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Doni: Few conversations have been more divisive and lacking in clarity than those about critical race theory.

What is it exactly?

Is it good or bad for our country and its educational system?

Here to talk about this today is Kristin Blochowski.

Professor Blochowski is an attorney who also holds a masters of education and is on the Staff of Lourdes University, where she is a professor of criminal and social justice.

This is to the point.

Connect with us on our social media pages and I would really love to hear from you.

You can email me at Doni underscore Miller at WGTE dot org and for this episode and other additional extras, go to dot org to the point.

Welcome.

We would like to, it is my pleasure I should say, to introduce you to this amazing woman.

This is Kristin Blochowski.

You're going to have to help me with that name.

Right.

Be patient with me.

But beyond the name is who you are.

You are a lawyer here in town on the staff at Lourdes University as an adjunct professor.

Kristin: An assistant professor.

Doni: There you go.

You are an assistant professor in criminal and social justice.

We are so happy to have you here, because this topic that we're talking about today is perhaps one of the most difficult ones this country has had to face in a long time.

And we're talking about critical race theory.

So I'm going to look at my notes for a minute because I want to get this definition right.

We we actually need a definition that we can agree upon to have this discussion and the definition that I found that I really like is by the founder of this whole criminal.

Critical race theory concept.

And that's Kimberlé Crenshaw, amazing woman on the staff, a professor at UCLA Law School, also Columbia Law School, and is an executive director of the African American Policy Forum.

So she puts forth the definition that she intended.

When we talk about when we when we talk about this topic and this is what she says, Professor Crenshaw says that critical race theory is a discipline that seeks to understand how racism has shaped US laws and how those laws have continued to impact the lives of nonwhite people.

Comfortable definition.

Kristin: Definitely.

Okay.

So I think the very first thing that people would say is, you know, here's my problem with that.

Laws are designed on their face to be neutral.

So what's this discussion all about?

What would you say to somebody who said that to you.

kristin: That they are designed that way.

And when you read our current laws as a general rule, there's no racism in them.

However, many of our laws impact people of color differently than they do white people.

Additionally, our past, we have had explicit laws that impacted race and said specifically we are putting race into this law.

We had slavery.

It was legal.

We owned people.

We owned people.

They were property.

Racist law.

We had Doni: Jim Crow laws.

Kristin: Yeah, exactly.

After the Civil War, we had black codes.

Then we had Jim Crow laws which allowed legal separation, allowed legal separation in schools.

We had racial covenants and contracts for housing.

We did not allow our black citizens to buy houses in the suburbs.

There was redlining.

Probably very few people know what redlining is and know that it was a legal effort to keep black citizens out of suburbs out of the schools that the the white community was on moving out to the suburbs.

So when we look back, we have to realize that history has impacted where we are now.

And I'll say this critical race theory has become kind of the the dog whistle buzz word.

President Trump, when he was president, said, I'm not going to allow any teaching of critical race theory and Doni: in fact defunding it, promising to defund those institutions that did.

Yeah.

Kristin: And diversity training.

And so the critical race theory kind of became that buzz word, that slogan that every politician started using, even though critical race theory has never been taught at any level except law school graduate level.

Doni: That's right.

Kristin: Diversity, equity and inclusion was truly what he was referring to.

And the same with DeSantis and Florida and actually Ohio.

We have a law that was proposed last year basically doing the same thing.

Doni: So is it we those see a number of states who are proposing legislation, Ohio included, that really is this pushing back so hard on the teaching of what they say.

Most of the laws say are designed just to make people feel bad.

Kristin: Well, the discussion is that critical race theory divides us.

How is learning divisive number one?

And number two, we're we're already divided.

We might as well understand why we're divided.

Right.

How we got to the point where we are now.

Because all of those things I just mentioned, causes where we have a disproportionate number of black Americans living in inner cities.

We have segregated schools.

Our schools are segregated now.

So all of those things came about from history and what critical race theory actually does and I'm not an expert in critical race theory.

I don't teach it.

I teach the the sociology of of race and different issues.

But critical race theory says we have to look back at where we came from and see how we have continued to put not explicitly racist things in our laws, but inform but information in our laws that impact people of color different.

Doni: So why is that important?

I mean, from a from a sociological aspect, when we're looking at race and racism and structural racism, why is the teaching of history important?

There are folks who would challenge and say it's absolutely not important at all that we need to move forward.

Kristin: That than let's not have social studies classes or history classes.

We need history.

Otherwise we wouldn't teach it in our schools.

And we use history to understand our past so that we don't repeat mistakes.

That's the first.

And then we also look at history because we know it forms who we are as a country.

So I was never taught a lot of things about black history.

