Recently, Christina Cross, a Black woman sociologist at Harvard, found her work at the crosshairs of the same person who brought us the bastardization of critical race theory. (Yes, it was.) Many scholars, from her sociology department to the primary investigators of the original study, defended her against his claims of plagiarism, but people jumped regardless. As I observed scholar after acclaimed scholar defending her work, it gave me hope that perhaps we had learned lessons from the last three years of ideological malpractice.
Yet, it also made me reticent to uplift this newfound courage cloaked in social science norms. I’m asking us to think more societally.
In using inaccurate forms of plagiarism, he gets to crusade against anything he deems “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI). Of course, when mainstream media asks him questions under their terms, he turns to cellophane, but that’s another layer to this conversation. Time and again, the same set of ghouls lay out the playbook through their social media platforms and articles. To deconstruct institutions that they and so many others have benefited from, they use the very people whom those in powerful positions have rarely sought to defend. In other words, if you can reshape Harvard by attacking Black women and other scholars with marginalized identities using tools that have historically limited these populations from coming through the door, then the task is merely academic.
I’ve argued on several occasions that telling the public “We don’t teach critical race theory” isn’t effective in beating the attacks back. America must name the vital role of our institutions, defend the value of those institutions in nation-building, and make the experience of these institutions better from a racial and social justice lens. Otherwise, this country continues to leave the responsibility of keeping this country prosperous to the people least likely to benefit from its largesse.
It also occurs to me how we’ve seen this in K-12, too.
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