Critical race theory becomes a flashpoint in US public schools as Republicans regulate teaching about race-related issues

[Rembrandt Brown]

‘Critical race theory’ becomes a flashpoint in US public schools
As Americans face a racial reckoning, a fierce political debate is emerging over how race is discussed in schools.
By Chris Moody
11 Jun 2021

As part of a backlash against campaigns to emphasize racism’s historical and ongoing effect on inequality in American life, Republican lawmakers across the United States are moving to restrict how race is discussed in public schools.

Legislatures in more than a dozen states have considered bills that would regulate how teachers teach about race-related issues in classrooms. Many aim to ban “critical race theory”, a school of thought that holds that major institutions in the US are inherently racist and constructed by their nature to perpetuate white supremacy.

Throughout the country, local school board meetings have been filled with parents voicing concerns. Fox News, a right-wing television network, has aired segments warning about critical race theory for weeks.

Debate is part of US’s race reckoning

The moves come at a time when the US continues to grapple with how to address racial inequalities, more than a year after protests and riots erupted throughout the country following the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, at the hands of a white police officer.

The reckoning has divided Americans over how best to examine forces in society that lead to inequalities based on race. It has forced Americans to take a critical look at their country that some would rather avoid.

“There is a desire for a good past and good ancestry. Americans have a hard time holding things together in a complex way. I don’t think we’re very good at being able to accept the good and the bad together as a part of our own heritage,” said Marie Griffith, a professor at Washington University and author of Making the World Over: Confronting Racism, Misogyny, and Xenophobia in U.S. History.

“We can learn about the very difficult and painful parts of our past and do better without developing self-hatred. Your children are not going to start hating you and hating all of your ancestors simply because they’re learning this history. It should be an honor to grapple with that history.”

Arkansas, Idaho, Tennessee, Florida and Oklahoma have already passed new laws that place restrictions on public school teaching related to race. Other states are considering similar rules.

Republicans: Critical race theory is divisive

Florida’s Republican governor, Ron Desantis, who signed a bill this week banning the teaching of critical race theory in public schools, said the new law would protect children from being taught that they are defined and restricted by race.

“I think it’s going to cause a lot of divisions,” Desantis said. “I think it’ll cause people to think of themselves more as a member of a particular race based on skin color, rather than based on the content of their character and based on their hard work and what they’re trying to accomplish in life.”

Tennessee’s law, which goes into effect July 1, bars instructors from teaching that “an individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously.”

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, a Republican, said it was important for schools to emphasize “American exceptionalism” instead of dwelling on topics that “inherently divide”.




The new laws raise alarming questions about academic freedom and the power of state governments to restrict having difficult – but important – conversations around race, said Adrienne Dixson, a professor at the University of Illinois who specializes in the intersection of race and education.

“It is unfortunate that politicians want to limit literally what we can know, what we can think and what we can talk about. That’s concerning,” Dixson told Al Jazeera. “It should be frightening for everyone, no matter what you think about race.”
The prim

Jonathan Butcher, an education policy scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation, argues that critical race theory would perpetuate discriminatory attitudes instead of reducing them.

“It’s very different to say that these are individual acts that we condemn and to say that the American government or that public institutions are inherently racist,” Butcher told Al Jazeera.

“It robs children of the opportunity to understand that this American promise of opportunity for everyone regardless of the color of their skin and equality under the law is available to them.”

Dixson, however, said that critical race theory merely explores a truthful part of American life that has long existed.

“This isn’t history that critical race theory or people of color are making up. This is documented history. We know this factually. We’re reckoning with that history and ensuring we don’t replicate it,” Dixson said.

“Racism doesn’t have to be overt acts where someone is using racial epithets or there are explicit policies to restrict people of color. But maybe it could be ensconced in our policy in ways that we are unaware of because we’ve internalized certain rhetoric or beliefs about who is deserving and who isn’t.”

