TAKING ’EM TO SCHOOL
Fla. ma rips ‘theory’
A black mother blasted critical race theory as racist during a meeting of Florida’s state Board of Education, arguing that it was valid only if “you believe that whites are better than blacks.”
“That is not teaching the truth,” Keisha King told the board in Jacksonville on Thursday, “unless you believe that whites are better than blacks.”
The Duval County mother of two argued that it was racist to divide people into “oppressors” and “oppressed.”
“Just coming off of May 31, marking the 100 years [since] the Tulsa riots, it is sad that we are even contemplating something like critical race theory, where children will be separated by their skin color and deemed permanently oppressors or oppressed in 2021,” King said in her remarks, a video of which was shared online(above).
“Telling my child or any child that they are in a permanent oppressed status in America because they are black is racist,” she added, “and saying that white people are automatically above me, my children, or any child is racist, as well.”
King’s remarks came on the same day that Gov. Ron DeSantis successfully lobbied the board to block critical race theory from schools.
Speaking to the board, King said that she had two children — one in private school and another in Duval County Public Schools — and that she was representing the advocacy group Moms for Liberty.
Critical race theory views racism as a social construct that is systemically ingrained and which perpetuates racial inequities. Its opponents argue it is a narrative that furthers racial divisions.
In lobbying for a ban, DeSantis said the theory tells kids that “the country is rotten and that our institutions are illegitimate.”
Later Thursday, the Board of Education unanimously passed an amendment to ban subjects that “distort historical events” in schools — including CRT, the 1619 Project and any lessons that downplay or deny the Holocaust.
About two dozen people protested the decision in Jacksonville on Thursday, chanting, “Allow teachers to tell the truth!”