Whenever anyone talks about the dangers of Critical Race Theory (CRT), I think of my 12 years of Catholic education. The purpose of Catholic education, or so my parents thought, was to deliver good Catholic adults. It failed miserably with me and my brothers and my sisters. Not a good Catholic among 5 children. If after thousands of years of practice, the Catholic Church can’t deliver even one child out of 5, I really don’t worry much about CRT indoctrination. If the hidden agenda of CRT is making bomb throwing America hating Bolsheviks, I am confident that the marketing departments of America’s commercial enterprises will triumph over the theoretical dogma of CRT. 

People are pretty practical about grand theories. If you ask the average Catholic about the Church, they could care less about why the Church encourages Infant Baptism, or did Jesus’ body Ascend into Heaven, or was Mother Mary a virgin. They are drawn to the church for the big picture messages – love they neighbor and your sins will be forgiven by a loving God. They pick and choose what they believe. Birth control is a good example of individual Catholics taking what they believe to be most important and ignoring the rest.   For example, most Catholics today have much smaller families than previous generations.  If I had to choose why, I would say they are using birth control. The Church stand on birth control is quite different.

Which brings me back to CRT.  First, and most importantly, public schools are not teaching CRT. It is an academic theory so laden with technical jargon to make it incomprehensible to the average adult much less a child. I am completely fine with people not teaching any of the theory unless it was before nap time. Now, on the other hand, where CRT might prove helpful is when educators are putting together a history curriculum. An understanding of CRT might encourage these educators to include sessions about how race affects people of color and can help us understand the history of our country.  If they don’t want to talk about race, how are they going to explain what happened to the indigenous people when they encountered the European settlers? Or why Africans were forced into slavery.   If it wasn’t racism, explain the terrible treatment these groups received from the European settlers?  These discussions would certainly benefit from an understanding of race.

Critics of CRT are pretty coy about what they want instead. By conflating teaching about race and racism with CRT, they are campaigning to remove race completely from the curriculum. Which means what? The Civil War was about two groups of good citizens fighting about state’s rights. The indigenous peoples happily relocated to reservations to make room for the European settlers.   Will they talk about lynchings? The Tulsa Race Riot? Discrimination?

It annoys me that Liberals are put on the defense over something like CRT. Critics are going after some of the most strident parts of the theory and saying this is wrong and because this particular point is wrong, it makes the whole theory wrong.  I have never believed in any doctrine 100 percent and I don’t think anyone ever has. The important takeaway from any theory is the big picture and, from where I stand, the big picture message from CRT is that to understand America, race and racism has to be talked about. I believe that to be true. So, until something better comes along, I am comfortable with big picture CRT and will leave theoretical CRT to the academics.