Welcome to our interactive learning site. Below, please comment with your name, program and research interests. In addition, please tell us why you are interested in Critical Race Theory and what you are looking forward to getting from the class. In addition, please answer the following questions:
- What does race mean to you?
- How would you define the term ‘racism’?
- What has been your experience with the role of race in education?
Race is a group of people with similar physical qualities. Of course defining people’s race based on amount of melanin in a person’s skin is as silly as defining race on ear, nose or eye shape, or eye color. We are one human race. Only those who wish to prejudge a person’s mental, political, moral, or ethical traits based on physical traits actually want to separate us further.
Racism is the act of prejudging anyone’s (or more than one, even one’s self) mental, political, moral, or ethical characteristics based on some set of physical characteristics. Critical race theory itself is actually racist because it does this.
It is my experience that race plays no part in educational differences. In deed, I am uniquely qualified to make this experiential statement. I grew up in Chicago and went to Chicago Public Schools. I was the only person with smaller amounts of melanin in my skin. I had the same educational opportunities as all of my higher melanin content classmates. The real difference was my cultural upbringing. To call my upbringing privileged merely because my family had less melanin is indeed racist, too.