Rebecca Wheeler Watson - CRT Instagram Live 8/28/2021 Notes
Rebecca lives in Virginia, has completed Law School at UCLA, holds a Master’s in Marriage and Family Counseling, is also a licensed minister.
What is Critical Race Theory? We need to define it before we actually step into defending or refuting, coming to the pros and cons, in order to have informed discussions.
Rebecca says, CRT is a way of thinking or engaging a topic, event, perspective or field of study, and asking the question are there racial dynamics at play that move beyond the individual intentions of the players involved and looking at structural things “baked into the cake” that are making decisions based on race, often time that are to the detriment of the minority group (or disempowered group).
- Started in the 1970s by legal scholars - looking at the gains that they thought would come through the Civil Rights Move Act.
- They saw gains in the legislation and in the law (Brown vs Board of Education) but were not being felt or seen in real time experiences on the ground.
- Early CRT scholars Derrick Bell and Kimberle Crenshaw were asking questions, why is this happening?
- If we apply a neutral sounding law to a scenario where racism is already “baked” into the structure, they found that you will not actually get at the structure, the racism that’s built into the structure.
- Classic law case would be regarding: Hate Speech
- There is freedom of speech. The law on its face is neutral and doesn’t mention race at all.
- However, if we apply that basic principle to a cross burning as a freedom of speech, we must take into account the history of the terror that a burning cross was meant to strike terror into the hearts of African Americans and newly freed slaves.
- We don’t at the structure or the symbol if we simply say “all speech is free”
Danielle asks, so without including race in the discussion we aren’t getting the full picture?
Rebecca says yes! And other disciplines have adopted this framework.
COVID-19: When the numbers started to show that Black and Brown communities were getting disproportionately affected by COVID, members of the health profession started to take a Critical Race Theory approach and ask are there things ‘baked’ into our health system and to our economic system that actually produced the disparate results we are seeing in COVID-19? And if we ask those questions, can we undo some of the inequity and imbalances that are built into the health care system and economic systems so we don’t see these disparate impacts moving forward?
Danielle says what she is hearing from Rebecca is that it is not an attack on a certain group of people but a way to get to racism that is built in the structure by an invitation to look at the history of how the laws were made (and by whom they were made) and how racism got baked into them. [Can we look at the disparities and care for one another well?]
Rebecca says it’s a good point -- this is not about an individual but a method for getting at racism built into the structure and therefore transcends individual actions.
For example Darrin Chauvin, the police officer who was convicted of murdering George Floyd. You can look at that scenario and say the individual act of one police officer, and if we address that one case with Darrin Chauvin going to prision for the murder of George Floyd, then “the problem has been solved.” But the issue is there are far too many George Floyds and Darrin Chauvins across the police communities across this country.
In fact today (8/28) is the anniversary of the death of Emmet Till. There are many names and many scenarios. So if we simply stop with Darrin Chauvin then we don’t get at the question of do we have a problem with the way we imagine policing in this country? Do we have a problem with the way we imagine innocent behavior as threatening or criminal when the actor in that scenario has black skin? CRT invites us to look at the structure of policing altogether to engage not in villainizing a single person but to look at the whole system, as a country.
Danielle adds, it doesn’t sound like it is a villainization of a system either. It is a look at where we are now and saying we don’t want to be here now. A historian looks at where we came from in order to help us understand how to make decisions about where we go from now moving forward.
Rebecca says recently Professor Crenshaw gave the example of asbestos: The medical community and the science community has now determined that we should not use asbestos because it has been found to contain carcinogens. But there was a previous generation that built every generation with asbestos in it. Same with lead paint. There are hundreds and thousands of buildings across America where asbestos is built into the building. And you don't usually know that until something happens to stir it up and expose it. Would we just ignore that? Of course not. When we discover asbestos in the building we move to remediating. Granted that process is costly. And it's probably painful and expensive. But it is the right thing to do going forward to protect future generations and to make the building safe for those who will inhabit it.
It is the same for Critical Race Theory. We go along and things seem fine until something exposes racism and we see that racism is baked into this country and it’s harmful to Black and Brown communities. When we encounter it, will we have the guts to pay the cost to remediate it?
Danielle said being married to someone who works in constructions, she knows that you have to have extensive training and have special gear to go into buildings with asbestos for removing it. It wasn’t just anyone, but you had to know what you were doing and how to do it.
It’s an invitation for change.
Rebecca says you can come at this from a political standpoint: are we going to be the country political and socially that works towards becoming the “more perfect union” that we profess to be? And if that’s true, when we come to imperfections, will there be the political capital to address them? Rebecca says we’re at one right now with what to do with Afghanistan -- will we have the political guts and the will to address it or not? The same is true from racial issues. The history of slavery and genocity against not just Africans, but Native Americans, Latinx Americans, Asian Americans... There are moments where we are confronted with the realities of these stains and what it brings to present day for people?
You can also look at it from a theological standpoint: There are places as believers where we fall short on how we treat our fellow man. And when we are confronted in that moment, do we have the capacity, the spiritual strength to face that moment and decide that it’s true that “greater is He who resides in me” and by his strength and in His wisdom I can face this moment and bring His economy to bear in this scenario?
