At the start of every month, I change my home and lock screens on my phone and tablet. I’m indecisive. Sue me.
At the start of this month, I changed up my wallpapers as usual. And my home screen picture was a trip down memory lane: a photo from my friends Matt and Kali’s wedding.
Look at that newlywed glow!
Seeing that photo every time I use my phone is one way to get regular hits of serotonin. But seeing the three of our smiling mugs also made me think of two questions: 1. Why didn’t I mind the heaven and earth that had to be moved for this picture to be taken? 2. What’s the deeper meaning behind the answer to question 1?
You see, because I’m behind the curve and don’t have my license, getting to Wisconsin for the wedding wasn’t as simple as hopping in my car on Friday morning and then hanging around in Madison until Matt and Kali said their “I dos.” I had to:
Buy a train ticket.
Talk amongst my roommates and see who was willing to get up at 4:30 in the morning on a Friday to drive me down to the train station.
Ride a train to Chicago.
Run from the Chicago train station to the Chicago bus station.
Ride this bus to Madison, Wisconsin.
Catch an Uber from the bus stop to the hotel.
Panic text Kali when I realized I’d been so focused on getting to Wisconsin that I hadn’t made an exit plan.
And to fund all of this, I had to work a fast food job that at one point made me scream into a pillow for the first time.
And yet, despite the early rising, the seat rash, wanting to light my tie on fire out of sheer frustration, and possibly being racially profiled in a wine store (don’t ask), all the negatives feel like afterthoughts compared to being in the crowd when Kali and Matt were announced as husband and wife, dancing with friends at the reception, and even the drive back to Michigan with two of the bridesmaids. Why?
Answer: because I love Kali and Matt.
They’re my friends. Our friendship spans three countries (the three of us met at our American university, Matt and I studied abroad together in Spain, and Kali visited during advising break, and I kept up with Kali while she was abroad in Peru). The three of us have seen each other at low points, and been there for one another in dark times. We’ve also celebrated each other’s high points.
One in particular.
In the shadow of the mountain of the love between Matt, Kali and I, transportation shenanigans and crabby customers are minor inconveniences.
So, let’s talk about love.
Geez, I feel like a cheeseball even typing that sentence.
What is love? (Besides a cheesy hit single from the ’90s?) Two different sources have definitive answers, and I want to talk about both of them.
The first and more recent is CS Lewis. In his book The Four Loves, Lewis analyzes four types of categories, given names and definitions by the Greeks. They are:
Storge, the love of affection and family. This is the love of familiarity, the type of love made through regular close contact. Studies have shown that neglected babies have problems in brain development, showing that storge is necessary for survival
Philia, the love of friendship. Lewis called this the love dismissed, and said that “few value it because few experience it.” He also noted that philia can never be one-sided. Proof of that: pick a random celebrity and type their name into Instagram’s search engine. See all those fan pages that come up? Now see how many of those pages the celebrity follows. And if you’re one of the people who dismisses philia, consider how many of the most acclaimed movies and shows revolve around friendship–every sitcom ever (including the one literally named Friends), Sex and the City, Band of Brothers,Stand by Me, Naruto, The Shawshank Redemption, etc.
Eros, the love of romance. When you hear of eros, your mind may jump straight to something sexual; rein that instinct in. Culture has made that association too (eros is the root word for erotic, after all) but Lewis distinguished between eros, romance, and Venus, sexuality. Eros is about intimacy: if you’ve ever seen an old couple holding hands, that may be the embodiment of eros. Unlike philia, eros can be one-sided
Agape, the love of charity. Lewis considered this the ultimate form of love, the kind of love that storge, philia and eros built up to. This is the love of self-sacrifice, of dog-tired parents getting up to comfort a crying baby, of a boy/girlfriend joining in on a hobby they don’t like because their partner does, of staying by a relative’s side as a terminal illness ravages their body. The ultimate example of agape is none other than Jesus Christ, suffering and dying for the redemption of humankind.
The second answer comes from the Bible, in 1 Corinthians 13.
If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
1 Corinthians 13: 1-7
Takeaways?
No amount of faith or works can salvage an unloving heart. I have a rocky relationship with street evangelism for this reason. I have no doubt the majority of people you see preaching from a soapbox on a street corner have good intentions. But the nature of street evangelism–going to a place where you don’t know anyone and giving a message they may not want to hear–leaves little room for love. Evangelism based on numbers games is evangelism that doesn’t foster love.
