Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not just about explaining, it's about identity, ideology and activism. To posit the issues as 'merely explaining' is kind of to strawman people's legit concerns. CRT, for example, goes way beyond 'explaining' - on purpose. If this were an in issue of merely 'explaining to people who systematic limitations might work' - and being sufficiently nuanced about it, then I think this whole thing would be a lot less con…
> CRT, for example, goes way beyond 'explaining' - on purpose. That is not true. Critical Race Theory is a framework for viewing legal and social structures through the lens of race and racism. I’m not an expert here, but this seems to be a fairly balanced summary: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_r...
The link you provided is a nice reference, but it's a very small-c conservative description and avoids the harder parts of the issue.
The notion that 'minorities face challenges that majorities will have difficulty perceiving' is not unreasonable. But CRT uses language such as 'White Supremacy' - reminiscent of Men in Pointy White Hats' to describe those 'majority systems'. Their stated objective is to 'deconstruct and destroy Whiteness', implying that the 'majority culture must be removed', and that those who do not realize this and actively participate are holding up structures of White Supremacy.
So they use 'whiteness' in kind of an abstract way, something that 'stands in contrast to blackness' - but they also mean every classical cultural trait.
Things like a 'focus on the correct answer', 'focus on literacy', 'objectivity' etc. - these are artifacts of 'whiteness and white supremacy'.
The link you provided actually is fairly decent, if that text represented CRT then I think there would be controversy, but much less so.
But CRT in practices uses the language of race war: 'Destroy Whiteness or you are a White Supremacist'. In that case 'Whiteness' is effectively an ethnicity, broadly 'Westerners' or 'White People'.
Finally, even if we can agree on what CRT is, it plays heavily into ideological victimhood: 'the student failed to learn to read at a high level because that's a racist, colonial imposition, and shouldn't have to achieve literacy to graduate high school' etc..
When we're talking about 'systematic issues' then those who have a propensity for victimhood can view racism/sexism in literally everything. The 'truck' toy with the 'boy' on the front cover? Gendered language? Your company founders are white and male? It's all oppression.
On one hand, while the notion of systematic racism has legitimacy, CRT ideology opens up an ugly pandora's box that allows people to take an activist perspective on the basis of conjecture about literally everything and it plays directly into, and validates people's worst bigotries.
This article about how 'the sidewalks are racist' is not a joke. They make completely unsubstantiated and bigoted notions about how 'White people walk on sidewalks' at Northwestern U. This is the kind of crude, fantasy racist bigotry, supported and endorsed by CRT thinking. [3]
From the University of Toronto [1]
Wikipedia [2]
[1] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory
[3] https://dailynorthwestern.com/2021/04/05/opinion/allen-are-t...