‘Critical race theory’ becomes a flashpoint in US public schools

As Americans face a racial reckoning, a fierce political debate is emerging over how race is discussed in schools.

www.aljazeera.com

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

What Do Conservatives Fear About Critical Race Theory?
In the Texas legislature, Republicans seemed willing to acknowledge systemic racism but resistant to the idea of talking about it with children.
By Benjamin Wallace-Wells
June 10, 2021

One of the first forays in a mounting conservative campaign to control the teaching of race was HB 3979, which was introduced in the Texas legislature this spring. The bill, which has become a model for state legislation across the country, proposed to elevate the teaching of “founding documents” in Texas schools, prevent teachers from supplementing approved books with other texts, and ban the teaching of the 1619 Project, which emphasizes the role of structural racism in American history. Its original sponsor was a staunch conservative named Brandon Creighton, who had previously introduced legislation that would have made it more difficult for local governments to remove Confederate monuments. But Creighton collapsed on the floor of the Texas Senate in early May, during a debate over a bill he supported to let Texans carry concealed weapons without a permit, and did not return to work when HB 3979 came to the Senate floor, on May 21st, so the task of presenting the bill fell to a bearded Republican named Bryan Hughes, whose genial manner lent a John Grisham-like courtliness to a tense debate. “You’re a very respectful individual,” the Democratic state senator José Menéndez said, eyeing Hughes. Hughes quickly replied, “You certainly are, too. Thank you.”

Since the January 6th insurrection, Republicans on the national level have been a little low on talking points and shock material. That is not the case in state legislatures and on cable television, where conservatives have been vigorously denouncing the influence of critical race theory, a scholarly movement ascendent during the nineties, the adherents of which argue that white supremacy is encoded in law and in the structure of American institutions. These conservatives have noticed that concepts used in critical race theory—“structural racism,” “internalized white supremacy”—have entered the mainstream, and in some cases have become part of corporate training or public-school education. A center-right policy journal has reported that third-grade students in Cupertino, California, are being asked to rank themselves according to their power and privilege, and that white male executives at Lockheed Martin, of all places, were asked to examine their racial and gender privileges. Like in Texas, conservatives in nearly a dozen other state legislatures have introduced bills with very similar language, with the apparent goal of keeping the idea of enduring structural racism as far from schools as possible.

In the Texas legislature on May 21st, Hughes presented as a case study a picture book called “Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness,” in which a white child, prompted by TV-news coverage of a police shooting, goes to the library stacks to find out about racial history. “Whiteness is a bad deal. It always was,” the child eventually concludes. The book, which was said to have been recommended by teachers in the Highland Park Independent School District, in Dallas, was held up by the bill’s supporters as proof that the legislation was necessary. “It’s horrible, horrible,” Hughes said. But, beneath the bluster, he seemed to be conceding quite a lot. Hughes opened his presentation by saying that he wanted to be direct about the American experience, and that, as glistening as the ideals in the founding documents had been, they had applied at first only to “white property-owning males.” However much those rights had since expanded, some Texans continued to experience unfairness that was “much worse and more invidious” than for others, he said, “and there’s no getting around that.”

Republicans hold a small advantage in the Texas Senate, so the bill’s passage was always likely, but for more than four hours Hughes moved patiently around the Senate floor, taking questions. The Democratic state senators, a majority of whom are Hispanic or Black, asked pointed questions about whether there was really any public demand for this legislation, and also more searching ones, about what would be accomplished by deemphasizing the cruel and unjust elements of the American experience. The bill, Hughes kept insisting, would not ask teachers to change how they taught the past—it wouldn’t affect lessons on slavery. It was only seeking teacher neutrality when it came to current events. The Democrats seemed basically to distrust this distinction.-urse, it does.”

The bill passed the Texas Senate 18–13, over the objections of the Texas A.F.T. And, although the Senate debate had for many liberals emphasized the conservative challenge to free speech, it wasn’t immediately obvious how the new law would affect the work of Texas teachers. August Plock, who teaches eleventh-grade U.S. history in the public schools in Pflugerville, outside of Austin, told me that, in the existing Texas curriculum, “we do a poor job of including minorities in teaching history,” Latinos especially. “We cover Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, and that’s about it.” There is nothing on the Zoot Suit Riots, he said, and little on the enduring struggles over immigration. But the bill, which requires teachers not to give special “deference” to any one side, seemed to Plock to be relatively easy to manage. In each of his classes, he said, a handful of students are deeply engaged in the material, and it doesn’t take much to draw out more critical perspectives. Plock said, of the conservative legislators, “They want to get out there thinking that these damn liberal schoolteachers are teaching stuff they disagree with. I’m sitting here looking at it and thinking, It really doesn’t impact me as a teacher, per se, because I teach [the Texas state curriculum].”

