A Truthful Analytical Look At CRT… What Exactly Is It And Where Did It Come From?
When having an honest discussion about any topic, it’s important to separate the extreme views from the core of the matter. Many people tend to forget this fact when discussing Critical Race Theory (CRT). In fact, many individuals purposely point to the extreme examples as a way of justifying their point of view and/or to provide cover for their political agenda.
As excellently explained by EdWeek.org, “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.
“CRT does not focus on interpersonal bias or whether any individual person is racist. CRT helps us understand how laws and policies, even the ones that aren’t explicitly about race or racism (e.g., housing, health care, voting rights) can cause or worsen racial disparities. By focusing on laws, policies and systems, CRT helps us understand how and why racial injustice continues to persist in the U.S. despite the progress that has been made towards racial equity.1a“
“The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others.
“CRT also has ties to other intellectual currents, including the work of sociologists and literary theorists who studied links between political power, social organization, and language. And its ideas have since informed other fields, like the humanities, the social sciences, and teacher education.1“
On the extreme spectrum, we have individuals and groups INCORRECTLY attaching Critical Race Theory to wokeness, beliefs such as all White people are inherently racist & oppressors and all Black people (and/or people of color) are oppressed, LGBTQ issues/organizations, and the Black Lives Matter organization. And no, Critical Race Theory is not anti-Christian!
Now that we know what Critical Race Theory is and is not, below are a number of historical systematic and institutional facts that support CRT.
SYSTEMATIC / INSTITUTIONAL RACISM
Systematic Racism
Racism isn’t always explicit. “When most people think about racism, they probably think of racial slurs, hate crimes, or other overtly racist actions. There are, however, other less obvious yet ultimately even more destructive forms of racism. Structural [institutional] and systemic racism are often invisible – at least to those who are not its victims2.”
“Systemic racism” can be defined as an infrastructure of rulings, ordinances or statutes promulgated by a sovereign government or authoritative entity, whereas such ordinances and statutes entitles one ethnic group in a society certain rights and privileges, while denying other groups in that society these same rights and privileges because of long-established cultural prejudices, religious prejudices, fears, myths, and Xenophobia’s held by the entitled group3.“
A good example of systematic racism is in the 1930s, the US government officials literally drew lines around areas deemed poor financial risks, often explicitly due to the racial composition of inhabitants. Banks subsequently refused to offer mortgages to Black people in those areas regardless of their financial situation and/or credit worthiness.
Another example of systematic racism is in the realm of voting. The legal right for all men to vote was secured in 1870. However, during the nearly 100-year era of Jim Crow laws, voter suppression of Black people was maintained in many States through violent intimidation and selectively applied laws. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not eliminate requirements that continued to differentially affect people of color.
As a consequence of the US Civil War, social efforts by African and European American progressive groups and individuals, the removal of Jim Crow laws, etc, today there is almost no “legal” support of systematic racism in the US Federal or State governments. However, the negative consequences of systematic racism does still effect African American communities (as explained in the above video).
“Without the fear of death any person can petition their precinct or district representatives, or challenge in a court of law covert or overt efforts by government municipalities, political organizations, or even businesses that attempt to create systems of racism designed to thwart the advancement and well-being of the American African people or any other ethnic group. If any individual in government, or any organization is found to be guilty of working to create systems of racism, that individual or organization will soon be publicly exposed, vilified, most likely resulting in loss of work or influence, finally being ostracized from the public arena with the potential for criminal prosecution. Thus, systemic racism in the pure sense of the word is dead in the U.S.” See the Institutional Racism section below.
