"Critical race theory"

President Bunker Boy brought up "critical race theory" as one of his cult's bogeymen recently. He has no idea what it is, of course. And in the FOX News/QAnon bubble, all they need to know is: "It has something to do with colleges and black people so it's bad and we hate it."

In case you are wondering what it might be in the real world, though, here is a two-paragraph definition from Paula Groves Price (Critical Race Theory Oxford Research Encyclopedias, accessed 09/20/2020):

Race has historically been, and continues to be, a significant issue in all aspects of American society. In the field of education, racial inequality is prominent in the areas of access, opportunity, and outcomes. Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a framework that offers researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers a race-conscious approach to understanding educational inequality and structural racism to find solutions that lead to greater justice. Placing race at the center of analysis, Critical Race Theory scholars interrogate policies and practices that are taken for granted to uncover the overt and covert ways that racist ideologies, structures, and institutions create and maintain racial inequality.

In the field of education, CRT is a helpful tool for analyzing policy issues such as school funding, segregation, language policies, discipline policies, and testing and accountability policies. It is also helpful for critically examining the larger issues of epistemology and knowledge production, which are reflected in curriculum and pedagogy. As education is one of the major institutions of knowledge production and dissemination, CRT scholars often push the field to critically examine the master or dominant narratives reproduced in schools and the counter-narratives that are silenced. CRT is a theoretical framework that provides education researchers, policy makers, and practitioners with critical lenses to deconstruct oppressive policies and practices and to construct more emancipatory systems for racial equity and justice.

The translation into Republican-speak, as I indicated is: It has something to do with colleges and black people so it's bad and we hate it.

Erwin Chemerinsky (Trump’s administration attempting to ban the Critical Race Theory is intolerant and unjust Sacramento Bee 09/18/2020):

Critical race theory began in law schools in the 1980s and then became part of other social science disciplines. It focuses on the way white supremacy and racial power are maintained over time, and especially the role of law in this regard. It focuses on how race and racial oppression shape law and society. It seeks to end anti-Blackness and racism in society.

Cheryl Harris also has a reality-based explanation of it in What Is Critical Race Theory and Why Is Trump Afraid of It? The Nation 09/17/2020:

The mischaracterization of Critical Race Theory - a body of scholarship led by people of color centered in the legal academy - as anti-white propaganda is more than a caricature: It is a ploy intended to gin up the idea that anti-racist work is itself racist - against whites.

The bogeyman that the memo seeks to evoke is a familiar figure, designed to appeal to Trump’s base, reprising some infamous billboards on Alabama highways, sponsored by the white nationalist White Genocide Project, asserting that “Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white,” and “Diversity means chasing down the last white person.”

But inhabitants of the FOX News/QAnon bubble scare easily, bless their hearts.