One reason might be that the emphasis in the text of the bills, in Texas and in other states, is often on insuring that white students not be made to feel racist, and that conservative ones not be made to feel isolated by their views. In Texas’s bill, after three short sections establishing that students can’t be required to receive academic credit by working for organizations also involved in lobbying, and that teachers can’t be required to attend training sessions that attribute “blame on the basis of race or sex,” there is a very long and telling section, which is present also in bills in other states. It prohibits teachers and administrators from suggesting that “an individual’s moral character, standing, or worth is necessarily determined by the individual’s race or sex.” It insists that no individual student should “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual’s race or sex.” It bans any teaching that “meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist.”

In Texas, the news coverage of the bill—which the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, is expected to sign—has focused on the idea that it will “ban critical race theory,” as one local news station put it. But the term “critical race theory” does not appear in the text. What it seeks to do, on closer reading, is establish a protective halo around white students, so that they do not hear that their success might have something to do with their race, or that the structures of racial power and privilege in the past also apply to the present. The bill doesn’t rewrite history in the way that the campaigns to protect Confederate memorialization have sometimes sought to. Instead, it tries to cleave off students from any feeling of historical responsibility—as if, with each generation, America were re-created, blameless and anew.

This notion—that a generation can arise purely in the context of its own experience rather than that of its parents or generations before them—recurs often in American politics, and especially right now. Increasingly, conservatism after Donald Trump has been defined by a fear that American society is on the verge of being displaced by a progressive reimagining, with woke politics and aggressive redistribution. Progressivism is defined by an equally urgent hope that it can, in fact, displace old patterns of ecological destruction and discrimination. It is interesting—and slightly ironic—that critical race theory, with its invocations of structural racism, should be so central to the policy debate right now: part of its teaching is that the patterns of American society can’t be easily dislodged by a change in manners, and that if you are snapping your fingers to make the past disappear you are only doing so in tandem with the rhythms of the past.

That is reason to think that the conflict over critical race theory might endure, even when the attention of Fox News inevitably drifts. The question of what children are held responsible for cuts deep, and the answer isn’t always determined by a person’s ideology or partisan identity. When I spoke with Terry Stoops, a conservative education-policy expert at the John Locke Foundation who had been appointed to a task force on “indoctrination” in public schools by the conservative lieutenant governor of North Carolina, he told me that he wasn’t sure how long the outrage of some grassroots conservatives would ultimately last. But he did think their anger had been misunderstood. “I’ve seen so much discussion about the fact that conservatives are advancing these critical-race-theory bills because they don’t want the truth of slavery or racism to be taught, and I haven’t seen that at all. I think parents want their children to learn about the mistakes of the past in order to create a better future,” Stoops said. “They don’t want their children to be told that they are responsible for the mistakes of their ancestors, and that unless they repent for those mistakes then they will remain complicit.” The debate isn’t about history, exactly. It is about the possibility of blamelessness.

What Do Conservatives Fear About Critical Race Theory?

In the Texas legislature, Republicans seemed willing to acknowledge systemic racism but resistant to the idea of talking about it with children.

www.newyorker.com

 

[Mello Mello]

And what do you know I’m Texas the very stare that tried to rewrite the history of slavery and erase the idea of slavery from their curriculum altogether.

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

What Is Critical Race Theory? Here's What to Know About the Intellectual Movement
BY CADY LANG
SEPTEMBER 29, 2020

During the first general election Presidential debate on Tuesday night, President Donald Trump was asked to explain his Administration’s directive to all federal agencies to stop anti-bias trainings that rely on critical race theory or address white privilege.

“I ended it because it’s racist. I ended it because a lot of people were complaining that they were asked to do things that were absolutely insane, that it was a radical revolution that was taking place in our military, in our schools, all over the place,” Trump said, though he did not directly answer moderator Chris Wallace’s question about whether he believes that systemic racism exists in the U.S. “We were paying people hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach very bad ideas and frankly, very sick ideas. And really, they were teaching people to hate our country, and I’m not going to allow that to happen.”

