title
Motion of the Council of Allegheny County urging school districts within Allegheny County to include Critical Race Theory perspectives in their curriculum as a means of providing students with an additional tool for comprehensively evaluating the role of race and racism in society.
body
Whereas, Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a practice of interrogating the role of race and racism in society that emerged in the legal academy and spread to other fields of scholarship that cannot be confined to a static and narrow definition but, rather, is an evolving concept that critiques how the social construction of race and institutionalized racism perpetuate a racial caste system that relegates people of color to the bottom tiers; and
Whereas, CRT also recognizes that race intersects with other identities, including sexuality, gender identity, and others, and recognizes that racism is not merely a purely historical footnote, but rather acknowledges that the legacy of slavery, segregation, and the imposition of second-class citizenship on Black Americans and other people of color continue to permeate the social fabric of this nation; and
Whereas, while recognizing the evolving and malleable nature of CRT, scholar Khiara Bridges outlines a few key tenets of CRT, including (1) the recognition that race is not biologically significant insofar as science refutes the concept of biological racial differences - but is instead purely socially constructed and socially significant, (2) acknowledgement that racism is a normalized feature of society and is embedded within systems and institutions, like the legal system, that replicate racial inequality, and that manifest structural and systemic racism, (3) rejection of popular understandings about racism, such as arguments that confine racism to a few “bad apples,” coupled with recognition that racism is codified in law, embedded in structures, and woven into public policy and thus establishes a self-perpetuating cycle of r...
Click here for full text