White America Should Not Be Afraid of Critical Race Theory

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
Speech delivered on October 19, 2021
Posted: January 12, 2022

"Critical race theorists are committed to a program of scholarly resistance, and most hope scholarly resistance will lay the groundwork for wide-scale resistance."

—Derrick Bell, "Who's Afraid of Critical Race Theory?"

INTRODUCTION

I am pleased that Ines Maturana Sendoya, Associate Dean of Students and Engagement, has asked me to be the keynote speaker in her series, "21 Days Against the Racism Challenge." I am also pleased that she has asked me to address you on the subject of Critical Race Theory. At least, my take on the subject. For over fifty years, as a professor of Africana Studies (we used to call it "Black Studies") and a columnist for many newspapers, I have been writing or teaching about how race and racism have functioned within America's theoretical discourses and historical practices.

METHOD

I cite my teaching and writing record to argue that we should not see critical race theory as a recent or a foreign entity against which so many misguided state governors and boards of education have raised their voices but as a mode of inquiry and practice that was started by our academic forefathers and foremothers such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Anna Julia Cooper, and Carter G. Woodson, all of whom placed the notion of race-consciousness at the heart of their pedagogical and ideological projects. As far as I am concerned this is an old project that is dressed up in new garments.

In offering my analysis on this subject, I follow the advice of Derrick Bell, "The Man Behind Critical Race Theory," as The New Yorker described him last month, and someone who I knew at Harvard when I taught there. Bell reminded us that critical race theory "writing and lecturing is characterized by frequent use of the first person, storytelling, narrative, allegory, interdisciplinary treatment of law, and the unapologetic use of creativity."¹

Although I will speak of this movement as it developed nationally, I will also seek to demonstrate how Wellesley College, an institution that I have been attached to for the last 35 years, has been enclosed within the cocoon of this racist ideology. Necessarily, I can only select two incidents to demonstrate my position.

PRESENT STATE OF THINGS

Recently some of our more conservative governors, media personalities, and grassroots activists have discovered that there is something called critical race theory, which they are certain, is a bad thing for America. They are not sure what it means but they know it will pollute the intellectual life of our academy, especially white students who, they say, will be taught to hate themselves, their country, and everything that is white.

In June 2021 Ron De Santis, governor of Florida, outlined its dangers to the republic. He said: "Florida's education system exists to create opportunity for all our children. Critical Race Theory teaches kids to hate our country and to hate each other. It is state—sanctioned racism and has no place in Florida's schools."² Taking its cue from him, the Florida Board of Education voted to restrict what public school children can learn about the past and thereby determine their relation to the future. From that date, Florida teachers were not allowed to define U.S. history "as something other than the creation of a new nation based largely upon universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence."³

In July, Dr. Cathryn Stout, a former Wellesley student and bureau chief of Chalkbeat Tennessee, wrote: "Over several months, officials nationwide have raced to enact new laws and introduced new policies meant to shape how students discuss the nation's past—and present. Many of the efforts have attempted to ban critical race theory, the academic framework that examines how politics and the law perpetuate systematic racism. In other states, lawmakers have tried to restrict specific kinds of antiracism training or teaching 'diverse' concepts. The picture is varied, though, and other states are adding ethnic studies courses or incorporating more about people of color into their learning standards."⁴

Today, about 28 states have introduced resolutions to ban the teaching of critical race theory or have placed restrictions on the discussion of race. In some cases, they do not use the term race but the objective is the same: keep our children and our teachers away from this pernicious, people-hating ideology. However, I will come back to this.

WHAT IS CRITICAL RACE THEORY ANYWAY?

This brings up the question, What is critical race theory, and why and how has it evolved in the first place?

First, CRP is a theory. A theory is not an axiom, that is, a statement or proposition which "is regarded as being established, accepted, of self-evidently true." It "is a system of ideas intended to explain a phenomenon," or as the Marxists used to say, a method of inquiry or practice into social and philosophical questions. Theories emerge to deal with challenges that exist as pedagogical and social questions arise.

