Professor Tanya Hernandez shared her insight in a Newsweek article discussing the growing campaigns against the teaching of critical race theory.
Perrysburg is one of many districts across the U.S. in which K-12 schools were rendered arenas for spiraling culture wars in recent months. As the critical race theory controversy mushroomed within America’s public discourse, education boards experienced drawn-out meetings packed with members of the public and laden with tension.
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Tanya Hernandez, professor of law at Fordham University and author of upcoming book On Latino Anti-Black Bias: “Racial Innocence” and the Struggle for Equality, said critical race theory does not perceive the removal of “formal barriers to inclusion,” such as Jim Crow-era segregation, as sufficient to achieve the societal goal of racial equality.
“Instead, critical race theory goes much deeper than that and looks at the ways in which there are systems and structures in place that account for so much racial disparity that has nothing to do—or often, not as much to do—with individual intent,” she told Newsweek.
Hernandez added CRT does not contend that there are “inherent deficiencies to peoples and groups that accounts for racial disparity and socio-economic inequality.”
Opponents to what is perceived to be critical race theory are, in reality, reacting to “misinformation that sings upon a particular note,” according to Hernandez. It plucks at a string that “equates any racial progress with a loss of white status,” which poses a threat to “quality, truthful education.”
“This reactionary response and attempt to censor, this almost McCarthyite labeling of critical race theory in society, this is new,” Hernandez said. “And it’s not from people who actually care to know or know anything about the truth of what critical race theory is.”