Shut Up and Dribble

CRT and the Search for Truth -my new obsession and book project

There are many truths, as many as there are realities.  What truths you subscribe to in many ways reflects the position you occupy.  The truth of a child is different from those of their parents, and the truth of the victim is different from that of the victimizer.  Which truth you choose to adhere to is the truth you will live by.  But all truths, as with all realities, grant you insight.  The more truths you can learn, the more insight you will gain.  And there is nothing worse than those who choose to be ignorant of multiple truths or believe that there is one truth.

The basic premise of this volume has been that for far too long, the truth has been externally provided to Blacks and others who do not occupy positions of power within the racial state.  I remember George Orwell's observation that "History is written by the winners". In our current political climate, the truth is dictated by those in power from the extreme right.  Books are banned, teachers and professors are being silenced or fired, and schools and institutions are sanctioned or defunded because they dare present different “truths.” 

This is not the first time in our country or world that those in power have victimized " truth claims.  Typically, as this volume will document, it has been in those times when the “racial power elite” perceived existential threats that they used all power at their disposal to curtail, derail, or destroy alternative versions of the truth. Therefore, the first laws to control the African slaves in this country followed the successful Haitian revolution and the fear of such.  The Slavocracy, gripped with the fear of similar slave rebellions, banned reading and writing for the African -slave and free.  As freedom was gained by the slaves during Reconstruction, the first institutions that were constructed were the church/schools.  The first things to be destroyed by the KKK and other anti-Black groups were the churches, followed by the businesses.  To control the Native Americans, the U.S. government established boarding schools where the motto was “Kill the Injun, save the man”.  Consequently, we see Native American children forcibly removed from their homes, stripped of their names, hair, language, customs, and identities, and inculcated into the “whitened truths of imperial history”.  And the racial state came into full bloom. 

It would take a hundred years and the various civil rights movements to finally challenge the racial truths embedded in every aspect of the U.S. educational apparatus.  With these challenges, calls for more equitable and inclusive histories and pedagogies were heard.  For a brief period, what may be called the “second reconstruction,” racial and ethnic studies, women, and gender studies, were presented and coexisted with the standard “racial imperialized” version.  These programs, particularly at colleges and universities, never were intended to replace the dominant version, but at least they gave the “illusion of inclusion.”  Such programs in Higher education, underfunded and overworked, have always existed on the periphery of the academy.  But they existed nonetheless.  Strangely, they never had the numbers (regarding faculty or students) to represent a serious threat, but they have always been suspected.  Now, these suspect academic programs and their proponents are being targeted by the extreme right.  But it is not the academic programs that are at stake but the truth itself.  The chapter outlines are presented below.