Editor, Gazette-Journal:

The demonization of critical race theory has made its way to Gloucester and Mathews. (See recent articles and letters in the Gazette-Journal.) A pause to define critical race theory is in order. It is not hard to understand.

Critical race theory is a decades old American legal principle that holds that even in the absence of overt acts of individual racism, African Americans can be discriminated against because our legal, economic, and social systems are rooted in the past when African-Americans were not considered equal citizens. (The same can be said of women.)

We have come a long way since the modern civil rights movement of the 1960s. Discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, gender, and disability is illegal, and most people believe that it is fair and just. But in order to overcome the disadvantage that was baked into our society over the centuries, we have to go deeper to root out systemic racism. That is what critical rac...