I was taught that Martin Luther King was this beloved person.

No, he he was investigated by the FBI.

He was looked at as a criminal.

We weren't taught that.

Right.

You know, we were taught that Rosa Parks was some little old tired lady that wouldn't give up her seat.

That's not true either.

She was an.

Activist.

Doni: She was an activist.

That's right.

Kristin: And so what we're doing there.

Number one is kind of taking away the agency from the black community of their own civil rights movement.

And it's almost giving credit to two white people in a way, for it.

We were nice enough to, you know, pass the civil rights laws and because you complained enough, but we did it.

And, you know, the white president made Martin Luther King Day and it just takes away the agents of the fight that our black community has had.

Doni: Why is there a professor?

Why is there this fear that people have of owning the past and using it as a way to to make a better future?

I read a quote just the other day, and I can't remember who it was from who said history never really says goodbye.

It says, See you later.

And I thought that was really fairly profound, pretty simple, fairly profound at the same time.

Why are people afraid?

Kristin: The last question, which I probably didn't answer.

People are afraid because they think it's going to make white people feel guilty.

We don't want to teach white people that they've done anything wrong.

But the issue is I didn't do anything wrong.

Doni: Exactly right.

Kristin: And the other people that are living today are not doing anything wrong.

It's our history.

Our.

Our ancestors did that.

But if we don't teach about that, if we don't teach our children what our ancestors did, we're not going to learn why we are where we are.

We're going to be even more divisive because the issue of racism and racial disparities is not going away.

Doni: Right.

And it's not, as I understand it and please correct me if I'm wrong.

It's not a matter of teaching a subject that identifies people as oppressors or as evil people.

It's a it's a process that empowers people by giving credit to their history in their presence.

And not just not just black folks, but indigenous folks.

Is that.

Kristin: Exactly.

We we tend to talk in terms of always negative.

You know, we have disproportionate number of black citizens living in the inner city, living in poverty.

The rates of death in birthing for black women is higher or higher.

Why do we have all these things?

And we have to figure out why That that's that's that is probably the most important thing.

And that history, looking back and looking at the sociology, looking at the past laws, is what makes people understand how we got here.

Doni: Absolutely.

I'm going to ask you to hold it right there.

We're going to go away for just a minute.

We're going to come back.

I don't want you to forget where you were in that sentence.

All right.

We're going to go away.

We'll be back in just a minute.

Please stay with us.

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Doni: Again, I'd like to remind you to connect with us on our social media pages and please email me at Doni underscore Miller at WGTE dot org for this episode and other additional extras, go to WGTE dot org to the point.

Again, we are talking today about critical race theory and its implications and its misunderstandings and I understand that this is a huge topic for the amount of time that we have today, and that's why I really want you to come back so we can talk about just things that make a difference in the way this society moves, like structural racism and and the understanding of the impact of of of that particular activity and the presence of that on on this country and the folks who will have to live in in this country.

You were saying as we went to break.

Doni: Well the structural racism is one of the things that many people want to deny exists.

If we have structural racism, then that explains the disparities that I was just talking about.

If we don't have it, then we can look and we can say in our country, hard work and making the right choices, anyone can can succeed in this country.

And that's true now, no doubt about it.

We have choices, but we don't all have the same choice.

Yeah, and we have to look back to see why we got to the point where we don't have the same.

doni: And, you know, that's one of the primary criticisms of this whole critical race theory is the idea of meritocracy that, you know, people don't want the idea of meritocracy to be challenged, that, you know, they really want to speak as though everybody does have all this, all the same opportunities.

Doni: Well, the the the opportunities are out there.

It's a matter of whether people of color are given those same opportunities.

And so there's no doubt when we look at society, there are differences.

We can see where people live.

We can see it in the schools.

And when people narrow it down and just say, well, they didn't make good choices, they didn't work hard enough, that is very frustrating because we know that we had people that were property that weren't allowed to read that were told that it's a crime to learn to read.

We had this and my students hate it when I say white supremacy, but it just means white was in power.

And so we had all these laws of white supremacy that made us different, that said we were different.

We're not different.

But our history has made where we are in society different.

And so it's real easy to just say, well, hard work and choices when it's not.

Doni: When it's not.

You said something earlier and you actually said it twice about the country being really divided.

And this certainly is not going to make it worse.

The teaching of history can't possibly make it much worse than it than it is right now.

And one of the things that it made me think about is we don't really move ahead on the road to healing if we don't understand where each other, what we bring to the table of discussion in terms of trauma and experience.

And, you know, it is generational teaching and influence and so many white children will never experienced racism.

Right.

And so unless we have this kind of education, how do we bridge how do we bridge that gap?

