Was I Taught ‘CRT’ as a High School Freshman?

A positive lesson in color-consciousness from one of my high school teachers…it’s stuck with me for more than two decades!

Within our society’s educational discourse, there seems to be a lack of consensus as to what exactly Critical Race Theory (CRT) actually is…or, on the flip side, what it isn’t.

Some say it’s merely learning about racial injustices as part of America’s history.

Others contend it’s incorporating a more diverse range of authors/academics of color within student reading materials.

Many would emphasize it involves exploring how the systemic forms of racism had a role — and still continue to — in shaping governmental policies.

Several CRT proponents may argue that the theory involves recognizing the function of systemic racism in creating inequities or inequality. Yet, there are dissenting perspectives on what parameters we ought to use for exact definitions or potential subcategories. It’s unlikely those debates will be settled anytime soon.

All of this should be fair game to consider insofar as whether (and to what extent) these discussions will be included in K-12 educational curriculums. But hashing out those details shall be an ongoing process.

Today, I want to reflect upon a time from my own pre-collegiate education — long before “CRT” had become a contentious part of our American vernacular.

It was early-1997. The second semester of my freshman year in high school had just begun. In either late-January (near the MLK federal holiday) or February (as part of Black History Month) — I forgot which exact month — I arrived at my freshman English class for what would prove to become a very eye-opening experience.

All Ninth-Graders took English I Survey, which was a core freshman year English course consisting of grammatical review and exposure to various literature genres. My first semester, I’d emerged from those eighteen weeks with an A- in the class. During the second half of my Ninth Grade year, I would earn myself a pure A.

I say this not to brag about my academic prowess, but rather, to illustrate where my 14-year-old consciousness was, at this point in my life.

Our teacher, Mrs. Hornby, greeted each student individually at the door for 2nd Hour. As we entered, she would hand us a slip of colored construction paper: either green or purple. Every slip had a string attached to it, so we could drape these construction paper placards around our necks.

As I walked through the doorway, Mrs. Hornby handed me a green slip. In a clipped voice, she instructed me to set down my books and Trapper Keeper over by the east wall of the classroom. She directed me to take a seat in the center of the classroom, where a fleet of desks had been assembled in close proximity to one another.

“Hmm, this is sort of interesting,” I thought to myself.

Once I’d taken my seat, I could see that every student who was arriving at class would be handed either a green slip or a purple slip to hang around his or her neck. I also noticed that there were way more students being randomly given purple slips than green slips.

By the time the class period officially began, there were about eight of us “Green People” with our desks situated as an awkward cluster in the middle of the room. The other 20–24 students (the “Purple People”) had taken seats along the classroom’s west wall, sitting in neat little rows.

Mrs. Hornby opened class with a bright greeting…but she directed it specifically to the Purple People. Her back was turned to us Green People the entire time; she wasn’t even looking at us.

Our English teacher then proceeded to orate a majority of her planned lesson to them. She answered their questions, doted over them, and would make pleasant small talk with them. Mrs. Hornby was very pointedly treating the Purple People really well.

She basically ignored us Green People.

When it came time for a classroom writing activity, Mrs. Hornby handed out pencils and paper to the Purple People first. Then, us Green People were given crappy pencils with chipped tips or no erasers. The Purple People, of course, had received writing utensils and fresh paper in pristine condition.

Soon, one of my fellow Green People spoke up and pointed out how none of us had anything to write on. Mrs. Hornby groaned audibly, rolled her eyes, and tossed a small pile of recycled paper to one of us. That student was then tasked with distributing the crappier half-sheets of paper to the rest of us.

Mrs. Hornby then turned her attention back to the Purple People and remarked, dramatically:

“They complain so much, don’t they?”

Obviously referring to us lowly Green People.

Very early-on during the class period, I’d picked up on what Mrs. Hornby was doing. I thought it was brilliant. I’m unsure how many other students knew right away what this activity was alluding to, but I just played along so as to help my teacher carry out the simulation.

Throughout the next half hour, she would bark at us or talk down to us in a condescending manner. If any of us laughed, she’d reprimand us. All because we had green placards around our necks.

When some of the Green People asked to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water, she shut us down. However, if any of the Purple People asked to leave the room, she would very pleasantly let them do whatever they wanted.

One of the Purple People innocently asked her why the Green People weren’t being allowed to take a break.

Mrs. Hornby squinched up her face, dismissively gesturing toward us as she told the “Purple” student:

“Oh, because they’re the GREENIES…”

At one point, my friend Christina returned to our classroom from her extended break out by the hallway water fountain. Playfully, she reentered the room, arms outstretched, theatrically rubbing it in by announcing:

“Ahhhh! That water was so refreshing!”

Mrs. Hornby just smiled, as Christina retook her seat. I wanted to giggle out loud at my friend’s showmanship…but I didn’t dare utter a peep. If I laughed at anything, I knew I’d get lambasted in short order.

I was a “Greenie.”

