in large part by elite economic interests. Koch Industries, the same fossil fuel interest that donates millions of dollars to the RSC, also invests millions of dollars into conservative think tanks – with the expectation that they will produce content about critical race theory designed to create confusion, distrust and anger. One Koch think tank author, for example, absurdly argued that the Stoneman Douglas shooting in 2018 was a result of critical race theory curricula at the high school.
Critical race theory falls under a broader academic discipline called critical theory, a framework that explores and challenges dominant social, economic and political structures. Critical theory seeks to critique, or thoroughly analyze, how these structures operate and determine how they can be most conducive to human flourishing. The father of critical theory, Max Horkheimer, an internationally renowned German sociologist and philosopher, notoriously distinguished critical theory from otherwise “traditional” theory. He argued that what makes a theory “critical” is it works “to create a world which satisfies the needs and powers of human beings.”
Critical race theory, a term coined by UCLA Professor of Law Kimberlé Crenshaw using this method of structural analysis and inquiry, explores how racism is not merely a concern of individual prejudice but that the foundational features of various social, economic and political structures produce circumstances that make it harder for people of color to flourish compared to their white counterparts. Educational institutions like GW bear the responsibility to take an authoritative stance against disinformation, especially when the disinformation perpetuates historical discrimination and racism.
One important step the GW community can take in the effort to combat the attack on critical race theory and the influence of interests like Koch Industries is to institutionalize critical race teachings into the curricula. Several of GW’s peer institutions, like Tufts and Tulane universities and the University of Pittsburgh, have required racial equity courses for graduation.
Critical race theory may seem complicated or abstract, but even those not attuned to the theory already use core tenets of it to inform our analysis of our everyday life. For example, it is public knowledge that Black people are incarcerated at a higher rate than their non-Black counterparts – not because there is an explicit law requiring this or because prisons across the country conspired to incarcerate more Black people. Instead, critical race theory research has enlightened researchers to consider how less obvious social phenomena like housing segregation, economic inequality and lack of access to education can create these conditions. Restorative policies that would provide the necessary decades-overdue reparations to rectify these environmental inequalities are heavily repressed, back then when white segregationists claimed discussions of race were racist and now where some are claiming the same. By institutionalizing the study of critical race theory, GW would be better equipping their students to create and hold those discussions about justice.
From social science to STEM, there is no discipline that has been unaffected by the consequences of systemic racism. And it would serve us better as community members and as academics to better understand how our disciplines have been racialized and influenced by racial disparities. The University clearly acknowledges an academic benefit to critical thinking, as it mandates three critical thinking courses in the social sciences and humanities. Administrators should specify one of the critical thinking course requirements to be a course on race. Additionally, professors in all disciplines should try to incorporate how race has affected the course topic.
Economic interests should not be deterministically influencing educational curriculum, and it is alarming that they have been so successful in their dissemination of false information. Rufo unsurprisingly later admitted that the campaign against critical race theory was not about understanding the framework as it has been used in academic research but rather “recodify[ing] it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.” This attack on critical race theory is not about a critique of its method or an academic engagement with the work – it is an attack on the core principle that we should be critical of dominant power structures and work to change them if they don’t promote human flourishing. With incoming generations being exposed and conditioned to false information about such a crucial academic framework like critical race theory, ensuring students understand how to critically think about race and racial systems is not only necessary but moral.
Karina Ochoa Berkley, a junior majoring in political science and philosophy, is an opinions columnist.