The directive to federal agencies wasn’t the only time Trump has taken aim at critical race theory. While speaking at the National Archives Museum for Constitution Day this month, President Trump denounced it as “toxic propaganda” that will “destroy our country.”

But what exactly is critical race theory? And why has it become a point of contention for the Trump Administration?
Priscilla Ocen, professor at the Loyola Law School, who spoke to TIME before the debate, says that Trump’s condemnation of critical race theory (CRT) is part of his larger approach of using racial division as a way to maintain power, but she believes he’s probably unaware of its scope as a framework and in scholarship.

“Critical race theory ultimately is calling for a society that is egalitarian, a society that is just, and a society that is inclusive, and in order to get there, we have to name the barriers to achieving a society that is inclusive,” Ocen says. “Our government at the moment is essentially afraid of addressing our history of inequality and if we can’t address it, then we can’t change it.”


What is critical race theory?

Critical race theory offers a way of seeing the world that helps people recognize the effects of historical racism in modern American life. The intellectual movement behind the idea was started by legal scholars as a way to examine how laws and systems uphold and perpetuate inequality for traditionally marginalized groups. In Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic’s book Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, they define the critical race theory movement as “a collection of activists and scholars interested in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power.”

Kimberlé Crenshaw, one of the founding scholars of CRT and the executive director and co-founder of the African American Policy Forum, says that critical race theory “is a practice—a way of seeing how the fiction of race has been transformed into concrete racial inequities.”

“It’s an approach to grappling with a history of white supremacy that rejects the belief that what’s in the past is in the past, and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it,” Crenshaw told TIME in an email.

While critical race theory was initially conceived as a framework specifically for understanding the relationship between race and American law, it’s also provided a way to consider how other marginalized identities—such as gender, sexuality, sexual orientation, class, and disability—are overlooked.

“What critical race theory has done is lift up the racial gaze of America,” says John Powell, the director of the Othering & Belonging Institute at the UC Berkeley. “It doesn’t stay within law, it basically says ‘look critically at any text or perspective and try to understand different perspectives that are sometimes drowned out.'”

Who came up with the idea?

The critical race theory movement officially came into being at a 1989 workshop led by Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda and Stephanie Phillips at the St. Benedict Center in Madison, Wis.—but the ideas behind the movement had been brewing for years by that point.

In the 1970s, a group of legal scholars and activists developed the theory, building on the work of movements like critical legal theory and radical feminism. Civil rights lawyer Derrick Bell, who was the first tenured Black professor at Harvard Law School, is often credited as the “father of critical race theory”; his 1980 Harvard Law Review article “Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma,” is often cited as an integral piece in starting conversations about the critical race theory movement. Other founding scholars of CRT include Richard Delgado, Allan Freeman, Patricia Williams, Mari Matsuda and Crenshaw, who also coined the term intersectionality, which explains how different facets of identity like race and gender can “intersect” with one another.

“[Early] CRT theorists identified the significant role that law played not only in facilitating civil rights reforms, but also in establishing the very practices of exclusion and disadvantage that the civil rights movement was designed to dismantle,” Crenshaw explains. “Racial discrimination, segregation, [anti-miscegenation rules] and many more practices were lawful practices right up until the day they weren’t, creating disadvantages and privileges that continue to live throughout our society right up to the present day.”

How has critical race theory been applied?

Critical race theory has been used to examine how institutional racism manifests in instances like housing segregation, bank lending, discriminatory labor practices and access to education. It has also helped to develop themes and language to address racism and inequality, such as white privilege, intersectionality and microaggressions, among others.

Here’s a specific current example: consider the fact that a disproportionate amount of people from Black and Latinx communities are being impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the CDC, Black and Latinx people are twice as likely die from the virus as white people. A person considering that stat in a vacuum might assume that genetic or biological factors are to blame—a false conclusion that insinuates that there is something inherently wrong with Black and Latinx bodies. However, a person applying a critical race theory framework to this issue would also ask how historical racism—which manifests today in everything from access to clean air to treatment by medical professionals—might be influencing this statistic, and would thus arrive at a much more complete and nuanced explanation.