Critical race theory is no different. It emerged in its present form in the 1980s from the dissatisfaction with how law professors at Harvard University treated the question of race as it involved their interpretation and understanding of the law. In the Introduction to their seminal work, Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement (1995), the editors argued: "With its explicit embrace of race-consciousness, Critical Race Theory aims to reexamine the terms by which race and racism have been negotiated in American consciousness, and to recover and to revitalize the radical tradition of race-consciousness among African-Americans and other peoples of color—a tradition that was discarded when integration, assimilation and the ideal of color-blindness became the official norms of racial enlightenment."⁵

The same year that Crenshaw and others edited Critical Race Theory, Derrick Bell wrote that critical race theory, "is a body of legal scholarship, now about a decade old, a majority of whose members are both existentially people of color and ideologically committed to struggle against racism, particularly as institutionalized in and by law. Those critical race theorists who are white are usually cognizant of and committed to the overthrow of their own racial privilege."⁶

This statement alerts us to the fact that the initiators of critical race theory were not only people of color but also whites who were committed to overthrowing whiteness, as an ideology, and white privilege. They all agreed that whiteness is an ideology that was invented in the 18th century Enlightenment.⁷

Bell also alerted us to the fact that the work of the critical race theorist "is often disruptive because its commitment to anti-racism goes well beyond civil rights, integration, affirmative action, and other liberal measures….They [critical race theorists] are highly suspicious of the liberal agenda, distrust its method, and want to retain what they see as a valuable strain of egalitarianism which may exist despite, and not because of, liberalism."⁸

Charles W. Mills, the illustrious Black radical philosopher, located the origin of critical race theory within a deeper strain of liberalism that he calls the racial contract that began with scholars such as Kant, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill. He says, in critical race theory, "We've inherited a concept that was central to the justification of imperialism, colonialism, African slavery, Jim Crow, apartheid, the 'color bar,' and the 'color line'" and which is central to decentering the whole notion of racism which he defines as "institutions, practices, and social systems that illicitly privilege some races at the expense of others, where racial membership (directly or indirectly) explains this white privileging."⁹

So CRT not only undermines racism and racial privileges, it attacks a whole system of whiteness that undergirded the political and social formation that developed from the first time that Black people planted their feet on the shores of these Americas. And just in case you think that Crenshaw, Bell, or Mills are radical in their assertions about whiteness and white privilege, you may want to listen to Booker T. Washington, born a slave in 1858 or 1859, and who, in teaching indigenous people at Hampton University in 1879, made the following observation:

The things that they [the Indians as he called them] disliked most, I think, were to have their long hair cut, to give up wearing their blankets, and to cease smoking; but no white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man's clothes, eats the white man's food, speaks the white man's language, and professes the white man's religion.¹⁰

Incidentally, Portia Washington, Booker T. Washington's daughter attended Wellesley but did not graduate.¹¹

In other words, CRT disrupts a whole way of seeing and thinking, which makes white Americans suspicious, ill at ease, and reluctant to participate in a process. This makes them see themselves as acting in an exploitative way to people of color and demand that they rethink and work toward the overthrow of the privileges they have taken for granted over the years.

To summarize then, we can say that critical race theory can be characterized by six principles:

1. The centrality of racism—Racism is normal and ingrained in American society.
2. White supremacy—It reinforces racial subordination and normalized white privilege.
3. The emergence of the voices of people of color—It counters the dominant white discourse through storytelling and the voices of people of color.
4. Interest convergence—Racial equality is only possible when it converges with the interests of white people,
5. Intersectionality—It recognizes that no person has a single identity, including sex, race, class, and gender.
6. Color blindness—It exposes the failure to see racial privilege.¹²

HOW WELLESLEY COLLEGE FITS INTO THIS PROCESS

Critical race theory does not merely challenge the racial posture of American law schools but all the institutions that contribute to the racial climate in the U.S. So that while this interrogatory work was taking place nationally, people of color at Wellesley College were also challenging racism and white privilege that is at the heart of our academic institution.

Wellesley College's Black Studies—now Africana Studies—Department, was formed in 1972, when Black students contested the white, Europecentric education that privilege whiteness in its most naked form. In 1988, given the whiteness of the faculty, we persuaded the college to increase the number of Black faculty members through the acceptance of what was called a "Target of Opportunities Program" which yielded five new positions.

However, the real threat came in 1992, when we began to attack the privileged position that whiteness enjoyed at the school. In that year, Mary Lefkowitz, one of Wellesley's most esteemed professors, declared in a blazing and provocative headline in The Chronicle of Higher Education: "Afrocentrism Poses a Threat to the Rationalist Tradition."

