2021-11-20
21 分钟This is in conversation from Apple News today.
I'm Shemitah Basu.
Every weekend, we're taking you deeper into the best journalism on Apple News.
In news headlines, at school board meetings, on the campaign trail.
Every.
Everyone is talking about critical race theory.
Critical race theory is a political agenda that is absolutely in our schools.
The American Medical association has gone woke the organization, releasing a language guide that promotes critical race theory.
And let me tell you right now, critical race theory is bigoted, it is a lie, and it is every bit as racist as the Klansmen in white sheets.
Okay, let's pause because everything you just heard there, none of it accurately reflects what critical race theory is.
And the irony of it all is one of the key founders of critical race theory, a man named Derrick Bell, spent his whole life studying this exact dynamic of liberal reform and conservative backlash.
He said that, you know, any effort at reform would invariably be met by.
By an entrenched opposition trying to reinstate the status quo ante.
And that is what we've seen.
That's Jelani Cobb speaking.
He's a staff writer for the New Yorker, and he recently wrote a profile of Bell that explores his path from champion of the civil rights movement to critic.
Bell was a famous civil rights attorney and legal scholar.
He started his career with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
And he was optimistic that America's racial inequalities could be fixed.
He goes into this believing that in fighting the good fight, you're going to uproot all of these wrongs, and it doesn't turn out that way.