Is there a way.

Kristin: We need the education .That's the whole point.

And if we look at these laws, they're being brought forward by Republican legislators, which in the states that the Republicans control the state.

Yeah, and I'm not trying to make it political, but races political.

It's always been divided by the political parties on one side or the other.

And with critical race theory being that buzzword that that the conservatives want to use as they are causing the division.

Because if you ask a person of color, have we been taught history correctly, they would say no right there.

If you ask them, have you been discriminated against?

The answer's going to be yes at some point.

Is there race some racism in this country?

Yes, there is.

But why are we not accepting their word for it?

We also can see the numbers.

We can see what's going on in our society.

So it's not like there isn't a basis that we can actually see the difference is we have children.

I've had students come to my classes and when we discuss race, it's hard to discuss.

They say, Well, I've never met a black person before.

How how can you get to college and never have met a black person before?

So when they learn about redlining, for example.

Doni: Which is still prevalent today, or, you know.

Kristin: Definitely.

Doni: So for those of you who think that it's gone away, you would be wrong.

Kristin: Well, and why are the suburbs majority white?

We have to look at redlining and the fact that the houses where our black Americans were forced to live in rent did not build the wealth that the suburbs did.

Doni: That's right.

Kristin: So when we talk about generational poverty and generational wealth, that the white Americans have been able to sell houses, make profit, have been able to take their home equity, send their children to college, and many black Americans have not had that same opportunity.

Doni: Yeah, and those are the kinds of issues that need to be.

I would propose, faced head on if we're going to make any.

Kristin: Taught.

Doni: That's right.

Taught.

Kristin: Taught in an African-American history that you know, that AP classes that we've now had discussion on race should not be a political issue.

It shouldn't be.

It's a human rights issue.

But now it's completely left and right.

Doni: Yeah, it is.

You know, so many interesting aspects, I think, arise when we talk about this, this whole issue of critical race theory.

And I'm almost disappointed that we've labeled this huge thing.

I can't think of the word you promised to help me with my words today.

This, this, this huge topic.

Kristin: Subject.

Doni: yeah subject critical race theory there there are so many things that influence the way this country moves in terms of race.

Kristin: For sure, definitely.

I taught a civil rights class last semester and we we started at slavery because the fight for civil rights began there.

Yeah.

And now when we get to the present day, the buzzwords used to be, Oh, we don't want to learn about diversity.

We don't want to learn multiculturalism.

Now it's critical race theory, which really is kind of the same thing and and people I teach a concept of implicit bias.

Mm.

Mhm.

People don't want to admit that they have a bias.

It's, it's not, it's not what we call explicit racism, but being raised in this white society, we all have an implicit bias that we're, we're not aware of.

Doni; Sure.

How could them, how could you.

That has to be.

That has to be.

Kristin: The way things are portrayed on the news, the way things have been portray I show a perfect example of in Hurricane Katrina, there were a couple white people that were clearly carrying some groceries, and it was labeled Hurricane Katrina.

Victims find food to survive.

And then there's and I'm paraphrasing, but there was a young man of color.

He was a black, very young man.

And it said individual lose.

Doni: I saw that.

I saw that.

Kristin: Classic example of how implicit bias is formed and we don't realize it.

Yeah, Yeah.

So so we look at a black person as a criminal and the white people who are they're just trying to survive.

Right?

And that's how implicit bias builds in us over time.

We don't even know it.

Doni: That's right.

And education is the best way to.

To.

Overcome these things.

It's a very, very best way.

I don't undersetand.

And maybe you can help me in the few minutes we have left.

Why there would be a challenge to learning about things like the Tulsa riots in 1921 or or taking a good hard look at what happened to George Floyd or Rodney King and why or why can't we use those as a reflection of who the society is and a pathway away from that kind of thing?

What what what are you running into with your students?

What pushback?

Kristin: The the the pushback is that they they haven't learned these things.

They don't understand each other.

And really, I can say after that civil rights class, there were so many students that just went I didn't know all this.

Doni: I didn't know.

Kristin: I didn't understand why our schools are segregated.

I didn't understand why we live in two different places.

So just understanding the the history and the past laws, we it will help us look at our current laws.

Absolutely.

Even in the war on drugs, there was a law dealing with crack cocaine and powder cocaine.

That and on its face, there's nothing.

Wrong with that.

Doni: That's right.

That's one of the things I want to talk about when you come back and we're going to have to leave this subject today.

I so hate to do that, but you promised me you'd come back, right?

All righty.

So we are going to go away.

Thank you so much for your time today.

Again, this is a topic that we will discuss again and again and again.

Thank you so much.

We'll see you on to the Point.

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