In the summer of 2020, the United States erupted in a series of protests designed to confront this nation's problem with race. As conversations about racial justice took hold in the public sphere, attention was drawn to critical race theory (CRT) and what role it might have in explaining why the United States remains rooted in racism. However, on September 4, 2020, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Russell Vought sent a letter mischaracterizing CRT that subsequently incited a crusade of disinformation and misguided rage (Cineas, 2020). The ensuing fallout has led to an educational crisis as educators grow fearful of teaching the United States' history comprehensively (Griesbach, 2021; Herman, 2021). Rather than critically evaluate how the systems (e.g., educational, judicial, political) within the United States reinforce White supremacist ideology, the focus shifted toward the very theories used to understand this phenomenon. What had the potential to be a racial reckoning instead became an attack on CRT. Across the United States, politicians, school boards, colleges, and universities attempted to ban and eliminate CRT (or topics associated with it) from discussion. While critics of CRT framed their opposition as an attempt to decrease racism by not giving it any attention, the pushback against this theory actually reflects a hard truth: that the historical accuracy CRT demands is an existential threat to White supremacy. Trying to censor theories of race is an example of the very thing CRT highlights—that systems are designed to reinforce whiteness—and legislating the erasure of CRT is one form of this White supremacy. We want to make clear that those in strong opposition to CRT are not the primary audience for this editorial. This editorial is for those who want to do better in calling out the role of whiteness in their research that employs a CRT framework. We start with contextualizing the relevance of CRT, then provide a brief overview of it as a theorizing space (as opposed to a theoretical framework), discuss it within engineering education research (EER), and conclude with questions scholars engaging with this theory should consider as they move forward.

In this Year of Impact on Racial Equity, the EER community would do well to scrutinize the recent, and ongoing, campaign against CRT taking hold in various educational spaces (American Society for Engineering Education [ASEE], n.d.). The ASEE has endorsed this yearlong effort “to help leverage and extend the societal momentum toward greater awareness and action to dismantle white supremacy and racism” at a time when White supremacy is flexing its political and social muscle (ASEE, n.d.). This type of attention is particularly important as mention of CRT grows within EER. While some scholars have mentioned it as a useful theory in understanding the experiences of racially excluded people in EER (e.g., DeCuir-Gunby et al., 2009; Ong et al., 2020; Trytten et al., 2013), others have suggested that the use of frameworks like CRT in this domain has largely characterized racially excluded students from a deficit perspective (Mejia et al., 2018). In noticing this trend, we ask, how can EER best apply CRT? Despite the wide range of scholarship on CRT, both the public discourse and many of the published papers mentioning it in engineering make clear that this theory is misunderstood. Too often CRT discussions involve only two of its primary tenets: (1) racism is endemic and (2) the centrality of experiential knowledge. However, these tenets do not directly name a critical component for understanding race in the United States. Any use of CRT within the EER community should center whiteness. This is the only way to make any significant progress on actualizing racial equity and confronting the ways White supremacy operates within engineering classrooms.

In 1998, Gloria Ladson-Billings asked, “Just what is critical race theory and what's it doing in a nice field like education?” (p. 7). That question set forth several decades of scholarship that explored the relationship between CRT and educational spaces. At the time, Ladson-Billings thought that CRT would be a “darling of the radical left” (p. 22) and would not influence the classrooms or daily lives of the racially excluded. While it is unclear how influential CRT has been in classroom spaces, it has proliferated the educational research community and is now commonly used as an analytic frame to understand the lived experiences of the racially excluded. Ladson-Billings offered a word of caution for such situations: “It is a pattern in educational research for a new idea or innovation to take hold and proliferate,” she wrote, and “sometimes an idea takes a while to root, but once it does, most likely its creators lose control of their idea” (p. 21). We argue that EER lacks control over the use of CRT, which is often used as a broad conceptualization of race at the individual level but rarely actively engaged with its many tenets at the systematic level. Theoretical engagement, particularly around critical theories, requires more than just superficial acknowledgment of the theory. It requires deep engagement with its foundational development. Claiming that one is using CRT but only mentioning that racism is endemic or that storytelling allows one to understand the experiences of the racially excluded does not draw attention to why these tenets came to be in the first place. What is most profound in EER is the lack of indictment of whiteness—a key reason why CRT was created in the first place.

