the whole purpose of critical race
theory
is to provide americans with a way to
understand
the legacy of racism even though
those stories sometimes hurt it's
anti-american training
that vilifies white people and demands
they apologize
the best learning for students about
social studies and about our democracy
and our country
is the learning where students can
really grapple with
the issues and really come to a deeper
understanding of how our past informs
our presence
all of this revisionist woke curriculum
you are not going to do this to our
children
teachers across the country are caught
in the middle of the latest flashpoint
in america's culture war
critical race theory so what exactly is
it and why is there a push to ban it in
schools
critical race theory is a body of
ideas and a set of approaches
to understanding the history and the
present
of american society
that looks at the ways in which racial
unfairness
have been woven into the fabric of our
institutions
in other words critical race theory or
crt for short is a legal academic
framework
centered on the idea that racism is
systemic
it first started to coalesce in the
1970s when black
hispanic and asian legal scholars were
researching the persistence of
inequality
despite the landmark legal victories of
the civil rights era
the legal scholars undertook
a set of analyses and investigations
that were aimed at trying to make sense
of
the puzzling persistence of racism
in our legal system in our political
system uh
in our economy crt has been studied in
fields like sociology
economics and political science it's
been used to examine issues such as
housing and educational segregation
unconscious bias and criminal justice
reform contrary to what often critics
portray as sort of judging people
intrinsically as being racist or not
or making or holding people responsible
for you know
slavery in the past it is actually to
open up a conversation of
how we all inherit and live in a society
sort of beyond our choosing
we didn't choose where we were born or
what racial group we were part of
and yet we have this common history how
do we understand that history what does
it mean for
us those are the sorts of questions
that critical race theorists were trying
to grapple with
the racial reckoning spurred by the
police killing of george floyd
brought the decades-old framework back
into the spotlight as some schools
sought to implement reforms that better
address race in classrooms
i think the thing that critical race
theory would add to that conversation
is that we not sort of confine that
horrific example to
derek shoving but to think about how
well there were
other law enforcement officers present
including
officers of color who stood idly by and
so that pushes
us to think about you know this
phenomenon
as not simply one of you know racism by
whites against blacks right i mean it
makes us think more
you know more critically more engaged
more seriously around
why do these practices happen the push
against crt
gained steam under former president
trump when he directed federal agencies
to end
any diversity trainings related to
critical race theory
though ultimately blocked on first
amendment grounds and rescinded by
president biden
the fight over crt at the state level is
still in full effect
the focus on crt is a way to latch on to
a concept that very few people sort of
really understand
which sounds kind of scary perhaps to
someone not you know
trained in what it means and latch onto
that as a kind of
football in this sort of ongoing fight
over you know the future of this country
with regard to racism as of mid-june
2021
21 states have introduced bills
attempting to restrict the teaching of
critical race theory
and or impose limits on how race is
discussed
inside the classroom and those limits
are often vague
and instructors educators especially at
the k through 12 level
will just not go there will not run the
risk of upsetting parents
or you know i'm being misunderstood or
drawing the ire
of you know lawmakers in texas for
instance house bill 3979 says teachers
must explore
current events from multiple positions
without giving quote
deference to any one perspective there's
language in this bill like teachers need
to present
a balanced perspective on current events
for instance you know they have to
they have to do their due diligence to
present multiple viewpoints but what
happens if
they're talking about an issue in the
classroom
and they try to present multiple
viewpoints
but you know the student comes home and
tells their parent about the lesson that
day and the parents that thinks well
they didn't do a good enough job of
prevent presenting this viewpoint
so who decides when the teacher has done
an adequate job of presenting
multiple perspectives on an issue it
saddens me
and disappoints me that instead of
really embracing this opportunity
to confront our nation's past
and to tell authentic and more accurate
narratives about experiences of you know
diverse people in this country
that we're looking to sweep it under the
rug we're looking to
erase it even further from our memories
you