I appreciate your reply (very much). It answers some of my questions regarding your essay.

I had just posted another comment to your essay when I found your reply to my first comment. Quite frankly, your experience is precisely what critical race theory attempts to address.

Simply put, people who practice Critical Theory ask, what is our society doing that prevents, heeds, or undermines people’s ability to be productive members of our society? In the case of CRT, practitioners narrow their focus to race. However, critical theorists ask the same questions about science, physics, math, language, sociology, history and so on. Basically, they are attempting to identify assumptions, so that we can separate assumptions from fact. For example, can mentally ill people be productive member of society? If yes, what do we need to do to make that happen? Likewise, what is society doing to prevent or undermine mentally ill people from achieving self-sufficiency, satisfaction and productivity?

In the example I provided, supreme court judges made assumptions about a witness to a murder, based entirely, on his race (Chinese). Based on those assumptions, a white man convicted of murder, was set free. Since that decision was rendered, it has been cited 22 times in other court cases. That is just one case — there are thousands of equally racist precedents, that continue to influence the courts. These precedents are the roots of systemic racism, and weeding them out of the legal system is the purpose of critical race theory. Other critical theorists, focus on mental illness, single mothers, special needs children, or the consequences of war (PTSD, moral injury etc.) etc.

First graders, junior high, even high school students are not prepared to conduct this kind of work. However, teaching children the difference between assumptions and facts lays the foundation for critical thinking.