EXAMPLES OF SYSTEMATIC RACIST LAWS
| SUBJECT | DESCRIPTION |
| Slavery (1500s – 1865) | Slavery in the United States existed in North America for more than a century before the founding of the United States in 1776, and continued in the South until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. The first English colony in North America, Virginia, first imported Africans in 1619, a practice earlier established in the Spanish colonies as early as the 1560s. The majority of slaveholders were in the southern United States, where most slaves were engaged in a work-gang system of agriculture. Such large groups of slaves were thought to work more efficiently if directed by a managerial class called overseers, usually white men. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, an estimated 12 million Africans were shipped as slaves to the Americas. Of these, an estimated 645,000 were brought to what is now the United States. By the 1860 United States Census, the slave population in the United States had grown to four million. |
| Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 | Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act in February 1793 and this was signed into law by the first US president, George Washington. The Fugitive Slave Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article 4, Section 2) guaranteed the right of a slaveholder to recover an escaped slave. This law established the legal mechanism by which escaped slaves could be seized in any state, brought before a magistrate and returned to their masters, giving states the right to demand a slave be returned. This law made it a crime to assist a fugitive or a slave in escaping, with prison and a fine for helping a fugitive but only a fine for helping a slave. The Act made every escaped slave a fugitive for life (unless manumited by the owner), who could be recaptured at any time anywhere within the territory of the United States, along with any children subsequently born of enslaved mothers. |
| The Indian Removal Act of 1830 | Indian removal was a nineteenth century policy of the government of the United States to relocate Native American tribes living east of the Mississippi River to lands west of the river. The Indian Removal Act, part of a United States government policy known as Indian removal, was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 26, 1830. A few tribes went peacefully, but many resisted the relocation policy. During the fall and winter of 1838 and 1839, the Cherokees were forcibly moved west by the United States government. Approximately 4,000 Cherokees died on this forced march, which became known as the “Trail of Tears.” |
| U.S. Government Suppression of Native-American Religion | With officials believing in the virtue of Christianity, the United States Government worked to convert American Indians to Christianity and suppress the practice of the Native religions (spiritual leaders had been associated with leading uprisings.) The goal of the United States Government was to get Native Americans to assimilate to their culture. Some called this “making apples”, as the Indians would still appear ‘red’ on the outside, but would be made ‘white’ on the inside. Even in the 20th century, “spiritual leaders ran the risk of jail sentences of up to 30 years for simply practicing their rituals”. The law did not change until the passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) of 1978. |
| Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 | The Fugitive Slave Law or Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers. It declared that all runaway slaves be brought back to their masters. Abolitionists nicknamed it the “Bloodhound Law” for the dogs that were used to track down runaway slaves. In the response to the weakening of the earlier Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 made any Federal marshal or other official who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave liable to a fine of $1,000. Law-enforcement officials everywhere now had a duty to arrest anyone suspected of being a runaway slave on no more evidence than a claimant’s sworn testimony of ownership. The suspected slave could not ask for a jury trial or testify on his or her own behalf. In addition, any person aiding a runaway slave by providing food or shelter was subject to six months’ imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. Officers who captured a fugitive slave were entitled to a bonus or promotion for their work. Slave owners only needed to supply an affidavit to a Federal marshal to capture an escaped slave. Since any suspected slave was not eligible for a trial this led to many free blacks being conscripted into slavery as they had no rights in court and could not defend themselves against accusations. |
| 1850 Foreign Miners Tax | This law placed a $20 a month tax on all miners of foreign origin in California. The 1852 version of the law placed a $3 a month tax exclusively for Chinese laborers. Taxes for Chinese steadily increased with ever harsher bills passing the California Legislature and signed into law by then California Governor Bigler. One law passed by the State Legislature and signed by the Governor created a $50 tax per head for Chinese entering Californian ports that was to be paid within three days. The California Supreme Court later ruled the law unconstitutional. |