At a certain point, a few of the Green People decided they wanted to have fun with Mrs. Hornby. They began talking back to her, protesting, throwing mini-tantrums. One boy from our group named Theran, after being sent by Mrs. Hornby to go stand in the corner facing the wall, whined:

“But I’m just a little [B]lack boy who doesn’t know any better!”

Obviously, I wasn’t the only one who’d cracked the code that this role-playing exercise was commentary on race relations.

Toward the end of the class period, we were writing out full sentences on our papers. Mrs. Hornby sauntered over to me and snatched up my sheet of scrawling. She then crankily berated me for my penmanship, and commanded me to redo it.

“Yes, Miz Hornby,” I said, bowing my head obediently and sheepishly. This had been literally how one of the Black students had meekly responded to their White teacher, in one of the short stories (set during the Civil Rights Era) we’d just read earlier that week.

Mrs. Hornby curtly nodded at my acquiescence. “That’s right,” she said, in a softer — but still resolute — tone.

I think she knew that I knew what she was doing…and she actually may have appreciated my docile role-playing, in contrast to Theran and the other boys who were clowning around with it.

Minutes later, Mrs. Hornby similarly swiped the paper that was in front of a girl named Corrie, who’d been sitting directly in front of me in our “green” section of the classroom. Glancing in revulsion at what Corrie had written, Mrs. Hornby scoffed:

“What a response!”

I was still holding in my laughter.

With ten minutes remaining in the class period, Mrs. Hornby broke character and instructed us all to move our chairs back into the middle of the classroom. For the remainder of 2nd Hour, she explained the historical parallels of how Black students were frequently mistreated — compared to their White peers — following desegregation.

She told us that, when she ran the same simulation during past years, sometimes she’d even brought Mrs. Weber (our vice-principal) in on it, to actively discipline any “Greenies” who ended up being physically sent to our actual principal’s office for their misbehavior.

For homework, we had to write a personal narrative about how we’d felt during that simulation — whether we were the Green People being oppressed, or the Purple People having to watch the oppression occur as bystanders.

Although Mrs. Hornby had used green and purple markers to represent our statuses, her simulation was obviously an allegory about white privilege. It could also be extrapolated as a commentary on the universal unfairness of privilege (regardless of which attribute such favoritism was based upon) in general.

This activity definitely taught empathy. Although we “Greenies” only endured this abuse for half an hour, it was a vicarious experience rather than merely reading about oppression secondhand in a book. It also made us mentally consider “What Would You Do?” — or “What Will You Do in the Future?” — whether the student was a victim or a bystander.

Mrs. Hornby’s simulation gave us an idea of how bad things were immediately after the 1964 abolition of racial segregation in schools. It also implied how, even though treatment had greatly improved after three decades, unequal conditions were still a problem in many schools. Often, it could be due to how some teachers themselves perpetuate inequitable conditions or prejudicial stereotypes.

By today’s standards, one could interpret this interactive exercise as an example of Critical Race Theory. Under some of the anti-CRT laws currently being proposed or enacted, a school activity such as this might be banned.

However, the Green/Purple Classroom is a much more effective activity, in my view, than when a teacher chooses to command students to label themselves as “oppressors” or “colonizers.” The Green/Purple dichotomy places students right in the thick of it. Mrs. Hornby obviously chose two colors (green and purple) that were totally distinct from the skin tones of actual Americans who may be White, Black, Asian, Latino, Indigenous, Desi, Pacific Islander, or Middle Eastern. This choice of hers allowed students (particularly in a predominantly-White school district) to view injustice through an objective and clinical lens…while still evoking the emotion of watching our real-life classmates get mistreated.

Looking back, I would have appreciated a follow-up (later that week) string of activities involving either narrative-reading or audio-visual learning tools that documented some of the more contemporary inequities and inequalities that had existed in school districts of what was then our present-day era (the late-1990s). But, understandably, there were time restraints and also less information readily-available since the Internet was still somewhat limited for K-12 educators to utilize

Overall, though, I found it to be an enriching experience. It touched upon the beast of systemic discrimination through real-time role-playing. That gave us (again, a classroom of mostly White students) some experiential context for the tumult of segregation and desegregation that we’d been reading about as part of the historical fiction during our current literature unit.

Mrs. Hornby was a stickler for perfection. She was known for sitting in her classroom and marking up a copy of our school’s student-run newspaper, The Paw Print, with a red pen where she’d correct all of the erroneous grammar and punctuation that its student editors had overlooked (since she wasn’t their faculty advisor).

However, her Green/Purple simulation seemed to have the desired effect. And she clearly knew that when designing the activity.

For all the huffing-and-puffing done by many folks on the Left, they have to admit: if a teacher gets hung up on trying to make themselves feel morally-superior to her or his students, then it will most likely compromise the point of the lesson while distracting student attention from classroom learning.

This is why our political leaders should pump the brakes on the notion of blanket-banning CRT.

Mrs. Hornby proved that you don’t have to become steeped in guilt, shame, or political correctness in order to successfully educate students about racial justice.