Thread by @BenjySarlin

I've read about a million takes on "critical race theory" over the last few months and my one consistent takeaway that obsessing over a definition of "CRT" is largely useless and everyone should just argue over specific examples as much as possible nymag.com/intelligencer/…

This cuts in different directions on left and right. The main activist on the right is openly trying to make CRT a catch-call and political slogan for various things conservatives hate, not some actual rigorous definition. It's easy to dismiss it as bad faith demagoguery as such.

But because it's so easy to dismiss as propaganda, people on the left keep thinking any complaint that falls under its rubric can be safely ignored. But there really is lots of change happening now and they need to address specifics without getting bogged down in label fights.

One way to think about it: Just about everyone said we were entering a big national conversation on race last year, right? Well, that conversation is happening nationwide. If you get too bogged down into properly labeling it, you forget you need to actually HAVE the conversation.

In NY, for example, there are big debates over gifted and talented programs, testing, and specialized high schools. What should we do on those? People have strong disagreements! There's not much to be gained by deciding which is "CRT," you just have to hash it out in a democracy.

This is all the more maddening because so many debates over what we call structural racism predate CRT and would be going on today regardless of whether Derrick Bell ever existed. This is what the more Sullivan-esque side that sees CRT behind every tree keeps failing to get.

You think people never noticed huge structural disparities in housing, school, admissions, policing, law, without explicit race-based discrimination before some academics got together? It was central to the civil rights movement the whole time!

So people correctly see activists on the right using word games to shut down debates that have been going on for decades about how to provide racial justice in reality, not just on paper. But they have to actually WIN those debates, pointing out its being exploited doesn't do it.

"This issue is being exploited by bad faith actors for electoral purposes" is an evergreen truth, but doesn't provide any answer to what optimal education/housing/policing/fiscal policy should be. There are no easy answers and we're going to have to keep hashing it out forever.