| “Greaser” Act of 1855 | The Greaser Act was an anti-Mexican law enacted in 1855 in California, thinly disguised as an anti-vagrancy statute. The law defined a vagrant as “all persons who are commonly known as ‘Greasers’ or the issue of Spanish and Indian blood… and who go armed and are not peaceable and quiet persons.” The law was repealed a few years later. |
| The Black Codes (1860s) | These were laws passed on the state and local level in the United States, but mostly in the south, to limit the basic human rights and civil liberties of blacks. After the abolition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, all former slave states adopted new Black Codes. During 1865 every Southern state passed Black Codes that restricted the Freedmen, who were emancipated but not yet full citizens. While they pursued re-admission to the Union, the Southern states provided freedmen with limited second-class civil rights and no voting rights. Southern plantation owners feared that they would lose their land. Having convinced themselves that slavery was justified, planters feared African Americans wouldn’t work without coercion. The Black Codes were an attempt to control them and to ensure they did not claim social equality. The Black Codes denied freedmen the rights to testify against whites, to serve on juries or in state militias, or to vote. Black Codes declared that freedmen who failed to sign yearly labor contracts could be arrested and hired out to white landowners. Some states limited the occupations open to African Americans and barred them from acquiring land, and others provided that judges could assign African American children to work for their former owners without the consent of their parents. Click here for more information on Mississippi and South Carolina codes. |
| Anti-Coolie Act a.k.a. “An act to protect free white labor against competition with Chinese coolie labor, and to discourage the immigration of the Chinese into the State of California” (1862) | The Anti-Coolie Act was enacted by the state of California in the United States of America and became law on April 26, 1862. Its proper title is “An act to protect free white labor against competition with Chinese coolie labor, and to discourage the immigration of the Chinese into the State of California.” It was designed to protect native residents of the state from competition in the labor market from Chinese immigrant manual laborers. It aimed to discourage Chinese citizens from immigrating to California by placing a per capita tax on all Chinese laborers in the state of California. The tax took the form of a monthly work permit costing $2.50 to be required of any worker over the age of 18 of the “Mongolian Race.” The act exempted Chinese workers engaged in the production or manufacture of sugar, rice, coffee or tea. Federal legislation known by the same name was passed earlier the same year. “Coolie” was a derogatory term used for unskilled Asian workers |
| Convict Lease System (1883-1910) | The subjugation of African-Americans became common throughout the South after the war. Several laws were passed (or old ones were reinstituted) which helped keep the African-American population in its place, such as vagrancy, loitering, disturbing the peace, and Jim Crow laws, to name just a few. When these methods failed, the use of force was relied upon, especially lynching (and lynchings increased after the war). One result of this practice was the shift in prison populations to predominately African-American following the war. Convict leasing was a system of penal labour instituted in the American South after the emancipation of slaves by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. Criminologist Thorsten Sellin, in his book Slavery and the Penal System, says that the sole aim of convict leasing “was financial profit to the lessees who exploited the labor of the prisoners to the fullest, and to the government which sold the convicts to the lessees.” Convict leasing involved leasing out prisoners to private companies that paid the state a fee. The convicts worked for the companies during the day (convicts were usually not paid) outside the prison and returned to their cells at night. The Convict Lease System quickly became widespread and was used to supply labor in railroad, mining, farming, and logging operations. Offenders who were leased out to private enterprises often suffered neglect, abuse, and brutality. Convict leasing began in Texas by 1883 and was abolished in 1910. |
| Page Act of 1875 | The law was named after Horace F. Page, a Republican Congressman in the United States House of Representatives who introduced the bill and “sought to end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women.” |
