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ical race theory aims to do just 
that — put people into neat 
boxes. Because CRT revolves 
around race and racial cate-
gories, by definition it must 
downplay the individual. We 
become defined by our skin 
color, a radical departure from 
Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous 
dictum that we ought to be 
judged by “the content of our 
character and not the color of 
our skin.”
This stereotyping is especially 
problematic for groups that 
have a long history of being put 
in stereotypical boxes that have 
led to their persecution, such as 
Jews. Throughout the centuries, 
Jew-haters have used any con-
venient box to attack Jews — 
communist, capitalist, powerful, 
weak, religious, secular, insular, 
universal and so on.

Today, one of the conse-
quences of CRT is that Jews 
are put in the “ultimate white 
privilege” box, reinforced by an 
association with the powerful 
“white” State of Israel, a coun-
try that attracts an inordinate 
amount of antisemitic hostility, 
particularly when it defends 
itself.
As a result, Jews are facing a 
form of identity erasure, made 
worse by CRT’s erasure of indi-
vidual choice.
The Jewish tradition, while 
valuing communal connections, 
values individual agency above 
all. We make choices as individ-
uals, whether to serve God or 
our fellow humans.
We sin as individuals, seek 
forgiveness as individuals and 
forgive as individuals. The 
major figures of the Bible, from 

Moses to King David, all had 
their individual flaws. The sages 
of the Talmud were in constant 
debate.
The Jewish message is that 
none of us have static identities 
based on qualities or charac-
teristics that can never change. 
Our message is always one of 
action and hope — each one of 
us is a work in progress, even 
kings and great leaders.
Critical race theory nullifies 
this powerful idea — that we 
are individuals with the power 
to make a difference, both in 
the world and in our lives.

ACKNOWLEDGING 
PROGRESS
We can and must teach in 
our schools the shameful and 
complicated racial history of 
the United States and fight its 

lingering effects, but without 
ignoring the long arc of prog-
ress or the ability of individuals 
to think critically and strive 
for improvement. Even when 
we are part of groups — what 
is commonly known today as 
“identity politics” — it is what 
we bring to these groups as 
individuals that nourishes our 
lives and helps the groups suc-
ceed.
We have an obligation to 
teach our kids the universal 
truth that the sanctity of our 
individuality is the real source 
of human dignity. We might call 
that Critical Human Theory. 

David Suissa is editor-in-chief and pub-

lisher of Tribe Media Corp, and the Los 

Angeles-based Jewish Journal news-

paper. He can be reached at davids@

jewishjournal.com. This article was first 

published by the Jewish Journal.

origin of these ideas among 
legal scholars). 
The impact of systemic 
racism may be measured, for 
example, in things as diverse 
as the wealth gap between 
white and Black Americans 
with similar educations and 
the declining tree cover in 
neighborhoods with majority 
African American populations. 
Critical Race theorists look 
to the history of government 
policies from the 1930s like 
redlining, under which the 
Federal Housing Authority 
refused to underwrite 
mortgages in African American 
neighborhoods with the explicit 
goal of separating “incompatible 
racial groups.” Blacks were, like 
Jews, forbidden to buy homes 
in newly developed suburbs, 
while white Americans received 
help from the government to 
purchase homes in these leafy 
neighborhoods and to build 
generational wealth.

The CRT framework, decades 
old, gained popularity (or 
notoriety, depending on whom 
you ask) after the summer 2020 
wave of protests that followed 
the murder of George Floyd.

MEMORY LAWS
The bans on teaching with a 
Critical Race Theory framework 
aren’t really against history per 
se, which is in the past and 
therefore stubbornly resists 
regulation. Rather, these decrees 
fall more precisely within the 
category of what are called 
“memory laws.” Historian 
Timothy Snyder described 
these laws as “government 
actions designed to guide public 
interpretation of the past … by 
asserting a mandatory view of 
historical events, by forbidding 
the discussion of historical 
facts or interpretations or by 
providing vague guidelines that 
lead to self-censorship.”
Compared to Americans, 

Europeans have less of an 
allergy to limitations on free 
speech, and they generally 
accepted these laws when 
they were designed to protect 
victims of historical trauma, for 
example, by banning noxious 
phenomena such as Holocaust 
denial. 
Putin, however, pioneered 
a new approach to memory 
laws: Rather than protecting 
the weak, they also can be 
weaponized to strengthen 
the powerful. In the context 
of Russian history, the 
counterpart to American 
slavery is the Holodomor, 
a terrible famine that killed 
millions of Ukrainians from 
1932-1933. Beginning in 
2008, Russia’s Duma assembly 
passed legislation that forbade 
the discussion of Russian 
government policies that 
contributed to the genocidal 
nature of the famine.
This is the intellectual 

home of the CRT bans. They 
share educational space with 
Poland’s ridiculous, offensive 
and dangerous 2018 law that 
criminalizes the suggestion that 
Poland bears any responsibility 
for the crimes committed by 
the Germans during World 
War II. The object of Poland’s 
memory law is not to prevent 
the resurgence of extremist 
antisemitism; it is to prevent 
Poles from confronting the 
complex legacy of collaboration 
with the Nazi occupation.

U.S. BANS ON CRT
This brings us to the American 
versions of the memory laws. 
Tennessee, for example, recently 
passed SB 623, which lists 
14 directives all tied to state 
funding. The requirements 
oscillate between the painfully 
obvious and the absurdly 
comic. On the one hand, 
Tennessee “does not prohibit 
… the impartial discussion 

MILWAUKEE TEACHERS’ EDUCATION ASSOCIATION/FLICKR 

COMMONS/JTA