If you change "Afrocentrism" to "Critical Race Theory," you will notice that a similar thread runs through our discourse today. Professor Lefkowitz declared in her article:

"The Afrocentrists, in my opinion, not only are assigning credit to African peoples for achievement that properly belongs to the Greeks; in the process they are destroying what is perhaps the greatest legacy of Greek philosophy—rational thought. The Greeks were the first people to try to describe and record an accurate account of past events as they actually happened, rather as they might have wished them to have occurred. The great Greek historians did not seek, as Afrocentrists are now doing, to recreate history in order to praise themselves or to devaluate the achievements even of those peoples whom they regarded as their enemies….

"Afrocentrist historians appear to have discarded this important rationalist tradition. Instead, they appeal to emotions and deny opportunity for debate. In so doing, they are abandoning the very heritage that they insist was stolen from their ancestors by the Greeks."¹³

In Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Martin Bernal, argued that the cultural roots of Ancient Greece were derived from Egypt, the Phoenician cities of the Eastern Mediterranean, and West Asia. Not so, said Lefkowitz. The Greeks, she argued, borrowed nothing from Egypt. The most she was willing to concede was that Aristotle or his Greek sources "might possibly have been influenced in some way by Egyptian (or Hebrew) notions."¹⁴ Words, such as "cross-cultural references," were not a part of her vocabulary. Both Lefkkowitz and Guy Rogers, in their Black Athena Revisited (1996), accused Bernal of a naïve reading of the myths and ancient literary texts.

But Bernal's work was not without its influence. In January 1993, Ludwig Koenen, in his presidential address to the American Philological Association, the largest and most prestigious body of classicists, spoke of the influence of Ancient Egyptian and Near East cultures on Greek thought. He said:

We can no longer afford to look at early Greece in isolation. What is known to researchers, however, does not always reach the classroom, and the general public is hardly aware that our picture of ancient cultures and, in particular, of early Greek culture, has undergone dynamic changes. The Western tradition, with its hold on education, has tended to stress the uniqueness of Greek culture and literature.¹⁵

Although Koenen made a passionate plea to his colleagues to recognize and understand the contributions of Egyptian culture to Greek scholarship, most scholars in the field "retained a deeply emotional attachment to the image of the essentially autochthony and purity of Ancient Greece."¹⁶ This might be one reason why up until 1990, our Classics Department never taught one course on the importance of Egypt to world civilization even though Lefkowitz was a part of that department for over fifty years. It is also fair to say that not all of her colleagues supported her ideas.

The fires from this flame had not died down when Professor Lefkowitz enlarged her argument about the irrationality of Afrocentric scholars in her next book, Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentricism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History (1996). "Afrocentricism," she says, "teaches what is untrue; it encourages students to ignore known chronology, to forget about looking for material evidence, to select only the facts that are convenient, and to invent facts whenever useful or necessary."¹⁷

Even in her title, Lefkowitz wanted to take us back to as space when Africa was seen as "the Dark Continent," a myth that Wellesley College had tried to put to rest when it organized its "Symposium on Africa" on February 16 and 17, 1960 under the leadership of President Margaret Clapp. This conference brought together luminaries such as Ralph Bunche, the 1950 Noble Peace Prize and later under-Secretary for Special Political Affairs at the United Nations; Melville Herskovits, Director of the Program of African Studies at Northwestern University and author of The Myth of the Negro Past, in which he tried to debunk the myth that African Americans had no cultural past; Rupert Emerson, distinguished professor of Government at Harvard University; and Julius Nyerere, President of the Tanganyika African Nation Union and of whom President Clapp said: "In discussing Africa's place in the world, Mr. Nyerere speaks with authority as the leader of one African country, head of the Pan-African movement in eastern central Africa, and as a man realistically aware of the climatic moment in African history of which he and his country are part."¹⁸

It is true that the first session of the conference began with the topic, "Does 'Africa' Exists?" but they were really trying to understand Africa place in the world as she approached political independence and "whether what used to be called the 'Dark Continent' really constitutes an entity from the ethnic, geographic, economic, or any other point of view.¹⁹ Incidentally, as Mills explains, "the darkness of the Dark Continent is not merely the absence of a European presence but a blindness to Christian light, which necessarily results in moral blackness, superstition, and devil worship."²⁰

