Theory falsely used to stoke fear
Unbelievably, people are still talking about Critical Race Theory. This once obscure academic study has been catapulted into the limelight as far-right activists attempt to cast it as the gravest current threat to our democracy. Politicians and pundits have brought out words like, “Marxist,” “indoctrination,” and even resorted to comparing it to the rise of Hitler.
A small but predictably loud minority is demanding that public schools stop teaching CRT to our children for the spurious reason that doing so is teaching them to be racists, to hate America and themselves, and is turning our children into Marxists (whatever that means).
Public school administrators across our region have spent the last few months pointing out that they have never taught this graduate level material to our primary and secondary students, but these anti-CRT activists have not accepted this reality, in spite of the fact that public school curricula are, unsurprisingly, publicly available for anyone’s perusal.
What most school systems in our area do have is a DEI program (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). These programs are designed to create school environments that are free of racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination. Most districts try to accomplish this through staff training, by embracing diverse perspectives, and by teaching a factual curriculum that addresses our complicated and imperfect history.
The statistics on opportunity and race are so clear that no one really doubts whether 345 years of legal discrimination could have left some systems in place that advantage one group over another. This is no less the case in education. DEI programs are designed to take a hard look at curricular, institutional, and social aspects of our public schools and create evidencebased and measurable ways to achieve equity, and this equity benefits all students.
Conflating equity programs with CRT is problematic on its own, but semantics aside, teaching our children about racism will not turn them into racists any more than being taught about the Holocaust has turned other generations of Americans into Nazis.
The very suggestion is complete argle bargle.
However, these extremists are undaunted by facts because while they are wrong, they are not mistaken. Quite the opposite: they are intentionally confusing CRT and DEI to support a political platform that few support. It is no coincidence that at several recent regional school board meetings where CRT was discussed, community members supporting existing DEI programs significantly outnumbered those opposing non-existent CRT programs.
It is difficult to see the imminent danger posed by the study of history through the eyes not only of those who have traditionally penned these texts, but also through the eyes of those whose contributions to the creation of our country and our national identity were essential even while their contributions to its written record have been marginalized.
If you cherish our freedom of speech, then you can have no argument with a curriculum that allows many voices to tell our history. If you value our national experiment as the most diverse nation in history — the largest demonstration the world has that not only can different people coexist, but thrive — then you should cherish the opportunity for our students to hear all sides of our story.
That the long arc of history bends towards justice is not by accident or because of some immutable law of the universe. It is because those before us have bent it and now it is our privilege to put ourselves to the task of bringing it ever closer. This is one of the moments when you can choose on which side of history you will be.
History has shown us many times that the correct side, the side of justice, has never been the side that squelches other voices for fear of upsetting those in power.