How is Critical Race Theory (CRT) impacting your efforts to fight racial injustice?

Racial injustice creates serious barriers that continues to hold people back. We need more, not less, discussion about these barriers. 

Unfortunately, the debate around Critical Race Theory demonstrates how false choices can be used to undermine honest dialogue. The false choice is that you have to either deny the problems of racial injustice or accept CRT and therefore reject the core principles of our country’s founding. We reject that choice. 

The truth is, very few people are actually advocating a strict adherence to the ideas of Critical Race Theory.  Rather, many who are drawn to CRT simply want to call attention to our country’s historical injustices related to race. On the other hand, many of those opposed to CRT aren’t suggesting that race isn’t an important issue to address.  Rather, they are fearful that CRT undermines America’s founding principle of equal rights and won’t solve the harms that come from racial discrimination.  But both groups can agree that racial injustice is a problem we need to come together to solve.

Here’s where we stand:

CRT is an academic framework that is at odds with America’s founding ideal of equal rights, where all people are treated equally. We should strive to more fully live up to this ideal, not double down on its violation. But despite our disagreement with CRT, we don’t support efforts to ban its teaching. Using government to ban ideas, even those we disagree with, is also counter to core American principles – the principles that help drive social progress. 

We believe approaches rooted in respect offer better ways to solve the problem. Rather than give into the us-vs-them mentality, initiatives like Heal America focus on bridging divides to bring people together to fight racial injustice by more fully living out our country’s core principles.