Lefkowitz had no such concerns. She called Afrocentric scholars mythmakers who were misleading their students: "Good as the myths they were hearing may have made these students feel, so long as they never left the Afrocentric environment in which they were being nurtured and sheltered, they were being systematically deprived of the most important features of a university education. They were not learning how to question themselves and others, they were not learning to distinguish facts from fiction, nor in fact were they learning how to think for themselves."²¹

I responded to Lefkowitz's Not Our Africa in an op-ed article in the Boston Globe that was entitled "Afrocentricism: Not a Racist Polemic." I asked: "If, as Lefkowitz notes, Egypt's civilization was older than that of the Greeks and possessed 'elaborate religious customs and impressive monuments,' and if ancient philosophy arose out of theology, and if Greek thinkers visited Egypt, isn't it reasonable to assume that some form of sharing came out of this intellectual confluence?"²²

Twenty-five years ago Afrocentrists and Afrocentrism were depicted as threats to the rationalist tradition of Western rationalist thought in much the same way that CRT today is seen as detracting from the color-blindness of American thought. In fact, it seen as a threat to a white way of life. On February 9, 2019, Professor Lefkowitz was honored by the Consul General of Greece in Boston, "on behalf of the Greek state for her contribution to the support and promotion of Greek language, history and culture throughout her fifty years of teaching Greek and ancient Greek, and for her rich literary output."²³

Another challenge to Wellesley's entrenched racism came in 1997 when Adrian M. S. Piper, a professor of philosophy and an internationally renowned artist, produced an incisive report, "Racism at Wellesley: Causes and Containment," in response to the College's Minority, Recruitment, Hiring and Retention Committee (MRHR) review of the 1989 report of racism at Wellesley. Piper, who studied Kant and Hegel with Dieter Henrich at the University of Heidelberg in 1977—78 deconstructed the inherent racist structure that upheld white supremacy and racism at Wellesley. As a Kantian scholar she is aware of the centrality of the contract theorists—Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Kant—who invented the "white man," white racism and all its attendant ills."²⁴

The first point that Piper made was that Wellesley treated race as "an external political disruption to the operation of the College that must be contained in order to protect the system's mission of providing a liberal education" and that it was hostile "to the goals of racial diversity and multiculturalism as well as the simple pursuit of self-interest in a regime that does not currently reward institutional change in racial matters"²⁵

Piper also noted that "institutional repression of cultural differences and individuality across races and nations of students, faculty and staff at Wellesley is the local expression of a more general, traditional, self-enforced conformity and self-censorship that is virtually universal to women's culture—regardless of the particular form and content conformity may take at a particular time and place."²⁶

She argued further that cultural repression "takes this particular form at Wellesley because Wellesley is defined and dominated by white American middle-class women, who themselves traditionally have been further conditioned by pathological characteristics of traditional elitist white American women's culture such as perfectionism, nonconfrontationality and envy"²⁷ as defined by Rawls in his book Theory of Justice.

Piper also believed that the stigmatization of ethnic and racial difference had a pernicious effect on Wellesley's minority faculty who at the onset they "are led to believe that their particular modes of cultural, racial or ethnic self-expression are valuable contributions to Wellesley's attempt to integrate its environment."²⁸ She writes:

One senior minority faculty member at Wellesley proudly refers to himself as an 'obnoxious black man,' another to herself as 'the most universally disliked person on the campus.' Of course these individuals do not really believe of themselves that they are obnoxious or unlikable. They are merely echoing back to the Wellesley community in an ironic register the evaluations the Wellesley community has communicated to them. And they are voicing these evaluations in order to subvert the superficial façade of racial harmony that Wellesley presents to the world and itself.²⁹

Piper concludes: "Wellesley's racism goes as deep as the racism of American society more generally, and so is not susceptible to eradication."³⁰ In Faces at the Bottom of the Well, Bell asserted that "racism is a permanent component of American life."³¹ In a new foreword to Bell's book, Michelle Alexander, the author The New Jim Crow emphasized: "Racism is permanent in the United States of America, utterly indestructible."³²

Twenty-six years after Bell's book was first published, Alexander wondered: "What if Bell was right? What if justice for the dark faces at 'the bottom of the well' can't actually be won in the United States? What if all 'progress' toward racial justice is illusory, temporary, and inevitably unstable? What if white supremacy will always rebound, finding new ways to reconstitute itself?"³³

