Tennessee State Representative Justin Jones (D-Nashville, pictured above, left) was among the 40 speakers at the Critical Race Theory Summer School 2024 event held at Vanderbilt University in Nashville from July 28 until August 2.
Jones is one of the three members who controversially became known as the Tennessee Three for their role in a pro-gun control riot last year, and Nashville Scene reported he “helped bring the event to Vanderbilt” when it began in 2020.
Ahead of the event, its organizer Kimberle Crenshaw, a professor at Columbia University and University of Los California, Los Angeles professor, acknowledged a “backlash” to “racial justice” and CRT in a video advertising tickets.
“We started this in the middle of the summer of reckoning,” said Crenshaw, referencing the 2020 civil unrest that followed the death of George Floyd.
Crenshaw said Critical Race Theory Summer School was part of “recognizing that critical concepts, like structural racism and implicit bias and intersectionality were all part of the mobilization that we saw in 50 states across the country, demanding accountability.”
She then stated, “now we are at a point where the backlash against 2020, the backlash against racial justice, has taken the form of suppressing our right to learn, our right to know, our books.”
A ticket sales page for the event suggests many of its speakers offered arguments to use against political efforts which oppose their agenda.
The event organizers claimed efforts to curtail affirmative action and parents exerting control over reading materials in school libraries are part of a push by “conservative extremists” who want to push “racial and social justice advances” back “over seven decades.”
It is further claimed the “‘war on woke’ is really a war on Black knowledge, history, and other marginalized community,” and warned that “colorblind liberalism laid the groundwork for the current backlash by de-emphasizing the importance of race and racism in American life.”
Speakers also apparently provided a defense of the controversial Diversity, Equity and Inclusion practices, which were blamed after disgraced Harvard University President Claudine Gay was ousted amid plagiarism and antisemitism scandals.
According to the ticket sales page, those who attended the summer school learned “[h]ow those attacking CRT and DEI initiatives ultimately seek to turn back the clock on a century of civil rights advances and represent a broader attack on public education on public institutions.
Speakers also argued that “attacks on racial equality” are tied to an “assault on LGBTQ+ rights and liberties, and women’s reproductive freedom.”
Event organizers also mentioned Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation collection of white papers falsely attributed to former President Donald Trump’s campaign for the White House.
They claimed the Critical Race Theory Summer School attendees would understand “the ultimately goal of the anti-woke movement, which is to destroy the prospect of multiracial democracy through its vision in Project 2025.”
Polling conducted earlier this year found the majority of voters would prefer schools focus on traditional subjects including math, reading and science, and are generally opposed to instructions about CRT.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Rep. Justin Jones at CRT Summer School” by African American Policy Forum.
