Remembering race studies during 1970s

In a letter published April

11, John Carroll contended that all U.S. schoolchildren of the past century have been taught a theory “that implies a racial hierarchy by assuming the cultural neutrality of many practices we take for granted.” I disagree.

According to Carroll, this insidious and unnamed theory is “so ingrained in our collective belief system that we don’t even know it’s there.” It seems Carroll is suggesting that we are all dupes who have been taught racism without even knowing we were being programmed.

I didn’t go to school in California, but in 1970s Maryland I was taught about

Black slavery, the abolitionist movement and the civil rights struggle in elementary school. I fondly remember a book with the alliterative title “Frederick Douglass Fights for Freedom.”

It’s true that my K-12 education wasn’t perfect. I don’t recall learning, for example, that many consider California to have been “stolen” from Mexico. I wonder how many of California’s critical race theory enthusiasts would be willing to give that land back?

I do regret not explaining, in my initial letter to which Carroll responded, what critical race theory is.

Authors Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, in their recent book “Cynical Theories,” quote critical race theorists Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic as saying “critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning (and) enlightenment rationalism.”

Some of us think liberal principles and enlightened rationalism have served the U.S. and the modern world well. These principles are at the heart of the Constitution and directly led to the freeing of the slaves and the end of legal segregation.