This brings us inevitably to the present. On September 4, 2020, the Trump administration started its war against "race-based ideologies" when Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought, at Trump's behest, released a memo instructing "federal agencies to identify any critical race theory and white privilege training within their departmental training plans." The administration's mission, as Fabiola Cineas suggested, "was to stop any and all programming that suggests the United States is an inherently racist country or that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil."³⁴

On September 22, Trump released his "Executive Order on Combatting Race and Sex Stereotyping" the stated purpose "to promote unity in the Federal workforce, and to combat offensive and anti-American race and sex stereotyping and scapegoating." Against a backdrop of the nation's creed of unity, race blindness, and equality, Trump charged: "Today, however, many people are pushing a different vision of America that is grounded in hierarchies based on collective social and political identities rather than in the inherent and equal dignity of every person as an individual. This ideology is rooted in the pernicious and false belief that America is an irredeemably racist and sexist country; that some people, simply on account of their race or sex, are oppressors; and that racial and sexual identities are more important than our common status as human beings and Americans."³⁵

Now we are all supposed to be equal in this great land in spite of what was done to the native peoples, African Americans, and Japanese Americans just to name a few of the oppressed groups in the country.

President Trump also argued that concepts such as critical race theory and training in race relations "only promote divisiveness in the workplace and distract from the pursuit of excellence and collaborative achievements in public administration." He defines divisiveness as follows:

'Divisive concepts' means the concepts that (1) one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex; (2) the United States is fundamentally racist or sexist; (3) an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously; (4) an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex; (5) members of one race or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race or sex; (6) an individual's moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex; (7) an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex; (8) any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex; or (9) meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a particular race to oppress another race.³⁶

Following Trump's guidance, many states amended their state codes to reflect the language that is contained in Trump's Executive Order. The Tennessee State Bill No. 623 includes the nine "divisive concepts" verbatim that Trump outlined.

This attack against critical race theory did not stop with the legislators. It continued at a grassroots level. Moms for Liberty, the brainchild of Tina Descovich and Marie Rogerson, both Republican activists, founded "Moms for Liberty" to stop the teaching of critical race theory in the country's schools. In a promotional video one of the founders said: "As moms, we know the most effective way to have an impact on the future of our country is to start at home with education."

Since its founding in January 2021, Moms for Liberty has grown to 135 chapters in 35 states, with 56,000 members and supporters, in many battleground states such as Florida and Pennsylvania. They have sent "letters to school board members across the country and have alleged that teaching white children about systematic racism and the legacy of white supremacy makes their children feel guilty about their white skins and even suicidal." (Stout).

Moms for Liberty have also become "foot soldiers for Ron De Santis's reelection campaign next year." Pamela Castellana, chairwoman of the Brevard County Democratic Party says it may be setting the groundwork for him "to not only win the GOP presidential primary vote, but this is how Ron De Santis thinks he wins the presidency."³⁷

You might ask, Why is there so much panic over a concept as simple as recognizing the centrality of race in shaping American life and practice? Stout argues that it is simply "the marriage of old frustrations over diminished power with new anxieties over social change and hegemonic shifts. It is the fear or vilification of a targeted 'undesirable' whose presence requires urgent political action in order to protect society—and often women and children from harm and moral decay."

When Barack Obama was elected in 2008 some people boasted that his election signified the inauguration of a post-race society. Then Donald Trump was elected in 2016 and the backlash against Blacks and people of color started. Many liberals felt that their troubles were over when Biden was elected president. Now we face the distinct prospect of Trump or one of his clones (including De Santis) being elected to the presidency in 2024.

And we ask, Could we find ourselves in deeper racial waters than we were in yesterday?

Critical race theory offers a way to interrogate the history of the United States in a way that takes the question of race and racial discrimination in a serious manner. If we don't have the courage to stand up for what we believe then we are likely to find ourselves fighting the same battles that we have been fighting over the past years.

I have been at this institution for a long time and know more about Africana studies than anyone on this campus. But I have been removed from the committee that runs my department, selects its faculty, and shapes its direction all because the administration alleges that I betrayed some confidence because a copy editor edited a report I did. I am sure the administration would assure you that racism and/or white supremacy had nothing to do with it. But can they be really sure?

When a Black man can be denied the privilege of working meaningfully in a department that he helped to build for over thirty years and that action can be depicted as a normal part of business, I wonder if racism is not still alive and well at this institution.

I wonder if my Black colleagues and members of my department feel comforted by the fact that I have not been able to make any serious decisions in my department. To be sure, we now have a Black president who is doing all she can to make the campus more reflective of the egalitarian values we say we promote.