| Residential School Systems – Indian Schools (1879-1900s) | Tens of thousands of American Indians and Alaska Natives were forced to attend a residential school system which sought to reeducate them in white settler American values, culture and economy, to “kill the Indian, save[ing] the man.” Once Native-American territories were incorporated into the United States, surviving Native Americans were denied equality before the law and often treated as wards of the state. In some areas, these schools were primarily run by missionaries. Especially given the young age of some of the children sent to the schools, they have been documented as traumatic experiences for many of the children who attended them. They were generally forbidden to speak their native languages, taught Christianity instead of their native religions, and in numerous other ways forced to abandon their Indian identity and adopt European-American culture. Tragically, many cases of mental and sexual abuse have been documented, as in North Dakota. |
| Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 | The Act excluded Chinese “skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining” from entering the country for ten years under penalty of imprisonment and deportation.” Once the Chinese Exclusion Act was finally passed in 1882, California went further in its discrimination against the Chinese by passing various laws that were later held to be unconstitutional. |
| Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887 | This was enacted by the U.S. Congress regarding the distribution of land to Native Americans in Oklahoma. It was signed into law February 8, 1887. Named after its sponsor, U.S. Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, the act was amended in 1891 and again in 1906 by the Burke Act. The act remained in effect until 1934. The act provided for the division of tribally held lands into individually-owned parcels and opening “surplus” lands to settlement by non-Indians and development by railroads. By dividing reservation lands into privately-owned parcels, legislators hoped to complete the assimilation process by forcing the deterioration of the communal life-style of the Native societies and imposing Western-oriented values of strengthening the nuclear family and values of economic dependency strictly within this small household unit. Land allotments were made in exchange for Native Americans’ becoming US citizens and giving up some forms of tribal self-government and institutions. It resulted in the transfer of an estimated total of 93 million acres (6,100 km²) from Native American control. Most was sold to individuals. |
| Scott Act (1888) | The Scott Act (1888) was a United States law that prohibited Chinese laborers abroad or who planned future travels from returning. Its main author was William Lawrence Scott of Pennsylvania. It was introduced to expand upon the Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882. This left an estimated 20,000-30,000 Chinese outside the United States at the time stranded. |
| Bennett Law of 1889 | The Bennett Law was a highly controversial state law passed in Wisconsin in 1889, that required the use of English to teach major subjects in all public and private elementary and high schools. It affected the state’s many German-language private schools (and some Norwegian schools), and was bitterly resented by German-American communities. In 1888 the Republican party nominated William D. Hoard, a dairy farmer with no political experience as governor. He found the opposition of the Germans to the Bennett Law an insult to the English language, and he tried to mobilize the Yankee population of the state behind his reelection in 1890 by hammering at the necessity to have all children speak English. (Most German children were bilingual in the cities and towns, but those in rural areas spoke mostly German.) |
| Geary Act of 1892 | Besides renewing the exclusion of Chinese laborers for another 10 years, also required Chinese already in the U.S. to carry a resident permit, a sort of internal passport, that served as proof that they entered the U.S. legally and had the right to remain in the country. Failure to carry the permit at all times was punishable by deportation or a year of hard labor. In addition, Chinese were not allowed to bear witness in court, and could not receive bail in habeas corpus proceedings. |
| Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) | In Plessy v. Ferguson, U.S. Supreme Court rules that “separate but equal” treatment for blacks and whites under the law is constitutional, thus institutionalizing Jim Crow laws keeping the races apart in public facilities. Plessy legitimized the move towards segregation practices begun earlier in the South.The case of Plessy v. Ferguson guaranteed the state’s right to implement racially separate institutions requiring them only to be “equal”. The prospect of greater state influence in matters of race worried numerous advocates of civil equalities including Supreme Court justice John Harlan who wrote in his dissent of the Plessy decision, “we shall enter upon an era of constitutional law, when the rights of freedom and American citizenship cannot receive from the nation that efficient protection which heretofore was unhesitatingly accorded to slavery and the rights of the master.” Harlan’s concerns about the entrenchment on the 14th Amendment would prove well founded as states benefited to institute segregation based law that would become popularized as the Jim Crow system. Jim Crow laws spread northward in response to a second wave of African American immigration and would eventually extend to segregated educational facilities, separate public institutions such as hotels and restaurants, separate beaches among other public facilities, restrictions on interracial marriage among numerous other facets of daily life. Jim Crow legislation related to voting would quietly disenfranchise the Southern African American by requiring of prospective voters proof of land ownership or literacy tests at poll stations. Most African Americans were for the most part uneducated former slaves often leasing land from their former owners and immediately lost their constitutionally guaranteed right to participate in the political system. |
