Looking at the Paths of the Black, Indigenous (First Nations), Latin and Asian Peoples in the Americas and Critical Race Theory

Alberta’s Premier Jason Kenney is a Trump fan and follows his view on sanitizing the education system of anything but Western European info.
Trump – 1776 project
Kenney – junk theories

The problem with that is that not all people in Alberta are white Europeans.

And coming from a situation where First Nations people have repeatedly faced tactics used to assimilate them and many still live on reservations, this is saying that their heritage and history don’t exist or don’t matter. Metis map

This is telling children that they have equal access to the dream of gold streets in North America. And that is a hard sell to someone who goes home to dirty water, food insecurity, unsafe housing with ltd indoor plumbing and electricity, and the police and child protective services at the door to take their kids.

• To people who have been slaves in their own country, whose only way out is to enlist in the military machine &/or give up their kids to white society. Who cannot leave the reserve or they lose their status and rights to any reparation for the tribe.

Who have already suffered irreparable harm. Being forced to be so poor on land that was theirs.

• Or black people who came from slavery and segregation laws.
• Or latin people who are ltd to being farm migrant, seasonal workers.
• Or Chinese people who were grunt workers on the railroad and ltd to specific small businesses if they wanted to stay.
  Canada and the USA have a similar history in that.

That is the problem in teaching all children that they have equal rights and opportunity under the laws. It denies who they are. Because they do not have that, at all. Not even all white west European kids have equal access to the gold streets of the dream. Esp under conservative govt leadership.

And any politician who tries to say otherwise is forwarding racist structures and oppressing their people who they promised to serve.

That’s without even discussing the difference between how boys and girls are treated at home, in school, and in the streets.

So no, Jason Kenney. Kids do NOT have an equal shot at the dream. Not even in Canada, one of the wealthiest nations on earth.

…… What is Critical Race Theory?

The Five Tenets of CRT There are five major components or tenets of CRT:

• (1) the notion that racism is ordinary and not aberrational; Color-blindness and meritocratic rhetoric serve two primary functions: first, they allow whites to feel consciously irresponsible for the hardships people of color face and encounter daily and, secondly, they also maintain whites’ power and strongholds within society.
• (2) the idea of an interest convergence; Stated more precisely, interest convergence is the notion that whites will allow and support racial justice/progress to the extent that there is something positive in it for them, or a “convergence” between the interests of whites and non-whites. CRT focuses on informing the public how certain stories act and serve to silence and distort certain enclaves of people and cultures (typically people of color) while simultaneously building-up and legitimizing others’, typically the majority—status quo (which retains or gains even more power through these transactions).
• (3) the social construction of race; (laws that segregate races ie the ‘one drop’ rule, Jim Crow laws, voting ‘tests’.)
• (4) the idea of storytelling and counter-storytelling; (one story doesn’t counter another equally in an oppressive system)
• and (5) the notion that whites have actually been recipients of civil rights legislation. (have received advantages, funding, better teachers, resources, living areas so it’s easier to succeed)
  read the long version here

……

Critical race theorists recognized that, while the law could be used to deepen racial inequality, it also held potential as a tool for emancipation and for securing racial equality.
Foundational questions that underlie CRT and the law include:

• How does the law construct race?;
• How has the law protected racism and upheld racial hierarchies?;
• How does the law reproduce racial inequality?;
• and How can the law be used to dismantle race, racism, and racial inequality?
  Am Bar

….. some theorists

Derrick Bell
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw
Richard Delgado
Jean Stefancic