Critical Race Theory Rebecca Wheeler Walston and Danielle S. Castillejo

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 com