| Jim Crow Laws (1876-1965) | This mandated racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly “separate but equal” status for black Americans. Some examples of Jim Crow laws are the segregation of public schools, public places and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants and drinking fountains for whites and blacks. The U.S. military was also segregated. |
| The Day Law (1904) | In 1904, the “Day Law” was passed by the Kentucky legislature, prohibiting any person, group of people, or corporation from the teaching of black and white students in the same school, or from running separate branches of a school for the teaching of black and white students within twenty-five miles of each other. The law was a direct response to the integrated education provided by Berea College. After visiting the integrated Berea College, Carl Day, a legislator from Breathitt County, decided that educating blacks and whites together was wrong and began pushing the General Assembly to outlaw the practice. The resulting “Day Law” was enacted in 1904, and was immediately put to the test when the Madison County grand jury indicted the Berea trustees for violating it. The subsequent court case ultimately wound its way, in 1908, to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court upheld the Day Law, though Justice John Marshal Harlan, a Kentuckian, dissented from the majority opinion. The Day Law remained in effect until 1954, although it was amended in 1948 to allow black nursing and medical students to be educated in medicine at all-white Louisville hospitals. It was finally struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, which declared “separate but equal” schools unconstitutional and mandated that education be integrated “with all deliberate speed.” |
| Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907 | The Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907 (日米紳士協約, Nichibei Shinshi Kyōyaku) was an informal agreement between the United States and the Empire of Japan whereby the U.S. would not impose restriction on Japanese immigration or students, and Japan would not allow further emigration to the U.S. Anti-Chinese sentiment motivated American entrepreneurs to recruit Japanese laborers. In 1885, the first Japanese workers arrived in the independent Kingdom of Hawaii. As the Japanese population in California grew they were seen with suspicion of being an entering wedge by Japan. By 1905, anti-Japanese rhetoric filled the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle. |
| Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 | Also known as the Snyder Act, was proposed by Representative Homer P. Snyder (R) of New York and granted full U.S. citizenship to America’s indigenous peoples, called “Indians” in this Act. (The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees citizenship to persons born in the U.S., but only if “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”; this latter clause excludes certain indigenous peoples.) The act was signed into law by President Calvin Coolidge on June 2. This Act did not include citizens born before the effective date of the 1924 act, or outside of the United States as an indigenous person. Even Native Americans who were granted citizenship rights under the 1924 Act, may not have had full citizenship and suffrage rights until 1948. According to a survey by the Department of Interior, seven states still refused to grant Indians voting rights in 1938. Discrepancies between federal and state control provided loopholes in the Act’s enforcement. States justified discrimination based on state statutes and constitutions. By 1947 all states with large Indian populations, but Arizona and New Mexico, had extended voting rights to Native Americans that qualified under the 1924 Act. Finally, in 1948 these states withdrew their prohibition on Indian voting because of a judicial decision. |
| Mexican Repatriation (1929-1939) | The Mexican Repatriation refers to a forced migration that took place between 1929 and 1939, when as many as one million people of Mexican descent were forced or pressured to leave the US. (The term “Repatriation,” though commonly used, is inaccurate, since approximately 60% of those driven out were U.S. citizens.) The event, carried out by American authorities, took place without due process. The Immigration and Naturalization Service targeted Mexicans because of “the proximity of the Mexican border, the physical distinctiveness of mestizos, and easily identifiable barrios.” |
