Teach critical race theory, American exceptionalism

The Tennessee legislature has banned the teaching in public schools of something called “critical race theory.” The governor and legislative leaders have said that what Tennessee school students should be taught is “American exceptionalism.”

But in honest and meaningful public education, critical race theory and American exceptionalism should both be taught. They are actually parts of the same story of American history, and it is not possible to really understand our history without studying both.

Critical race theory is based on the idea that systematic racism has been prevalent throughout much of our nation's history. It is hard to argue with that.

Our nation was founded in 1776 with a declaration that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights” including life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Yet even as this Declaration was made, our new nation was committing the “original sin” of slavery, denying liberty to an estimated 700,000 African Americans, and that number would grow to over 5 million by 1860.

When the Constitution was adopted 13 years later, the Founding Fathers not only rejected efforts to end slavery, but agreed to count such African Americans as only three-fifths of a person in determining a state's population.

The sin of slavery continued for over 70 years, and was legally ended only after a civil war and the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. But the nation's systematic racism did not end there. It was followed by another hundred years of forced segregation through the enactment of Jim Crow laws denying African Americans equal access to use public schools, transportation, and even water fountains and restrooms.

I grew up in Memphis in the 1950s, nearly 100 years after slavery was outlawed, and yet I remember “colored” restrooms, water fountains and entrances to theaters.

While the United States Supreme Court declared “separate but equal” schools unlawful in 1956, I attended segregated public schools in Memphis from 1958 to 1970.

Even worse, from the 1880s all the way through the 1960s, nearly 5,000 African Americans were the victims of lynch mobs.

This is a history of systematic racism, and to deny it is to deny history.

American exceptionalism is based on the idea that the United States of America is a unique nation in the history of the world, and that no other nation has worked harder and accomplished more for freedom and liberty. That is unquestionably true. Tennessee public school students should be taught it and be proud of it.

But the history of systematic racism in our nation, how we have responded to it, and still strive to do so is the story of American exceptionalism. Exceptional Americans include Abraham Lincoln, Booker T. Washington, Ida Wells, Martin Luther King Jr. and Thurgood Marshall, and more recently Colin Powell and John Lewis. Exceptional American stories include Brown v. Board of Education, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act.

Tennessee public school students should be taught that America is indeed an exceptional nation. Students can only truly understand how exceptional our nation is if they are also taught about our “original sin” of slavery, the continuing sin of racism, and how we have sought and still strive to address it.

It is in fact the American story.