Clarence Page
Chicago Tribune
Education or indoctrination? Thatâs the big question at the core of the hullabaloo over âcritical race theory,â and you donât have to be a conservative to worry about it. You only have to be a parent.
The concept of critical race theory, or CRT, has been widely roasted by conservative politicians, commentators and activists as radical, un-American and racially divisive. Because this issue combines three topics that politicians love to ballyhoo or demagogue, about a dozen states have taken steps to bar CRT from schools or government agencies, even though few people seem to know what it really is.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has raised a ruckus by announcing that she would only give one-on-one interviews on the two-year anniversary of her term to journalists of color, noting that
Clarence Page
Chicago Tribune
Should white professors be allowed to use the N-word in class, especially when it is an essential element of the lesson that is being taught?
That question caused an uproar at the University of Illinois at Chicagoâs John Marshall Law School this past winter that still hasnât quite gone away, the professor at the center of the controversy told me.
âThey put me on this ridiculous âindefinite suspension,â â law professor Jason Kilborn told me. âBut it was leave with full pay. So, at least I got a vacation for this entire spring semester.â
Still, he said, heâd rather teach his classes, which were canceled during the investigation. Students had called for Kilborn to be disciplined after he wrote a Civil Procedure exam related to employment discrimination that included redacted versions of the epithets ânââ-â and âbââ,â which he described as âprofane expr