The ACLU on fighting critical race theory bans: ‘It’s about our country reckoning with racism’

Bills seeking to limit the teaching of CRT has been introduced in 22 states in 2021. Emerson Sykes explains the plans to fight back

If 2020 was a year of racial reckoning for the United States, 2021 is shaping up to be one of backlash.

A concerted campaign against efforts to address persistent racial inequality has consolidated under the watchword of critical race theory" (CRT). Once a relatively obscure academic framework for examining the ways in which racism was embedded in US laws and institutions, CRT has been recast by rightwing activists as an omnipresent and omnipotent ideology, one that is anti-American, anti-capitalist, and anti-white.