| Indian Termination Policy | Indian termination was the policy of the United States from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s. The belief was that Native Americans (Indians) would be better off if assimilated as individuals into mainstream American society. To that end, Congress proposed to end the special relationship between tribes and the federal government. The intention was to grant Native Americans all the rights and privileges of citizenship, and to reduce their dependence on a bureaucracy whose mismanagement had been documented. In practical terms, the policy terminated the US government’s recognition of sovereignty of tribes, trusteeship of Indian reservations, and exclusion of Indians from state laws. Native Americans were to become subject to state and federal taxes as well as laws, from which they had previously been exempt. During 1953–1964, 109 tribes were terminated, approximately 1,365,801 acres (5,527 km2) of trust land were removed from protected status, and 13,263 Native Americans lost tribal affiliation. Many scholars believe that the termination policy had devastating effects on tribal autonomy, culture and economic welfare. The lands belonging to the Native Americans, rich in resources, were taken over by the federal government. The termination policy had disastrous effects on the Menominee tribe (located in Wisconsin) and the Klamath tribes (located in Oregon), forcing many members of the tribes onto public assistance roll. Termination had a devastating effect on the Health Care and Education of Indians along with the economic stability of tribes. Along with the end of federal control over land came the end of many federal services which included education and health care. |
| Japanese-American Internment of 1942 (Executive Order 9066) | This was the forced relocation and internment by the United States government in 1942 of approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese residing along the Pacific coast of the United States to camps called “War Relocation Camps.” Japanese Americans residing on the West Coast of the United States were all interned, whereas in Hawaii, where more than 150,000 Japanese Americans composed nearly a third of that territory’s population, 1,200 to 1,800 Japanese Americans were interned. Of those interned, 62% were American citizens. |
| Operation “Wetback” of 1954 | This was an operation by the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to remove about one million undocumented immigrants from the southwestern United States, focusing on Mexican nationals. Tactics employed included going as far as systematic police sweeps of Mexican-American neighborhoods, and random stops and ID checks of “Mexican-looking” people in a region with many Native Americans and native Latinos. |
| Lynching | Lynching, the practice of killing people by extrajudicial mob action, occurred in the United States chiefly from the late 1700s through the 1960s. This type of murder is most often associated with hanging, although it often included burning and various other methods of torture. Only rarely were lynchers punished, or even arrested, for their crimes. Between 1866 and 1940, at least 258 blacks were lynched in Kentucky (the exact number is not known because some cases were never reported). “Legal lynching” was condoned under the public hanging law in effect at the time. Blacks accused of crimes were tried under hostile circumstances, with no real chance to prove guilt or innocence, and swiftly given a death sentence. In other cases, the victims of lynching were not even accused of a specific crime—except, perhaps, that of violating some unwritten social convention. While the Ku Klux Klan did not become a strong force within Kentucky, Klan groups were present along with local vigilante groups, who opposed the advancement of blacks. “White-sheet” intimidation and cross burnings were not uncommon, especially in rural areas. |
| Anti-Miscegenation Laws (Inter-racial Marriage Laws) | In the United States, anti-miscegenation laws (also known as miscegenation laws) were state laws passed by individual states to prohibit miscegenation, nowadays more commonly referred to as interracial marriage and interracial sex. All anti-miscegenation laws banned the marriage of whites and non-white groups, primarily blacks, but often also Native Americans and Asians. In many states, anti-miscegenation laws also criminalized cohabitation and sex between whites and non-whites. In addition, the state of Oklahoma in 1908 banned marriage “between a person of African descent” and “any person not of African descent”, and Kentucky and Louisiana in 1932 banned marriage between Native Americans and African Americans. While anti-miscegenation laws are often regarded as a Southern phenomenon, many northern states had anti-miscegenation laws as well. |
| Literacy Tests for Voting | Adopted by a number of southern states, the literacy test was used to disfranchise many literate blacks while allowing many illiterate whites to vote. This was accomplished by making the test inordinately difficult and allowing test-givers to choose who had to take the test and who did not. The literacy test, combined with other discriminatory requirements, effectively disfranchised many African-Americans in the south from the 1890s until the 1960s. Southern states abandoned the literacy test only when forced to do so by federal legislation in the 1960s. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 suspended the use of literacy tests in all states or political subdivisions in which less than 50 percent of voting-age residents were registered as of 1 November 1964 or had voted in the 1964 presidential election. In a series of cases, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the legislation and restricted the use of literacy tests for non-English-speaking citizens. |