It is possible to sacrifice unlovingly. Let me preface this by saying any references to the Oscars are getting deleted. Now, in one of his stand-up bits, Chris Rock mocked black people who expect praise for things they’re supposed to do, like not committing crime and providing for their kids. All jokes aside, tons of children have had their parents leverage their well-being against them, as if they had a choice coming into the world a complete dependent. To paraphrase a certain blue-skinned space archer: your parents may be your parents, but they’re not always your mommy and daddy.
There is Biblical justification for giving Internet couples side-eye. “Love is patient, love is kind.” So, not those stupid couples that “play” pranks on one another or call each other horrible names for Internet likes. “…it does not boast, is not proud.” The next time you see a Kardashian bragging on what their Sugar Daddy of the Week bought them, remember that.
Love means taking the high road. A LOT. The Bible came up with the idea of “arguing right” a few thousand years before psychologists did: no personal attacks (“…does not dishonor others…”), “I feel” statements, not “you always” statements (“…it is not self-seeking…), keeping a cool head (“…it is not easily angered…”) and no keeping receipts on past grievances (“…it keeps no record of wrongs.”) When people hear “self-sacrifice,” they think lofty things like donating kidneys or Christ’s sacrifice. And while those things are self-sacrifice, it’s also not doing what comes naturally to human beings. No one has to be taught to hold grudges, or that jabs at people’s insecurities cut the deepest. That’s dying to yourself.
And reader, I’ve arrived at an impasse. Because, to no one’s shock except my own, love is a very large topic. Seeing how I got this post’s name from Rob Bell’s book, it’s fitting that I push and push towards a point only to drop it and move on. And because I don’t have enough bulleted lists, here’s another one for conclusions:
Bad things happen when you get the Four Loves confused. Ever heard someone say that men and women can’t be friends? Or heard somebody complain about being in the friendzone? It’s a love disconnect: where one party is experiencing philia, the other is experiencing eros. Incest happens when eros love and storge love are conflated. Need I continue?
No man is an island. Here in America, there’s a strong spirit of individualism built into the foundation of this country. And while everyone must be their own person in the sense of not being codependent, nothing is capable of being done alone, not even existence. I’ve heard people try to dismiss love as “brain chemicals,” but I repeat: love is dying to yourself, doing things that flies in the face of every animal instinct. Love makes soldiers throw self-preservation to the wind and run into gunfire to pull their wounded fellow man to safety. And as much as we idolize “self-made” people, there are few people who love no one. And those people are terrifying.
Love alone is worth the fight. This point is here purely to plug a dope song.
I can’t think of a concluding sentence that doesn’t feel Kumbayah-y, so I’ll conclude how I started:
It’s like the reverse of an Oreo!
Do your part to make a world where love wins, dear reader.
Welcome back everyone. TIWTTA is a series on this site where I take a current issue and cut through the bullcrap. I did one of these about privilege back in 2020 and then never again. Until now, that is!
Other than Ukraine, there might not be a hotter button topic than critical race theory. And the discourse around it (especially in right-wing spaces) makes it clear a lot of people are being misled. So, a solid definition is a good place to start.
What Is Critical Race Theory?
The simplest definition of critical race theory I could find comes from an Education Week article on the topic: “Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.” Key to critical race theory is the concept of systemic racism, defined by The Aspen Institute as “a system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity.”
I’ll use Education Week’s example of redlining for an example of critical race theory’s application. Redlining was a governmental practice in the 1930s. Lawmakers would hang up city maps and draw red outlines (hence the name) around neighborhoods they saw as financial risks. Most of these neighborhoods were “risky” because they had majority-black populations. They would pass these maps on to banks, who would then refuse mortgages and loans to residents of “risky” neighborhoods who applied for a mortgage in a “safer” neighborhood, effectively trapping black Americans in these “risky” neighborhoods. Though redlining was outlawed by the 1968 Fair Housing Act, it continues to affect American society to this day. The redlined neighborhoods of yesterday have become the projects and low-income neighborhoods of today. The practice of redlining effectively created the cycle of poverty in the US. Because of the state of these neighborhoods, businesses and community improvement opportunities go elsewhere, keeping these communities in their broken-down state due to lack of resources. Since home ownership is a major financial stabilizer, the disparity between black and white homeowners has also contributed to the wealth gap between black and white people. And because many of the residents in these neighborhoods turn to crime because they have no other options, redlining is also directly responsible for racist ‘tough on crime’ political rhetoric and policing practices.