2020 年夏天，美国爆发了一系列旨在解决这个国家种族问题的抗议活动。随着关于种族正义的对话在公共领域占据一席之地，人们开始关注批判种族理论 (CRT) 以及它在解释为什么美国仍然植根于种族主义方面可能发挥的作用。然而，在 2020 年 9 月 4 日，管理和预算办公室 (OMB) 主任罗素·沃特 (Russell Vought) 发送了一封错误描述 CRT 的信，随后煽动了一场虚假信息和误导性愤怒的讨伐（Cineas，  2020 年）。随之而来的后果导致了教育危机，因为教育工作者越来越害怕全面教授美国历史（格里斯巴赫，  2021 年；赫尔曼，  2021 年））。不是批判性地评估美国境内的系统（例如，教育、司法、政治）如何强化白人至上主义意识形态，而是将重点转向用于理解这种现象的理论。有可能成为种族清算的事情反而变成了对 CRT 的攻击。在美国，政治家、学校董事会、学院和大学试图禁止和消除 CRT（或与之相关的话题）进行讨论。虽然 CRT 的批评者将他们的反对定为试图减少种族主义没有给予任何关注，反对这一理论的阻力实际上反映了一个残酷的事实：CRT 要求的历史准确性是对白人至上主义的生存威胁。试图审查种族理论是 CRT 所强调的一个例子——系统旨在加强白人——而立法消除 CRT 是这种白人至上的一种形式。我们要明确表示，强烈反对 CRT 的人不是这篇社论的主要受众。这篇社论适用于那些希望在使用 CRT 框架的研究中更好地强调白人的作用的人。我们首先将 CRT 的相关性置于语境中，然后将其作为一个理论空间（而不是理论框架）进行简要概述，并在工程教育研究 (EER) 中对其进行讨论，

在这个影响种族平等的年份，EER 社区最好仔细审查最近和正在进行的反对 CRT 在各种教育领域的运动（美国工程教育协会 [ASEE]，  nd）。在白人至上主义展示其政治和社会力量的时候，ASEE 已经支持这项为期一年的努力，“以帮助利用和扩大社会动力，以提高意识和行动，以消除白人至上主义和种族主义”（ASEE，  nd）。随着 EER 中 CRT 的增加，这种类型的关注尤为重要。虽然一些学者将其作为一种有用的理论来理解 EER 中被种族排斥的人的经历（例如，DeCuir-Gunby 等人，  2009 年；Ong 等人，  2020 年）; Trytten 等人，  2013 年），其他人则认为，在该领域使用 CRT 等框架在很大程度上将种族排斥的学生从缺陷的角度刻画出来（Mejia 等人，  2018 年））。注意到这一趋势，我们问，EER 如何最好地应用 CRT？尽管关于 CRT 的学术研究范围很广，但公共话语和许多在工程中提到它的已发表论文都清楚地表明该理论被误解了。CRT 讨论经常只涉及其两个主要原则：(1) 种族主义是地方性的；(2) 经验知识的中心地位。然而，这些原则并没有直接指出理解美国种族的关键组成部分。在 EER 社区内使用 CRT 应该以白度为中心。这是在实现种族平等和应对白人至上主义在工程课堂中的运作方式方面取得任何重大进展的唯一途径。

1998年，凯莱莱德森比林斯问，“到底什么是关键种族理论，什么是它在做的不错教育等领域？” （第 7 页）。这个问题提出了几十年来探索 CRT 与教育空间之间关系的学术研究。当时，Ladson-Billings 认为 CRT 将是“激进左派的宠儿”（第 22 页），不会影响被种族排斥者的课堂或日常生活。虽然尚不清楚 CRT 在课堂空间中的影响力有多大，但它已经在教育研究界激增，现在通常用作分析框架来了解被排斥种族的生活经历。拉德森-比林斯 (Ladson-Billings) 对这种情况提出了警告：“在教育研究中，新想法或创新的形成和扩散是一种模式，”她写道，“有时一个想法需要一段时间才能扎根，但一旦确实如此，很可能它的创造者失去了对他们想法的控制”（第 15 页）。21)。我们认为 EER 缺乏对 CRT 的使用的控制，CRT 经常被用作个人层面的种族的广泛概念，但很少在系统层面积极参与其许多原则。理论参与，特别是围绕批判理论，需要的不仅仅是对理论的表面认识。它需要深入参与其基础发展。声称一个人正在使用 CRT 但只提到种族主义是地方性的或讲故事可以让人们了解被种族排斥的人的经历并没有引起人们的注意 尤其是在批判理论方面，需要的不仅仅是对理论的表面认识。它需要深入参与其基础发展。声称一个人正在使用 CRT 但只提到种族主义是地方性的或讲故事可以让人们了解被种族排斥的人的经历并没有引起人们的注意 尤其是在批判理论方面，需要的不仅仅是对理论的表面认识。它需要深入参与其基础发展。声称一个人正在使用 CRT 但只提到种族主义是地方性的或讲故事可以让人们了解被种族排斥的人的经历并没有引起人们的注意为什么这些原则首先出现。EER 中最深刻的是缺乏对白度的控诉——这是最初创建 CRT 的一个关键原因。