A professional educator I know used a statement, “If you’re old enough to experience racism you’re old enough to to be taught Critical Race Theory (CRT)”. She later used Jane Elliot’s “brown eyed/blue eyed (BeBe)” experiment as a positive educational example in support of her statement. Both an understanding of the BeBe exercise and of CRT have educational value, but neither are appropriate children – certainly not at the level of third grade or younger.
The brown eyed/blue eyed exercise
Age and experience appropriateness
The “old enough” statement is also incorrect. The video of the experiment shows an awareness many of the students of discrimination, but in his Milwaukee Journal article Stephen G. Bloom exemplifies a single third grader as able to be “critical” of the experiment’s parameters, saying “that’s not fair”. This single third-grader might be ready for some of the introductory concepts of CRT.
There are times when personal situations or events on the news prompt questions from children. A response is appropriate, and perhaps any attempt at a response will receive some negative feedback. Some of this may be mitigated when responding by taking care to satisfy the need and to avoid unnecessary expansion of the topic. It is hard to imagine the insertion of a module such as Elliot’s or something similar into a curriculum in such a way as to adhere to these suggestions.
Educational topics and methods
According to Bloom, Elliot continued to victimize most of the members of her third grade classes for 16 years, then took her show on the road to victimize individuals in corporations, prisons, schools, and military bases across the nation and the world. Worse, other educators adopted her methods to victimize their students. Elliot appears to have single-handedly created the educational premise that in order to teach about victimization, you must victimize. Her methods also seem to indicate that it is correct/permissible to create bigotry where none existed before in order to prove a point. We might go further to presume based on her assertions that those with green, violet, or ‘golden’ eyes could never learn the lesson as they were never either the designated victim class or the designated superior, privileged group.
50 years ago it was accepted practice to steer girls towards classes in home economics and boys towards classes in shop. Over time these sexist attitudes have been reduced (As an unintentional byproduct is that we are now teaching a smaller percentage of people of all sexes to sew, cook, build a shelf, or change their own car oil). It also seems appropriate that other bad concepts, methods and topics that may have been considered “right” 50 years ago should be reviewed and not arbitrarily accepted and then incorrectly built on.
What is Critical Race Theory?
Stephen Sawchuk does a pretty good (though not complete or unbiased) job of defining CRT but his dismissive descriptions of its criticism include only those from those furthest “right”. The inference is that support for all elements of the theory is mainstream, and that detraction only comes from far right extremists. He describes one criticism from Parents Defending Education in detail, but immediately dismisses it – it doesn’t appear in “academic texts”, it must therefore be “fear”.
Sawchuk’s citation of conflation and alternate meaning attributed to the CRT is assigned only to detractors, but as indicated in the first paragraph of this paper, conflation is at a minimum shared between detractors and supporters, and may actually be more prevalent with those who support the bulk of the theory in the belief that it supports their other views.
A better, more tested definition of CRT exists on Wikipedia. The concepts of Critical Race Theory are primarily legal. It was initiated in scholarly legal circles by pointing out differences in how individuals were treated under the law. It attempts to address differences in incarceration and penalization of based on race. It asserts that these differences are systemic. And it expresses a desire to fix the problem. The primarily cited conceptual extension is the exemplification of the economic practice of red-lining – that property value, the ability to leverage it and conception of worth, are based on location which many times are also associated with race.
While as a whole, CRT can be defined as a theory, many ancillary topics claiming support from the theory are actually only hypothesised (Bell: ‘racial equality is “impossible and illusory”‘) or simply untested, perhaps even false assertions (also Bell: “advantages [given] to people of color ‘tend to serve the interests of dominant white groups'”). Real introduction of CRT into a classroom requires students have some basic understanding of law, preferably some economics, a basic understanding of racial (and other) inequality, and importantly critical (the first word in the name of the theory) thinking. How many third-graders have this background? Teaching CRT is not the same as teaching “racism exists”.
CRT should not be conflated with teaching basic civility or general respect for others or with teaching respect for basic differences (“diversity”) or even with teaching respect of, consideration for, or even relinquishment of privilege to others who are differently abled or differently enabled (formerly “equality”, now “equity”).
Are you old enough to be taught CRT?
Let’s take Elliot’s methods, let’s also take some of the hypotheses associated with CRT and combine them. An educator teaches to a group of third-graders that society has designated “whites” as privileged. The same teacher says that “non-whites” are victims. You’ve immediately created a superior class and an inferior class. Add Bell’s statement ‘racial equality is “impossible and illusory”‘ and the fact that unlike Elliot there is no back-down on day three with the educator saying something like, “This was all an experiment, there really is no difference between blacks and whites. We learned something didn’t we? Let’s just go back to being friends”.
The real danger in teaching CRT to unprepared students is not Sawchuk’s incorrect assertion of a fear that “white students will be exposed to […] damaging […] ideas”. The danger here is perpetuating and further systemizing the bigotry and victimization that already exists, and of proving Bell’s hypothesis true. Elliot’s experiment actually demonstrates that CRT should not arbitrarily taught to children.
Elliot’s methods include bullying and victimization. The effects of the experiment are to victimize, traumatize, and create bigotry. Elliot’s experiments and the associated video documentation are valuable in educational and psychological discussions. So are the shock experiments of Stanley Milgram which were initiated at about the same time. Milgram’s experiments have been deemed unethical and banned from accepted psychological testing practice. For the similar reasons, Elliot’s experiments should be deemed unethical and banned from educational and/or psychological practice.