It never ceases to amaze me how upset people can be over something they know next to nothing about.

The latest example of this is the idea that Critical Race Theory is being taught in public schools even though it isn’t being taught in schools and, as far as can be determined, there are no plans to teach it in any public schools anywhere.

What’s important, my alarmed conservative friends say, is that it could be. Well, I suppose the Pope could perform mass in pasties and a g-string, too. If you can imagine a thing, you can also imagine it happening, no matter how unlikely.

That’s why in Mississippi we passed a law to prevent transgendered females from competing in female sports competitions, even though there has never been an instance in which that has happened. You know, just in case.

So what’s the next red meat for culture warriors?

Critical Race Theory (CRT for short).

Critical Race Theory has been around for 40 years, although up until a few weeks ago, folks in the South probably thought Critical Race Theory was the debate about when to pit during a NASCAR race.

First introduced at Harvard, CRT is now offered sporadically at the college graduate school level. The theory holds that racism in our country is institutional and systemic rather than confined to the individual’s view on race.

Why this would be controversial, I have no idea.

We know what our Founding Fathers believed on the matter of race (and economic status and women’s rights for that matter). When Jefferson wrote “All men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence, there was never any thought that anyone would assume that meant Black people, too. Remember, Jefferson was a man who chose his words carefully, after much deliberation, and wrote with clarity. He didn’t see the need to point out that when he wrote “all men,” he wasn’t including Black people, probably for the same reason he would not have found it necessary to point out that the term didn’t apply to chickens or hogs or armadillos. In his day, the distinctions were obvious.

The Constitution bears that out. The rights claimed in that document were not extended to the Black people here at the time of its passage. The overwhelming majority of Black people here then were considered property, so livestock and farm implements had as many rights as Black people at the time the Constitution was ratified.

If that’s not institutional racism, what is?

So, yes, from the jump, racism was embedded in our institutions. We see it throughout our history in areas of education, criminal justice, housing, lending, facilities, public health — just about every American institution.

To deny that, is to deny the sun sets in the west.

Mississippi history only amplifies the validity of Critical Race Theory, where Jim Crow laws kept its Black citizens in a perpetual state of disenfranchisement, marginalization, fear and compliance.

To the extent that today’s conservatives will acknowledge any of that to be true, they’ll argue that all of the institutional/systemic racism is a “thing of the past” and that we live in a post-racial society.

Oh, really?

Well, at this very moment, we live in a state that celebrates Confederate Memorial Day and Robert E. Lee’s birthday as state holidays and each year sets aside the entire month of April as Confederate Heritage Month. Of far greater impact, we live in a state where legislative policies are proposed and implemented with little regard to the impact on Black citizens.

How post-racial of us, huh?

Critical Race Theory does not — and never has — proposed that all white people are racist, no matter how often you may hear that distortion on right-wing media.

What it does show — with ample evidence to support it — is that all Americans are born into a racist culture, something that is never doubted or challenged by non-white Americans, by the way, but is met with feigned shock and fierce resistance among conservative white folks.

Some people may prefer not to know if they have a deadly disease. It’s just too unpleasant a thing to consider. But some of us would like to know, so we can fight it no matter how disturbing the diagnosis.

Racism is a disease that has afflicted our nation since its inception. Critical Race Theory is simply the diagnosis.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].