So: because of a social construct (stereotypes of financial irresponsibility and delinquency wrongly attributed to people because of their skin color) a system (redlining) of public policies (housing discrimination), institutional practices (refusing financial help to black folks looking to buy homes) and cultural representations (black people are lesser and your neighborhoods will suffer if you let them in) perpetuate racial group inequity (the cycle of poverty and discrepancies between the number of white and black homeowners) and also leave behind nasty legal traps long after the system is “abolished” (joblessness, racist policing, “tough on crime” politics).
You picking up what I’m putting down?
Who Created Critical Race Theory?
Eight different figures are considered the “founders” of critical race theory. They all contributed an idea critical (heh) to the school of thought. They are:
Derrick Bell (1930-2011), a civil rights lawyer, Harvard professor, and author, got the ball rolling by introducing the idea of interest convergence. Interest convergence is the idea that black people achieve civil rights victories only when black and white interests converge. Bell argued that Brown v. Board of Education was ruled in Brown’s favor because a desegregated America would have a better time winning allies in the Cold War.
Charles R. Lawrence III (1943-), an attorney, researcher, educator, and law professor at Georgetown University, focused on the idea of unconscious racism. He defined racism as “a set of beliefs whereby we irrationally attach significance to something called race” and pointed out that, by this definition, all people are racist. It is this type of unconscious racism, as opposed to the overt racism displayed by white supremacists, that plagues the white moderates Martin Luther King Jr. vehemently criticized in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw (1959-), a civil rights activist, scholar, and professor at UCLA and Columbia University, coined the phrase retrenchment. Retrenchment states that white supremacists will always move the goalposts, or retrench, when it comes to proving the superiority of whites over other races. When scientific racism was exposed as pseudoscience, white supremacists focused on the superiority of white cultures. And Crenshaw came up with the idea during the Reagan-era attacks on affirmative action, the next stage of retrenchment when cultural racism faltered. (Today’s attacks on critical race theory are themselves examples of retrenchment.)
Richard Delgado (1939-), a legal scholar who teaches at the University of Alabama School of Law, literally wrote the book on CRT. He is also one of the founders of LatCrit, an offshoot of critical race theory that takes its principles and applies it to the treatment of Latin Americans in US society.
Alan David Freeman (1943-1995), a law professor at University at Buffalo Law School, worked with Derrick Bell in the early days of Bell developing critical race theory. Freeman promoted a new paradigm of the law. Law, in Freeman’s eyes, was “an evolving statement of acceptable public morality” that’s primary purpose is to “legitimize the existing social structure and, especially, class relationships within that structure.” (In layman’s terms, if you’ve ever seen this meme or something similar to it, the idea comes from Alan David Freeman’s legal theories.) Freeman’s ideas are key to wrapping your head around the idea of systemic racism.
Cheryl I. Harris (???-), faculty director for the Critical Race Studies program at the UCLA School at Law, wrote the 1993 article “Whiteness as Property.” The paper itself is 85 pages long, so a summary: white identity and property are deeply interrelated concepts. Because property is so deeply tied to whiteness, laws that protect property often work to elevate white society. (She’s also Earl Sweatshirt’s mother, so even if the paper’s not your speed, that’s cool, innit?)
Mari Matsuda (1956-), a lawyer, activist and law professor in the University of Hawaii’s William S. Richardson School of Law, made a name for herself with her 1986 article “Liberal Jurisprudence and Abstracted Visions of Human Nature.” Her paper provided a feminist critique of John Rawls’ theory of justice, and concluded with the idea relevant to this post: that to achieve the society of free equals Rawls idealized in his philosophy, outsider voices and communities must have a place in the law.
Patricia J. Williams (1951-), a legal scholar, contributor to The Nation and director of law, technology and ethics at Northeastern University, has been the publicist of critical race theory, discussing it in her The Nation column “Diary of a Mad Law Professor” and having written for The New York Times on the topic of CRT.
This is a header, BTW.
Remember that retrenchment idea Kimberlé Crenshaw came up with? The backlash against “critical race theory” is an example of retrenchment. If you found yourself reading about the founders of CRT and thinking everything they’re talking about sounds way too lofty for elementary schoolers and/or noticed all the founders of CRT are some kind of professor, legal scholar, or lawyer, CONGRATULATIONS! You have done more critical thinking than everyone who’s screamed at school board members for brainwashing their children combined.