Why is the Trump Administration denouncing critical race theory?

In his speech at the National Archives Museum, the President posited that using critical race theory as a framework to consider the history of the U.S., including its use of slave labor, encourages “deceptions, falsehoods and lies” by the “left-wing cultural revolution.”

“Students in our universities are inundated with critical race theory,” he said. “This is a Marxist doctrine holding that America is a wicked and racist nation, that even young children are complicit in oppression, and that our entire society must be radically transformed. Critical race theory is being forced into our children’s schools, it’s being imposed into workplace trainings, and it’s being deployed to rip apart friends, neighbors, and families.”

Scholars who work with CRT, however, say it has become an indispensable and widely accepted tool for properly understanding the state of the nation—but they’re not surprised by Trump’s attitude toward it.

“I think this is another part of the general approach that Donald Trump is taking to campaign to try and separate and divide folks along racial lines and to try to create division instead of really addressing what our core issues are in our nation,” says Ocen, who also notes that President Barack Obama’s relationship with Derrick Bell was weaponized in previous campaigns against Obama.

What has the reaction been to Trump’s comments?

Following the memo from the Office of Management and Budget, American Association of University Professors president Irene Mulvey released a statement that called on faculty and administrators to “condemn this ban” on critical race theory.

“Critical race theory represents an important body of such expertise and President Trump’s recent attack on it is a naked attempt to politicize our national reckoning with racism and a new escalation in the assault on expert knowledge,” Mulvey wrote.

Meanwhile, many scholars have taken to their social media accounts to voice their concerns and opinions over Trump’s attempt to censure critical race theory.


Minister and activist Bernice King, a daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., also weighed in with her thoughts on Trump’s attempt to stop the application of critical race theory.




The influence of CRT on academic thought in the last few decades has been so thorough, many say, that it would be effectively impossible to stop its use, even if the words “critical race theory” don’t come up. But, Crenshaw argues, that doesn’t mean Trump’s attempt to shut it down isn’t worth thinking about.

“The question now with Trump’s efforts to censor anti-racism is, what story will we as a society be permitted to tell about what 2020 has revealed about our country?” she says. “What we are allowed to officially see and tell will shape what is within our societal reach to address.”

What Is Critical Race Theory?

Here's what you need to know

time.com

 

[MisterT]

THIS VIDEO IS GOLD!! THIS MADE MY DAY.......... LOL

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

THIS VIDEO IS GOLD!! THIS MADE MY DAY.......... LOL

Well, save this one for your tomorrow:






CJ sounded like he was running for office, uninformed and afraid to show his ignorance.

 

[HAR125LEM]

This shit has become beyond stupid now.
All this faux-controversy about "CRT" can be easily summed up in one sentence...

WHITE PEOPLE NOT WANTING TO KNOW THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH ABOUT THEMSELVES!

Another pure example of White folks creating a Racial Dog Whistle.

I wish I had spoken to Derrick Bell about this when I interviewed him during my radio gig decades ago.
Instead, WE were most focused on his book at the time, "FACES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL" and Brown Vs BOE.

These Right-Wing (along with White Liberals folks are sickening with their shit.

Sorry.
It's early Saturday Morning.

 

[ORIGINAL NATION]

The real race issuess is who was here first? Who built the pyramids and drove ufo"s and still driving to this day.
How and why did whites cover and are still covering it up

 

[Rah]

I see this is the new wave; Republicans are looking to ban CRT in West Point also. I don’t think West Point will cave. I think senior military leaders acknowledge in this current operational environment racism is a threat to national security.

House Republican demands West Point cease critical race theory trainings to military cadets

Republican Rep. Mike Waltz is demanding that U.S. Military Academy West Point stop teaching cadets critical race theory, calling the teachings "divisive," "destructive," and "unacceptable" for the future leaders of the U.S. military.

www.foxnews.com

 

[black again]

Well, save this one for your tomorrow:






CJ sounded like he was running for office, uninformed and afraid to show his ignorance.

This is typical of your everyday interaction on the board..

