Public Forum at IUPUI Addresses Critical Race Theory
A public forum was held Wednesday at the McKinney School of Law to discuss the CRT, what it is and what it is not.
INDIANAPOLIS — Critical Theory of Race.
These three words have sparked many debates across the country about how history and race are discussed in classrooms.
A public forum was held on Wednesday at IU McKinney School of Law to discuss the CRT, what it is and what it is not.
Indiana lawmakers, professors and academics addressed the topic in a panel discussion.
“History is not disconnected from where we are today. History is what produced where we are today,” said Kevin Brown, Richard S. Melvin Professor at IU Maurer School of Law.
Brown was part of a 1989 gathering of law professors of color, where the CRT was first discussed. These same legal minds continued the discussion during several workshops.
“We were mostly driven by the reality of what we saw was that American society had just normalized the idea that black people were meant to have less,” he explained.
Brown said one only has to look at history to understand why disparities for people of color still exist today.
“We talk about history to understand how we got to where we are in the present. We don’t talk about history to blame people in the present for what happened in the past,” Brown said.
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The concepts behind the CRT have sparked a storm of controversy across the country, with some state legislatures trying to pass laws to control how teachers talk about history and race in the classroom.
“CRT is not about teaching the contribution of black Americans and immigrants like me,” said Michael Gonzalez, who appeared virtually at the forum.
Gonzalez is a senior fellow with the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation and recently traveled the country, speaking out against the CRT to parents and state lawmakers.
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“The CRT is a tool for changing society, another instrument for tearing down the narrative of American history and culture and replacing it with a counter-narrative,” Gonzalez told those gathered. “What the architects of critical race theory really want is ideological confirmation around left-wing views.”
Brown, one of these architects, explained the CRT this way:
“It’s not a blame game on people today, but it’s a need to really consciously examine our history.”
According to Brown, one story led to disparities for black Americans that still exist today and need to be corrected.
“We never really faced them. We never really put them to bed,” Brown said.
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