| Poll Taxes | A poll tax is a discriminatory tax that is a pre-condition of the exercise of the ability to vote. This tax emerged in some states of the United States in the late 19th century as part of the Jim Crow laws. After the ability to vote was extended to all races by the enactment of the Fifteenth Amendment, many Southern states enacted poll tax laws which often included a grandfather clause that allowed any adult male whose father or grandfather had voted in a specific year prior to the abolition of slavery to vote without paying the tax. These laws achieved the desired effect of disfranchising African-American and Native American voters as well as poor whites who immigrated after the year specified. The 24th Amendment, ratified in 1964, abolished the use of the poll tax (or any other tax) as a pre-condition in voting in Federal elections. |
| Women’s Right to Vote (Women’s Suffrage) | Women’s Suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. Following the American Revolution, women were allowed to vote in New Jersey, but no other state, from 1790 until 1807, provided they met property requirements then in place. In 1807, women were again forbidden from voting in the state. During the beginning of the twentieth century, as women’s suffrage gained in popularity, suffragists were subject to arrests and many were jailed. Finally, despite President Woodrow Wilson’s opposition, Congress passed what became, when it was ratified in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment which prohibited state and federal agencies from gender-based restrictions on voting. |
SYSTEMATIC IMMIGRATION LAWS
| Year | Act or Law | Results or Implications |
|---|---|---|
| 1788 | U.S. Constitution ratified | Article 1 section 9 prohibits Congress from restricting the “importation” of slaves or other migrants until the year 1809. |
| 1790 | Naturalization Act | Two years of residence in the country and one year of residence in a state required to apply for citizenship; “any alien, being a free White person, may be admitted to become a citizen.” |
| 1795 | Naturalization Act of 1795 | Extends residency period to five years to become U.S. resident and two years to become resident of a state. |
| 1808 | U.S. slave trade banned | Between 50,000 and 25,000 Blacks continued to be imported (until 1865) and were thus considered illegal immigrants. |
| 1850 | U.S. Census records nativity | Establishes whether residents were born in the U.S. or outside of it. |
| 1854 | California Supreme Court People v. Hall | The court rules that a White man charged with murder cannot be convicted based on the testimony of a Chinese person. |
| 1862 | Homestead Act; Land Grant Act | Encouraged immigrants, most of whom were European, to move westward; provided them with land and education to establish homes there. |
| 1862 | Anti-Coolie Act | Taxed California employers who hired Chinese workers. |
| 1868 | 14th Amendment | Anyone born in the U.S. is a citizen; intended for former slaves. |
| 1870 | 15th Amendment | Voting rights granted regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” |
| 1875 | Page Act passed | Required processing of Asian immigrants to assess “moral” character. |
| 1882 | Chinese Exclusion Act | Barred immigration from China, but did issue certificates allowing Chinese persons who had already established a presence in the U.S. to re-enter. |
| 1888 | Amendment to the 1882 Exclusion Act | Congress repealed the provision of re-entry and voided all outstanding certificates. |
| 1889 | Chae Chan Ping v. U.S. | Case challenged the 1888 amendment; Court rules that Congress has the constitutional authority to modify immigration legislation at its discretion. |
| 1896 | U.S. Supreme Court Plessey v. Ferguson | Establishes that “separate but equal” is constitutional. |
| 1907 | Expatriation Act | American women who marry foreign nationals lose their citizenship. |
| 1911 | Dillingham report published | Argued to limit migration from Southern/Eastern Europe due to these people’s inferior genes and potential to subvert American society. |
| 1913 | California implements Alien Land Law | Primarily targeted Asians; barred them from owning property. |
| 1917 | Asiatic Barred Act (Immigration Act of 1917) | Established regions of Asia and the Pacific Islands whose emigrants could not become U.S. citizens; contained literacy test for immigrants. |
| 1921 | Emergency Quota Act (Johnson Quota Act) | Limits immigrants to no more than 3% of the number already residing in the U.S.; dispropor tionately limited non-Europeans. |
| 1923 | Supreme Court U.S. v. Bhaghat Singh Thind | The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that immigrants from the Indian sub-continent cannot become U.S. citizens because they were not “White.” |