Critical race theory–the actual field of study, which is exclusively a grad school-level subject–isn’t what Fox News mentioned 1300 times in a year or what politicians are coasting into office by promising to fight. You can tell because of the many laws on the books cracking down on “critical race theory,” (more on that in a minute) none have a consistent definition of “critical race theory.” Aziz Huq, a lawyer and law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, noted these inconsistencies in his TIME article “The Conservative Case Against Banning Critical Race Theory.” Is it “racial essentialism,” like the Republican Study Committee said in a newsletter? Is it a Marxist scheme defining race as a social construct to stick it to white men, like Ellie Krasne of the Heritage Foundation thinks? Is it identity-based Marxism meant to gear the US government towards a socialist revolution, like Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute believes? Is it emphasizing race over character, as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis contended when he passed the Stop W.O.K.E. Act into law? Is it an especially inflammatory form of identity politics, like Idaho lawmakers said when they passed HB 377?
It’s none of these things, and the people making a stink know it. This uprising is a power play.
One of the oldest tricks in the right-wing playbook is conflation. If you don’t know what I mean, consider this meme:
It’s a satire of real Internet discourse. Even though communism is an economic system (read: communists are most focused on work- and economics-related issues like labor unions, livable wages and wealth equity) conservatives scream “communism” at any left-wing policy, even on issues that communists would logically have little interest in, like gun laws or climate change. By instilling such a rabid hatred of communism in their voters, conservative lawmakers can turn their voter base against virtually anything proposed by liberals. And that’s the idea with the sudden revolt against CRT. First, label anything having to do with race and academics–diversity, inclusion, and equity efforts, affirmative action, curriculum content, etc.–as CRT. Second, throw in misinformation and false equivalencies meant to stir up white fragility and/or make the counter-protestors look like the bad guys, like: critical race theory teaches our kids that discrimination against white people is OK. And besides, it’s demeaning to black people, teaching them that they’re victims. It’s going to make American education worse, and make white students uncomfortable while doing it. Step three: trot out the anti-CRT measures and profit.
Arizona has an anti-“CRT” law in place for state agencies and, as of February 16, had two bills in gestation forbidding “CRT” from Arizona schools and one forbidding affirming ideas about race.
I’ve already mentioned Florida extensively, but believe it or not, it gets worse. Along with the Stop W.O.K.E. Act and the “Don’t Say Gay” Bill, SBs 242 and 148 aim to remove, quote, “anything that makes students feel ‘discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress'” from classroom settings. Ron DeSantis is also pushing for parents to be able to sue teachers that teach curriculum they disagree with.
It’s a bad time to be a teacher in a state that starts with “I.”
Idaho was one of the first states to pass an anti-“CRT” law. Idaho lawmakers are in lockstep with Ron DeSantis in fighting for parents’ rights to sue teachers over teaching ideas they object to.
Indiana senator Scott Baldwin made national headlines by demanding teachers be impartial when discussing Nazism and fascism in classrooms. His saying the quiet part out loud sunk that particular bill, but four others–SB 415 and HBs 1362, 1389 and 1134–sprung up in its place. These bills would ban gender and race diversity training and would allow school funding to be pulled if staff didn’t comply.
Iowa passed HF 802 in spring 2021, banning “racial and sexual stereotyping” in diversity training (read: they disallowed discussion of implicit bias, a foundational concept in diversity training, from diversity training.) Four bills are pending. One forbids negative comments about the Pledge of Allegiance. Another demands teachers take a Baldwinesque “balanced” approach to controversial topics.
In the land of McConnell-induced hell, aka Kentucky, four bills would ban gender/diversity training, discussion of certain topics, and would mandate versions to teach a specific version of American history. Teachers could have their credentials revoked should they disobey the bills.
Missouri takes the cake with a whopping sixteen bills promoting standard anti-“CRT” fare: ban on “divisive” concepts, a mandated positive presentation of US history, and a requirement of signing a “non-indoctrination clause,” wherein a teacher must teach all sides of political, religious or ideological debates.