One person is well-versed on a subject and one person knows little to nothing...yet they'll argue you down

It takes a special kinda ignorance to debate stuff you aren't familiar with.

 

[respiration]

THIS VIDEO IS GOLD!! THIS MADE MY DAY.......... LOL

I always wondered what it would look like if Mark lost his shit.

This Brotha specifically called Vernon an Uncle Tom, a handkerchief head, a Sambo, a shine and a hambone without actually calling him any of those.
...And did it after exposing him as the uninformed hoe ass imbecile he is.

Priceless! LMAO

 

[peterlongshort]

Fuck this shit. If our kids are gonna have a chance they have to learn how to code. They not teaching CRT in China

 

[geechiedan]

Fuck this shit. If our kids are gonna have a chance they have to learn how to code. They not teaching CRT in China

dude theres all kinds of ethnic cleansing/oppression shit happening in china...

 

[respiration]

dude theres all kinds of ethnic cleansing/oppression shit happening in china...

Man, don't even dignify his uninformed off topic deflection shit.

 

[Dr. Truth]

Well, save this one for your tomorrow:






CJ sounded like he was running for office, uninformed and afraid to show his ignorance.

Lmbaooooooooooo!!!!!!! Mark needs to stop having these BGOL coons on his show

 

[xfactor]

Lmbaooooooooooo!!!!!!! Mark needs to stop having these BGOL coons on his show

You haven’t been invited yet so he isn’t. You believe in abolishing it as well because you are a pro-white / globalist but your dumb ass can’t see it. Dumbest doctor on the planet

 

[xfactor]

dude theres all kinds of ethnic cleansing/oppression shit happening in china...

ethnicity =\= race

 

[Dr. Truth]

You are ignoring content by this member

Must be my Stan XCactor the stiff jipper cracka

 

[geechiedan]

ethnicity =\= race

tell that to the people being killed and persecuted..

 

[peterlongshort]

dude theres all kinds of ethnic cleansing/oppression shit happening in china...

They are not using class hours teaching valueless skills. A one hour class on coding 5 days a week teaches a child more than a one hour class on racism 5 days a week.

 

[geechiedan]

They are not using class hours teaching valueless skills. A one hour class on coding 5 days a week teaches a child more than a one hour class on racism 5 days a week.

homie I get what youre saying and coding and other stem/marketable skills are important...but the US, China, Israel, and countries in Central/South America and Africa are going to come to a reckoning on all the bullshit that's gone/going down and I guarantee you when that happens..coding is gonna be the last thing on anyone's mind.

 

[phanatic]

Well, save this one for your tomorrow:






CJ sounded like he was running for office, uninformed and afraid to show his ignorance.

Learning about black history would help more black people. Learning about civil rights made me appreciate what my grandparents went through to get us equality.

 

[shaddyvillethug]

You gatta be shitting me

 

[phanatic]

This is typical of your everyday interaction on the board..

One person is well-versed on a subject and one person knows little to nothing...yet they'll argue you down

It takes a special kinda ignorance to debate stuff you aren't familiar with.

You mean the person that works at the sardine factory doesn't know more about health and medicine than a medical doctor that spent decades in their fields? Nooooo.

 

[phanatic]

They are not using class hours teaching valueless skills. A one hour class on coding 5 days a week teaches a child more than a one hour class on racism 5 days a week.

Can't they take both classes?

 

[phanatic]

Well, save this one for your tomorrow:






CJ sounded like he was running for office, uninformed and afraid to show his ignorance.

Did y'all catch the anti-intellectualism jabs? "Waving around your PhD?"

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

Did y'all catch the anti-intellectualism jabs? "Waving around your PhD?"

That's why I said he sounded like a politician. Attack the other person's intelligence to deflect from your stupidity. "I can't name one book on the topic so fuck you and your ivory tower." It really was sad-- He could have admitted he hadn't actually read the 1619 Project and that would be fine since it isn't the whole of CRT. But this motherfucker just side-stepped the simple question and apparently assumed everyone in the audience was too dumb to comprehend what he was doing.

