Image courtesy of Ms. Magazine
The following is an opinion contribution and reflects the author’s views alone.
“I’ll be honest. I’ve only heard the narrative and speculation around it. I don’t quite know what it is,” Ahmad Higazy ‘23 told The Tory when asked to explain Critical Race Theory (CRT). Critical Race Theory promotes the notion that we must radically re-examine the role of race in American history, current structures of power, and governmental institutions. One of its central assumptions is that all people have underlying racist beliefs even if they do not act in explicitly racist ways.
Higazy’s sentiment was echoed by a majority of Princeton students interviewed for this piece. The Tory spoke to Princeton students to hear what they had to say about CRT and its presence on Princeton’s campus. Though almost all had heard of CRT, very few students could articulate a cogent definition of the concept. Despite this widespread lack of a factual foundation on the subject, many interviewees retracted their statements upon discovering that we wrote for The Tory, the journal for conservative thought on campus. Many defended their convictions despite not knowing the definition of the theory itself. We set out to clarify and respond to some of the statements and misconceptions we encountered.
The most common misunderstanding was the assumption that CRT-associated controversy stemmed from a debate over whether teachers are qualified to teach what is deemed to be advanced academic material. While some aspects of Critical Race Theory are esoteric and best explained by historians and sociologists, parents who’ve taken issue with CRT have not done so in regards to the competency level of the teachers or whether they can accurately relay the information to students.
In fact, many parents’ concern with CRT is that the material itself is divisive.
Fundamentally, Critical Race Theory promotes the belief that there are hierarchies of power where people push down others based on superficial characteristics. The confrontational framework through which CRT exists demands we see the world in a fashion quite contrary to the vision of celebrated Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., who advocated sizing up others, “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Instead, Critical Race Theory teaches children to view their friends, family, country, and even themselves negatively. While American history certainly has a multiplicity of deep faults and failings to ponder along with heartbreaking atrocities to learn profound lessons from, today’s children are not personally liable for the ethical and moral failings of a past before their own births. Furthermore, many parents rightfully worry that the topic is a heavy one to be presented to young children in their formative years. We teach kindergarteners a very different story of Thanksgiving than the one understood as adults. For some reason, though, our society can’t seem to apply that model to the topic of race.
A few students interviewed expressed the belief that those opposed to CRT feel the way that they do for one reason: opponents believe that the theory is an affront to white people and teaches children that white people are bad. However, this simplistic rationalization fails to consider the numerous complex arguments against CRT.
In addition, CRT education weaves race into subjects where it is not relevant. Look no further than The Mathematics Framework adopted by the California Department of Education, which claims that immigration experiences should be discussed in conjunction with the topic of unit conversion. For the sake of brevity, we will not include a lengthy polemic against CRT, but the above example makes it clear that people who are opposed to CRT are not doing it out of fear of so-called “white demonization.”
Another common misconception expressed by several students interviewed is that Princeton is a “predominantly white institution.” The university, however, prides itself on its efforts to be “a truly diverse community in which individuals of every gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and socioeconomic status can flourish equally.” Princeton even goes so far as to publish its demographic statistics after each admissions cycle. Of the class of 2025 admits, 68% self-identified as people of color, placing the white population in the minority at 32%. This number shows an increase from 61% from the year prior and 56% in 2019. Not only is the claim that Princeton is a predominantly white institution false, but statistics show that Princeton is more diverse than the United States as a whole. The United States’ population is 60% white, compared to 39% at Princeton.
Many CRT advocates have vaunted the institution of race-based affinity spaces, including segregated housing at the university level. While some interviewed students supported an affinity-based housing system, most were surprised that many of Princeton’s peer institutions have already implemented such a model in their dormitories. Notable examples include the W.E.B. Du Bois College House at the University of Pennsylvania and the First Gen and Women of Color houses at George Washington University. Of US News’s top 30 universities in the United States, affinity housing exists at least seven universities.
When asked about how they believed that the institution of affinity housing would impact the Princeton freshman experience, a good portion of students interviewed could not come up with a definitive answer. Many expressed the belief that rooming is not the be-all-end-all of student interactions. Others felt that because there are so many ways to meet people on campus, reducing diversity in the roommate experience would not have significant ripple effects. Such arguments fail to consider the reality that living with someone is an entirely different experience than sitting five rows behind them for 50 minutes twice a week.
Another argument students made concerning affinity housing was that the experience caters to white students at the expense of students of color; it puts students of color in the position to have to do the work to educate their white peers.
The following paragraph is a testimonial from Alexandra, one of this piece’s co-writers.
I have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to room with someone who has a different background from my own. My roommate is the first-generation daughter of Indian immigrants. One of the most memorable experiences I have had since coming to Princeton was the night we stayed up for hours swapping stories about our heritage–Indian and Jewish–and how it has shaped our identities. Having grown up in the Jewish community and attended private Jewish schools for my entire life, I found that Princeton’s freshman random rooming policy gifted me perspective and a type of education that I could never receive in the classroom.
It is a divisive and dangerous over-simplification to examine human interactions through the singular prism of race. Students carry with them identity-shaping experiences unrelated to race and often deeper-seated. For example, Danielle and I see our respective Jewish identities as defining facets of who we are and how we see the world. From the outside, however, we would both likely be described as ‘white.’ People cannot be defined by a superficial phenotype alone or lumped into a grouping at the expense of the individual identity. One’s hometown, personal relationships, hardships, education, and many other factors, coalesce into a unique individual identity. To ignore such complexities would be to diminish each of us to little more than an avatar of some larger identity not entirely of our own choosing.
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