There is one place where Rebecca agrees with the opponents of CRT and that is that we should not be segregated by race, it is contrary to the kingdom of God.
Danielle says that folks call “White Fragility” the inability to face our history and past and act in the moment. Danielle offers some push back - let’s give those younger places that didn’t learn about race growing up, a chance to grow. It’s not so much that we’re fragile but we’ve not given ourselves chances to grow.
When we engage race topics we find ourselves feeling really small (young) because we’ve not learned about this before. Danielle says this is especially true for those in the dominant culture. This is an area for repentance: What do I know, what don’t I know? It’s an invitation to learn and embrace what we know now and make change.
Danielle likens racism to a thousand little paper cuts - we need to tend to those wounds in an honorable way.
Can you engage the harm you’ve done? How do we move forward together?
Rebecca - It is good to engage the white fragility. People will say, “Well I didn’t own slaves” or “I’m not racist, I have a Mexican friend.” Okay. Okay. If we could approach the conversation with just what I have personally done, that would be nice. But there is more than that in the text. The Christian faith is built on the idea of the capacity of one standing in the gap for many. Otherwise the cross and person of Jesus is meaningless. Jesus paid a substitutionary death for all of us.
Call of scripture is to stand for others in the gap, not for the salvation of all, but also for the repentance of all. One is asked to stand in the gap for many. God honors the naming of that sin, God moves to repair and restore.
We can’t take the easy way out, and say “I didn’t do that, I have no stake in the game.”
Danielle, asks why has CRT become a hot button topic right now across the country? The theory is many years old… why now?
Rebecca says the answer lies within the cyclical nature of racism. Ta’Nahesis Coates in his book “8 Years in Power” talks about the rhythm of racism - one step forward, two steps back. One step forward, one step back. You can track throughout history the gains and backlashes. Emancipation Proclamation and Beginning of Reconstruction there are massive gains for Black in those two years following the end of the Civil War. And then there is a huge backlash that comes with the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the invention of “Black Codes” which became Jim Crow. You can see the movement in the 60s and Civil Rights Movement, followed by the massive retraction of that in the 70s.
What we’re looking at now is the country's reaction, White America, White Evangelicalism’s reaction to a summer of reckoning last year when the world’s eyes watched America -- Darrin Chauvin and George Floyd. It wasn’t a he said she said, it was all televised, for all to see and watch. There is a sense in the country that this is so much bigger than George Floyd and Darrin Cauvin. There were some gains that were made in the collective consciousness but before they can be solidified or codified into law we are feeling and seeing a massive backlash.
What has happened, according to Kimberele Crenshaw, is the plucking of this obscure doctrine (CRT) that was really reserved for the legal field. This is not something taught in K-12 or is a part of our everyday lexicon. People on the Right took this unfamiliar obscure category and poured all kinds of information that wasn’t accurate, and in many ways were outright lies in an attempt to take away the gains that were made last summer. What we are seeing is the repetition of the cyclical nature of racism.
The insidiousness of racism is that we were never supposed to see what is happening, but the curtain got pulled back; we’re not supposed to see how it is working in our country and in our systems. When people feel exposed, their reaction is to cover it up, rather than have the individual and collective integrity to face the moment and be better.
Danielle says this is what has happened in her community -- in 2019 on the 3rd of July, a Native man was killed at a Independence celebration in front of crowds of people and children. He was supposedly holding a screwdriver when cops surrounding him. There has since been some effort from indegenious community and the police of Poulsbo to form some kind of a bridge back to one another. And then this past weekend a man comes into our town, known for hate speech by the and acknowledges he doesn’t know about Critical Race Theory (he got his definition from wikipedia), a wound is just ripped open in our community. The backlash is not just collective but it’s also personal to this community and specific bodies in this area, as well as personal to people of faith.
Rebecca says we have to keep our eye on what’s happening collectively as a country, and also remember that these are individual people whose lives are forever changed. She thinks of George Floyd’s daughter who said, “Daddy changed the world” and she’s right, but it was at great cost to her and her family because they will spend the rest of their lives without him.
Danielle said everywhere she goes they will know her story. What do you think is the step forward?
Rebecca thinks we need to note and watch for the cyclical nature of racism and note it when it happens. We need to know how we’re going to respond in those moments. We need to recognize there is a system at play in this country that judges people on the basis of race (and gender, class and some other things) and it’s baked into the system. We have to be intentional to watch for it, looking for it, and we have to be willing to pay the cost to remediating it. There is work to do:
There will be some training and education required.
What are the contours of harm? How does it happen? How do we prevent it?
We must do this work individually and collectively. We need to be able to have conversations that are calm and reasonable, well-educated. Then we need to move to practically respond to things when we see them. We need to have critical conversations about: Policing, Education. Health Care, Economics...
We must be willing to pay the cost -- costs money, time and talent to step into places of remediation, individually and collectively if we want to be a “more perfect union” and bring the kingdom to God bear here on Earth.