But I ask, what happens when she leaves? Can we be sure that the president who comes after her will continue the work that she has begun? And if, as Bell and Alexander suggest, that racism is destined to be a permanent feature in this society can we afford to sit back and feel comfortable that all is well at our institution?

Should white America be afraid of critical race theory? I don't think so. It must make them aware of the privileges they have enjoyed at the expense of non-white population and make them more determined to create a more equal society. It also saves them from reverting to moral blindness that prevents them from seeing the evil that the present socio-economic system imposes upon others.

I believe that Black people should embrace a tool that allows us to understand and attack the problems that beset us. It should also make us more determined to fight the scourge of racism, white privilege wherever we find it in our midst, and to resist being complicit with its practices. As Black people we ought to be vigilant lest we, through our inaction and inattentiveness, contribute to keeping the walls of whiteness and black marginalization in place.

However, we look at it, we need to challenge a system that prevents America from creating that "perfect union" for which all of us desire to achieve. Accepting the premises of critical race theory can go a long way towards making America a better place to live.

NOTES:

1. Derrick Bell, "Who's Afraid of Critical Race Theory?" in Edward Taylor, David Gillborn, and Gloria Ladson-Billings, eds., Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education (New York: Routledge, 2009), 41.
2. Quoted in The New York Times, July 13, 2021.
3. Ibid.
4. Cathryn Stout and Gabrielle LaMarr LeMee, "Efforts to restrict teaching about racism and bias have multiplied across the U.S." Chalkbeat, July 9, 2021.
5. Kimberle Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, and Kendall Thomas, eds., Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement (New York: The New Press, 1995), xiv.
6. Edward Taylor, David Gillborn, and Gloria Ladson-Billings, eds., Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education (New York: Routledge, 2009), 40.
7. See Nell Irvin Painter, "White Identity in America Is Ideology; Not Biology," Think, June 27, 2020.
8. Derrick A. Bell, "Who's Afraid of Critical Race Theory?" in Edward Taylor, David Gillborn, and Gloria Labson-Billings, eds., Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education (New York: Routledge, 2009), 40.
9. Ibid., 3, 4.
10. Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (New York: Doubleday, 1901), 98.
11. Africana Studies Commemorative Magazine, 15.
12. I drew these categories from Clarence Caldwell, "Theoretical Domain: Critical Race Theory, Pepperdine University, Graduate School of Education, Los Angeles, California," November 10, 2019.
13. Mary Lefkowitz, "Afrocentrism Poses a Threat to the Rationalist Tradition," The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 6, 1992.
14. -
15. Quoted in Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Aerostatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Vol. 3 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006), 4.
16. Ibid., 9.
17. Mary Lefkowitz, Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentricism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History (New York: Basic Books, 1996), 157-8.
18. "Symposium on Africa," Presented by the Barnette Miller Foundation, Wellesley College, February 16 and 17, 1960, 147.
19. "Symposium on Africa, Preface.
20. Mills, The Racial Contract, 46
21. Lefkowitz, Not Out of Africa, 3.
22. Selwyn R. Cudjoe, "Afrocentricism: Not a Racist Polemic…" Boston Globe, April 21, 1996.
23. The National Herald, February 20, 2019.
24. In The Racial Contract, Mills noted: "White people do not pre-exist but are brought into existence as 'whites' by the Racial Contract-hence the peculiar transformation of the human population that accompanies this contract. The white race is invented, and one becomes 'white by law." Mills, Racial Contract, 63.
25. Adrian M. S. Piper, "Racism at Wellesley: Causes and Containment," September 8, 1997, 4-5.
26. Ibid., 11.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid., 17.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., 26.
31. Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 16.
32. Ibid., x.
33. Ibid.,
34. Fabiola Cineas, "Critical Race Theory and Trump's War on It, explained," Vox, September 24, 2021.
35. "Executive Order on Combatting Race and Sex Stereotyping, —the White House, Issued on September 22, 2020.
36. Executive Order on Combatting Race and Sex Stereotyping, 4
37. Tim Craig, "Moms for Liberty has turned 'parental rights' into a rally for Conservative Republicans, The Washington Post, October 15, 2021.

Prof Cudjoe's e-mail address is scudjoe@wellesley.edu. He can be reached @ProfessorCudjoe

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The Slave Master of Trinidad by Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe