Banning Critical Race Theory Is More Serious Than One Might Think

Until I listened to Terry Gross’s interview with researcher Jeffrey Sachs (pictured), I thought the war against Critical Race Theory was simply a windmill that the far right could tilt its jousting stick at.  Wrong.  I learned that, “across the U.S., educators are being censored for broaching controversial topics. Since January 2021, 35 states have introduced 137 bills limiting what schools can teach with regard to race, American history, politics, sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Before we consider what this means, we first need to realize that teachers at all levels are soon to have cameras in the classroom, with video streaming for literally anyone on Earth to see.  This means that some white supremacist can edit something I say, so as to take it out of context, and hand it over to Fox News.

From the interview:

There’s a law currently on the books in North Dakota that was passed last November after just five days of consideration that has me up at night. This is a law that attempts to prohibit critical race theory in K-12 schools, and I just want to reemphasize here this is not a law that prohibits people from endorsing or promoting critical race theory. It’s a law that forbids them from even including critical race theory in the classroom. And the way that law defines critical race theory is what has me so concerned: … “critical race theory, which is defined as the theory that racism is not merely the product of learned individual bias or prejudice, but that racism is systemically embedded in American society and the American legal system to facilitate racial inequality.”

In other words, the law now is saying that whenever a teacher talks about racism, they may only describe it as a product of an individual’s own biases or prejudices. They cannot describe it — even when the facts command them to — as something more endemic or embedded within American society. It’s a way essentially of preventing teachers, I think, from being honest about a lot of the uglier sides of American history and contemporary society.

So, slave-owners may have been racists as individuals, perhaps via contact with other slave-owners, but they did not participate in anything endemic to our society.

Apparently, there are history teachers who are staying in their positions after this idiocy was implemented; I’m impressed by their commitment to their students.  Forcing me to be dishonest with my kids wouldn’t work for me for an instant.