| 1934 | Tydings-McDuffie Act (Philippine Independence Act) | Effectively reversed the status of Filipinos from nationals to aliens, thus subjecting them to strict immigration quotas. |
| 1942 | Japanese American internment | Americans of Japanese descent were interned in U.S. camps ostensibly to prevent them from collaborating with the Japanese military during WWII. |
| 1942 | U.S.–Mexico Bracero | Established a program of temporary laborers from Mexico. |
| 1952 | Harisaides vs. Shaughnessy | Court upheld the right of Congress to expel noncitizens who were former Communists. |
| 1965 | Immigration and Nationality Act (Hart-Cellar Act) | Annual immigration quotas increased to 120,000 for Westerners and 20,000 for non-Westerners; eliminated the national origins quota and established preference for skilled workers and family unification. |
| 1978 | Immigration and Nationality Act amended | Abolished separate (Western vs. non-Western) quotas for immigration. It effectively increased immigration from non-European countries. |
| 1982 | Plyer v. Doe | Established that children of undocumented immigrants have the right to free public education. |
| 2000 | Legal Immigration and Family Equity Act | Granted residency to 400,000 undocumented immigrants. |
| 2005 | Real ID Act of 2005 | Based on Homeland Security recommendations, requires additional protections to enhance assurance of the validity of drivers’ licenses, enhances immigration restrictions. |
| 2010 | Arizona passes SB 1070 | Requires immigrants to carry registration documents at all times; requires police to check immigration status of people suspected of being undocumented (e.g., based upon how one is dressed). |
Institutional Racism
“Institutional racism” [and implicit bias] is quite prevalent in the American society today and has been so since the dawning of the U.S. Constitutional government.
“‘Institutional racism’ can be defined as the racial attitudes found in a ethnic group’s traditions, beliefs, opinions, and myths that are firmly ingrained in the very fiber of the ethnic group’s cultural paradigm, where such traditions, beliefs, opinions, and myths have been practiced and sustained for so long, that they are accepted as common facts, understood to be normal behavioral practices whereas, such practices in effect marginalize, and demonize the human worth of another ethnic group.“
“It is institutional racism that compels many law enforcement officers to see American Africans as less human than American Europeans and thus, the use of deadly force becomes justifiable even though less lethal force could have been an option to use to subdue the American African subject. It is institutional racism that compels many state and federal judges to impose a 30-year prison sentence on a convicted American African versus the 15-year sentence given to his American European counterpart for the same exact crime. It is institutional racism that makes many American Europeans that work in an HR capacity feel obliged to hire an American European over an American African even [if] the latter is more qualified with experience and technical skill sets. It is the institutional racism cultural paradigm of the American European that influences his social, political, and financial attitudes and are the core foundations of racism in America today4. It is institutional racism when a doctor tells an African American woman that her pain isn’t so serious but fully inspects the pain of a European woman with the same medical background and symptoms.
A Sentencing Commission report examining the difference in federal court sentences found that, between 2007 and 2016, sentences for Black male offenders were an average of almost 20% longer than those for white male offenders accused of the same crime.
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Prior reports suggested that judges’ decisions to reduce sentences on their own, without a request from the prosecutor, may be a source of sentencing disparity. The report found that Black male offenders were 21.2 percent less likely than white male offenders to receive a reduced sentence from a judge without a request from the prosecutor. And even when Black male offenders did get a below-guidelines sentence from a judge, their sentences were 16.8 percent longer than white male offenders who received a below-guidelines sentence from a judge.
“The Commission also reported that violence in an offender’s criminal history did not account for these sentencing disparities. When researchers took into account violence in an offender’s past, Black male offenders still received sentences on average 20.4 percent longer than similarly situated white male offenders.5“
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, when you exclude all of the noise and false attributions, Critical Race Theory is simply the study of racism that is embedded in our legal systems and policies. As you can see from the numerous examples above, it’s a valid academic theory considering the historical racist laws and practices of our government and institutions. However, it’s not a theory that should be used for vilification and/or to advance our alternative political motives.
Sources: 1a – ADL.org; 1 – Edweek.org; 2 – HealthAffiairs.org; 3 – OHCHR.org; 4 – OHCHR.org; 5 – Eji.org