 

[phanatic]

That's why I said he sounded like a politician. Attack the other person's intelligence to deflect from your stupidity. "I can't name one book on the topic so fuck you and your ivory tower." It really was sad-- He could have admitted he hadn't actually read the 1619 Project and that would be fine since it isn't the whole of CRT. But this motherfucker just side-stepped the simple question and apparently assumed everyone in the audience was too dumb to comprehend what he was doing.

Black conservatives don't speak to black people, they speak to dumb white people. As diverse as we are, black folk know when someone is running game, that's why when we get invited somewhere, we always ask "who is going to be there?". We want details, and we get wary when someone won't answer some shit, because we know that it'll be your own people trying to set you up.

 

[boodahblaze]

This shit has become beyond stupid now.
All this faux-controversy about "CRT" can be easily summed up in one sentence...

WHITE PEOPLE NOT WANTING TO KNOW THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH ABOUT THEMSELVES!

Another pure example of White folks creating a Racial Dog Whistle.

I wish I had spoken to Derrick Bell about this when I interviewed him during my radio gig decades ago.
Instead, WE were most focused on his book at the time, "FACES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL" and Brown Vs BOE.

These Right-Wing (along with White Liberals folks are sickening with their shit.

Sorry.
It's early Saturday Morning.

I disagree. It's not that they do not want to know the truth. That's not what is of concern. What is of top importance is their current stronghold on power and loss of said power.

 

[boodahblaze]

They are not using class hours teaching valueless skills. A one hour class on coding 5 days a week teaches a child more than a one hour class on racism 5 days a week.

Except when said child is not paid equitable for better code or denied advancement, or fill in the blank. Knowing to code is not sufficient.

 

[cold-n-cocky]

Well, save this one for your tomorrow:






CJ sounded like he was running for office, uninformed and afraid to show his ignorance.

Lil buddy’s hairline is running away from his forehead and he doesn’t have the head to rock a baldy; that Sherman Helmsley look is going to go over great for a “black” man in his 20s lol.

 

[Pworld297]

This is typical of your everyday interaction on the board..

One person is well-versed on a subject and one person knows little to nothing...yet they'll argue you down

It takes a special kinda ignorance to debate stuff you aren't familiar with.

It's unbelievable bruh, I'll never debate someone about an issue I've never read before.

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

It's unbelievable bruh, I'll never debate someone about an issue I've never read before.

I think it is okay to have simply read about it! That's the crazy thing- You don't have to be an expert in critical race theory to offer an opinion on whether it should be taught. You do have to have a basic understanding of what it is. I have never read any of the foundational texts mentioned in the articles I posted but I've read enough descriptions and commentaries to get the gist. CJ Pearson has not even done that. And it's because he is entirely ignorant that he is evasive about the particulars of his knowledge.

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

I think it is okay to have simply read about it! That's the crazy thing- You don't have to be an expert in critical race theory to offer an opinion on whether it should be taught. You do have to have a basic understanding of what it is. I have never read any of the foundational texts mentioned in the articles I posted but I've read enough descriptions and commentaries to get the gist. CJ Pearson has not even done that. And it's because he is entirely ignorant that he is evasive about the particulars of his knowledge.

Because this conversation is based so much in fearmongering, a key fact that gets lost is CRITICAL RACE THEORY IS NOT ACTUALLY BEING TAUGHT IN K-12 SCHOOLS!!!

This is much like the Republican campaign against transgender athletes-- It is a culture war boogeyman fighting a non-existent enemy. (There are like two in the whole country but suddenly this is a priority in every state.) They want people to believe the left / Democrats want to teach white kids to hate themselves, they have boys dominating girls sports, they are taking away your guns, etc. None of this is actually happening but that's the strawman caricature they want to present on FOX News and OAN.