New Hampshire must have something in the state drinking water, because along with a bill on the books that would forbid mentions of Marxism, socialism and negative portrayals of the Founding Fathers in classroom discussion, the New Hampshire branch of Moms for Lying to Children–I mean, Liberty–is offering bounties to report rule-breaking teachers.
In second place for volume behind Missouri is Oklahoma, with nine bills extending the reach of an established anti-“CRT” law in the pipeline. These bills, along with standard anti-“CRT” fare, would ban certain flags from the classroom, disallow teachers from giving extra credit for political activity, and would allow parents to sue teachers for contradicting religious beliefs.
Tennessee was one of the states where the critical race theory panic began. Five anti-“CRT” bills are in the pipeline. One of them is Tennessee’s own “Don’t Say Gay” Bill.
One of Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin’s first actions in office was to make good on his campaign promise and sign an anti-“CRT” executive order. Five bills supporting the executive order are in the pipeline. They also forbid teachings that criticize capitalism and have a built-in bathroom bill.
In third place for who’s taken the most crazy pills is West Virginia, with seven anti-“CRT” bills in the pipeline. One forbids the discussion of certain topics like communism, critical economic theory, Maoism or Marxism unless, quote, “the teacher includes ‘the scope and scale of state sponsored terror and murder, absence of legal process and protection of civil and political rights, forced labor, economic inefficiency and starvations’ that came with such philosophies.”
Twelve states (California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin) went unmentioned in the article, but considering the article is 2 months old and that anti-CRT bills have sprung up in Democrat stronghold states like New York and Minnesota, don’t think you’re safe because your neighbors have Biden/Harris signs in their yards.
What Can We Do?
With all this talk of conflation and theory and legal consequences, it’s easy to feel like this is out of your pay grade. I’m right there with you. So, here are practical steps:
Wake up and remember apathy is the goal. One lingering way Donald Trump has poisoned the Republican Party is by encouraging intimidation politics. All of these laws, passed and pending, punch down: threatening underpaid teachers with termination and under-funded schools and districts with even less money; fighting to keep underrepresented children underrepresented; and threatening legal action against anyone who speaks up. The intent of these laws is to leave people either too scared to resist or too hopeless to look for ways to fight these laws. So see these laws for what they are–legal bullying–and act accordingly.
VOTE SMART. People underestimate how important midterms are. While it’s important who’s President or Senate Majority Leader, there are hundreds of thousands of state and local politicians who can hold up or undermine the decisions of the legal, executive and judicial branches. So, vote in 2022 and 2024, but do your research before you do. Kneejerk voting against X, Y and Z is not only how people like Glenn Youngkin get elected, but also how Trojan horse candidates who campaign one way and legislate another get elected. (Looking at you, Kyrsten Sinema and Tulsi Gabbard.)
…or obey the letter of the law, not the spirit. In the same vein as the above, conservatives’ revolt against books that might make their kids realize radical ideas like “gay people are human beings” or “you have to be an idiot to think mask mandates make America Nazi Germany II” has backfired horribly. Tennessee’s ban of the graphic novel Maus, which has author Art Spiegelman tell the story of his father surviving the Holocaust, made sales for Maus skyrocket. And because Republicans can’t learn from their mistakes, the same thing happened when Ted Cruz brought out an antiracist children’s book to try to get one over on Ketanji Brown Jackson. As more than one person has pointed out, by issuing extensive book bans, conservatives have served curious children reading lists on a platter. And these children don’t live at school, meaning they’re free to read these scary, brainwashing books so long as they do it outside of school. So encourage your kids to read these books and research these ideas in their own time, a sphere no Republican can touch.
Read up on your rights. You better believe these laws aren’t being taken sitting down. The ACLU leaped on the variety of ways anti-“CRT” laws violated students and teachers’ First Amendment rights. You should, too.
Find and be support. When heads are put together, corruption falls apart. Whatever criticisms you have of conservative forces in this country, they got at least one thing right: they figured out decades ago how much power you can gather by coalescing people with similar goals. So organize those peaceful protests. Write those letters to officials. Attend school board meetings en masse. Make your coalitions. Your opponents can’t complain; it’s their idea. And be a shoulder to cry on and a listening ear to anyone affected by these bills and laws.
Matsuda, Mari J. “Liberal Jurisprudence and Abstracted Visions of Human Nature.” New Mexico Law Review, vol. 16, no. 3, 1986, pp. 613-30, digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmlr/vol16/iss3/18/.
The Keene Chronicles 
