More racism won’t solve anything

OPINION:

This country is a sucker for racial-tensions crises. It seems to me that every decade some person or group attempts to create a crisis based on our country’s racial tensions — and how easily we fall for the trap!

Critical race theory supporters now realize that despite good intentions they have polarized our education system, causing a ripple effect contributing to racial tensions. They have started to see how easily a curriculum can be weaponized to create divisions within society, especially when it ignores 60 years of social advancements, and the fact that most Americans today deeply regret the period in our history that slavery was legal.

The fact that CRT proponents are the benefactors of such social advancements — based on civil rights principles of character and content, not the CRT version of race and gender — and they are thus granted a platform to express their views is regrettable. Ignoring the history of how the people sacrificed their lives for this freedom is heartbreaking.

One would think with all the advanced education achieved, we would focus on solutions that improve the quality of everyone’s life, not use our success to create more divisions based on gender and race.

What’s more, there is one slavery-related issue that, surprisingly, CRT “experts” refuse to discuss, one which continues to affect African Americans: self-hatred. It is the same mindset we were taught by the European slave owner Willie Lynch, and in my opinion is one of the main causes of the high level of Black-on-Black crime. It’s odd that scholars refuse to address this issue as part of the impact of slavery on African Americans. Why do they refuse to discuss it? Because it requires African Americans to hold each other accountable and it exposes the lack of reforms that have been made, despite all the work supposedly done at various public levels to address systemic racism.

Perhaps that’s why our focus on advancing CRT will not have any positive effect. How does teaching children that they are racist because of their skin color or because of the actions of their ancestors prepared them for successful careers? It saddens many of us that scholars would misuse all of their knowledge on a platform of hatred for others.

But racial tensions sell TV ratings and secure media exposure. That is the trap. It must stop, or it will destroy nearly 60 years of social progress. There is an old saying: “The trouble you stir is the poison you drink.” I think the CRT supporters are beginning to experience it first-hand.

GREG RALEIGH

Washington