Should Critical Race Theory (CRT) Be Taught In Schools In America?

First, it’s important to note that CRT isn’t really one theory, but rather is a collection of different ideas that challenge a wide swath of intellectual and political traditions. The common thread is that they all agree that race is one of the important factors in creating and maintaining inequalities in society.

Now, CRT does not attribute racism to white people as individuals or even to entire groups of people. Simply put, CRT states that U.S. social institutions (e.g., the criminal justice system, education system, labor market, housing market, and healthcare system) are laced with racism embedded in laws, regulations, rules, and procedures that lead to differential outcomes by race.  CRT proceeds from a number of assumptions: that racism is the fundamental organizing principle of society and that it was created by white people to be imposed upon people of color so that they could disenfranchise minorities and control them through a kind of soft power.  It acknowledges that the legacy of slavery, segregation, and the imposition of second-class citizenship on Black Americans and other people of color continue to permeate the social fabric of America.

Opponents of CRT come in many forms.  "As a black college student, I'm certainly not paying to sit in a classroom and be told that I'm a helpless victim — that regardless of how hard I try, or how hard I work, it'll never be enough because racism will always win," writes CJ Pierson, a conservative activist at the University of Alabama.  Critics say CRT is not a theory in any scientific sense, as it offers no criteria by which it might be falsified as a scientific theory should.

So what do you think?  Is CRT education or indoctrination?