A national debate over critical race theory has surfaced in Kansas, after a state legislator requested information on whether it was being taught in classes at the state's public universities.​

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The attention on the controversial teaching framework comes as conservatives nationally have taken aim at the practice. Legislators in more than a dozen states have taken steps to ban CRT in K-12 education, arguing it is un-American and fans the flames of racial tension.​

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Scholars, meanwhile, say the practice has been used for decades and merely probes the ways in which racism has become embedded in societal and cultural structures.​

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Kansas became the latest flashpoint for this debate Thursday, when social media posts showed leaked emails where a Pittsburg State administrator requested information on whether critical race theory was being used in the university's classes. ...​

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Is critical race theory taught in Kansas?​

There is no evidence critical race theory is being taught in K-12 classrooms in the state.​

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At a higher education level, the emails sent to Pittsburg State ask professors a simple "yes" or "no" question as to whether courses involve the practice and the message doesn't define what critical race theory is. It is unclear how many courses meet that criteria, although the University of Kansas said there was at least one class that involved CRT.​

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Kansas House Education Committee Chair Steve Huebert, R-Valley Center, said he reached out to school districts earlier this year asking if any had used curriculum in their teaching based on the 1619 Project, a New York Times report "placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center" of U.S. history.​

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Huebert said the response indicated any teaching of the 1619 Project, or critical race theory more broadly, was at the initiative of individual teachers, rather than being part of a broader curriculum.​

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"As far as school districts at the local level, embracing and making it a part of the curriculum being used in any school in Kansas, there was no evidence of that happening," Huebert said.​

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The debate over critical race theory has cropped up in Kansas. Here's what you need to know.

A state legislator inquired whether critical race theory is being taught at the state's public universities, bringing the a national debate to Kansas.

www.cjonline.com

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State Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman is speaking out against the concept. In a recent Facebook post, she said CRT has no place in South Carolina schools and classrooms. In the same post, she wrote public schools will focus on the state and country’s history; teaching the truth about the good and bad.​

Hundreds of South Carolinians commented on Spearman's post. Supporters of CRT say it's critical to teach young children the truth of racism in America. Those opposed to the concept wrote they think it's inappropriate to teach young children.​

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The Department of Educations told News19 Spearman’s statement is in response to a nationwide effort to determine how historical racism should be taught in schools.​

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South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster said Monday he agrees with Spearman. "That is certainly not necessary for the education of young people 4-years-old all the way through high school," said McMaster.​

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High school government teacher Patrick Kelly said to News19 that despite all the debate, it’s important to know, CRT is not taught in schools in the Palmetto State.​

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"I think that this is another illustration of why policymakers need to talk to educators in the classroom before they start legislating on issues of curriculum, on issues that directly impact the classroom," Kelly said.​

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He added that many lawmakers make assumptions of what's happening in schools without ever actually asking. "A lot of those [assumptions] are misguided and misinformed because they haven't talked to the people that are in the classroom doing the work every day," Kelly said.​

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State leaders against teaching "critical race theory" in schools

The concept on racism comes from higher education, but some fear it may make its way into grade-level schools.

www.wltx.com

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PolitiFact: Is it used in the classroom, and how do you know when it is?​

Opponents of critical race theory suggest that the theory is pervasive, but that’s proven hard to pin down.​

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In Tennessee, press reports said that supporters of a bill to ban critical race theory didn’t cite examples from particular schools.​

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As Arkansas lawmakers debated a similar bill, the focus on local schools fell away, and the bill that passed only restricted state agencies. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson allowed it to become law without his signature, saying it “does not address any problem that exists.”​

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Elements of a race-conscious approach can appear in education policies, but not as part of a full package of critical race theory.​

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The Illinois’ State Board of Education has guidelines for teachers that say they should “understand that systems in our society create and reinforce inequities,” and “be aware of the effects of power and privilege.” Those ideas fit under the broad umbrella of critical race theory, but they would fit just as well under any approach to social studies that applied a realistic lens to current problems in America.​

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University of Missouri education professor LaGarrett King said the problem is blown out of proportion.​

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“The majority of teachers are not even familiar with what critical race theory is, nor do they teach it in their classrooms,” King said.​

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King and his colleagues have worked on study plans to help high school teachers get at tough issues, including slavery and economic inequality. None mention critical race theory itself, but some draw on the idea of systemic racism.​

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“It’s a lens, but it’s just one of the things taught in that class,” King said. “It doesn’t define the whole curriculum.”​

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What is critical race theory, and why are conservatives blocking it?

PolitiFact | Gov. DeSantis banned teaching it in K-12 in March, but is it taught in schools?

www.tampabay.com

 

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Except when said child is not paid equitable for better code or denied advancement, or fill in the blank. Knowing to code is not sufficient.

Knowing the code is survival.