Op-ed: UCLA must implement CRT course requirement for public policy master’s students

In June 2020, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block and then-Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Emily Carter penned a letter to the UCLA community amid a national call for racial justice after the viral modern-day lynching of George Floyd. This letter stated that every sector of the university was going to implement changes that would produce lasting advancements toward promoting racial justice. As of March 30, the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs has not seen these changes. If it’s serious about advancing racial equity, the Luskin School should immediately implement a Critical Race Theory course requirement for all students in the Master of Public Policy graduate degree program.

CRT was founded by civil rights lawyers and activists as a legal framework to understand racism in the United States. In 1976, lawyer and civil rights activist Derrick Bell theorized that racism was so interwoven into American society that even attempts to dismantle it would lead to new forms of racism that must be addressed differently. This is the foundation of CRT and why it is vital to understand as a public policy graduate student. CRT is needed because this country’s education system is rooted in white supremacy. Therefore, in order to dismantle this, we must create policies in educational systems that require an overhaul of the former curriculum that dismisses racism, maintaining inequality between Black and white educational outcomes.

Nate Williams, associate professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and the co-vice president of the Critical Race Studies and Education Association, notes that CRT is a tool that allows folks to process, label and understand racial inequalities in order to analyze them. He states that one of the tenets of CRT is racial realism. This allows us to understand how race is omnipresent and to acknowledge that racism is at play in all sectors of society, including academia. Implementing a CRT course will encourage and support Black and non-white people by providing resources and actionable steps to dismantle white supremacy.

The attack on CRT has risen in the past few years following the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. Just last year, Republican lawmakers in five states crafted bills that would cut funding to any K-12 school and public college or university that teaches lessons from the 1619 Project, which documents the history of slavery as pivotal in American history and a foundation for persisting racial inequalities. As of January, Education Week reported that 36 states have introduced or implemented bills or other measures that restrict or ban critical race teachings in education curricula. Even in California, bans on CRT have already been instituted on the basis that it is a “fatally flawed” ideology.

Education reform starts with curriculum standards set by the state. Thus, it is up to individual schools and universities to tackle one of the greatest barriers to liberation – racial inequality. UCLA, as an institution, has declared it wishes to be a part of the solution to racial inequality but has not yet followed through with all actions necessary to establish a clear path toward this. First of all, the chancellors’ letter does not address how UCLA has contributed to the racial inequity in education as one of the nation’s leading public universities with an undergraduate student body that is only about 5% Black or African American and a graduate student body that is only 6% Black or African American. Thus, using a CRT lens, we can see how without this acknowledgment, UCLA is not actually challenging or confronting its role in racial inequality. The university, and by proxy the public policy department, must recognize that without implementing mandatory CRT teachings in the MPP program, which guides students to be future change-makers and policy agents, they are not following Block and Carter’s promises to students.

Mandating CRT in education curricula is a highly debated topic among conservative politicians because there is a strong sentiment expressed by racists and white supremacists that it creates feelings of unproductive guilt in white students. However, CRT actually builds unity among groups of diverse backgrounds and fosters understanding grounded in equality. More importantly, it is rooted in fact. Further, the guilt of white students is not reason enough to impose on the learning of all other students.

Some critics will even say that while CRT is an important concept, introducing a core requirement of CRT in the UCLA MPP program is simply symbolic and does not actually challenge the social structures of racial inequality. This is proven incorrect through one of the tenets of CRT – the idea of naming one’s own reality. Richard Delgado, author, professor and CRT scholar, notes the importance of naming one’s own reality as “the exchange of stories from teller to listener [to] help overcome ethnocentrism and the dysconscious conviction of viewing the world in one way.” This means that while it may seem symbolic, the practice of oppressed people sharing how they see and experience the realities of the racial injustice they face takes away power from the oppressor, who only ever sees the world from their perspective.

The UCLA MPP program’s colorblind approach to race is in itself an ineffective method to challenge structures of racism and inequality because it denies the reality that they exist. Mandating CRT in the MPP program directly combats racial inequality in education. The racial inequalities between Black and non-Black people in education lead to opportunity gaps that ultimately maintain the caste system of racial capitalism that continues to oppress Black folks at disproportionate levels. CRT will work as a tool to challenge indoctrinated practices of white supremacy and highlight education as a key factor in empowering and encouraging change makers. The Luskin School needs to act on the chancellors’ promises to students and implement a core required course in CRT to address its role in racial inequality.

McClendon is a second-year graduate student at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She earned her bachelor’s degrees from California State University, Northridge, majoring in Africana studies and consumer affairs. She will be receiving her master’s degree in public policy with a concentration in Black studies in spring 2022.