Teaching about race is good: States need to stop banning it.
Neither white students nor students of color benefit from laws that censor history, critical thinking and open dialogue in the classroom.
Commentary by Ian Wright | OtherWords.org
In this back to school season, millions of American students are returning to classrooms where the wrong course, lesson or textbook can lead to deep trouble. Why? Because for the last several years, conservative activists and lawmakers have been waging a crusade against “critical race theory,” or CRT.
Critical race theory is an academic concept acknowledging that racism isn’t simply the result of individual prejudice but is also embedded in our institutions through laws, regulations and rules.
As school districts have emphasized, it’s a higher education concept rarely taught in K-12 schools. But cynical activists have used CRT as a catch-all term to target a broad range of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives — and seemingly any discussion about race and racism in the classroom.
Anti-CRT bills in U.S.
Since January 2021, 44 states have “introduced bills or taken other steps that would restrict teaching critical race theory or limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism,” according to Education Weekly. And as of this writing, UCLA has identified 807 anti-CRT “bills, resolutions, executive orders, opinion letters, statements and other measures” since September 2020.
Critics claim — falsely — that CRT teaches that all white people are oppressors, while Black people are simply oppressed victims. Many opponents claim it teaches white students to “hate their own race,” or to feel guilty about events that happened before they were born.
In reality, CRT gives students of every race the tools to understand how our institutions treat people of different races unequally — and how we can make those systems fairer. That’s learning students of every race would be better off with.
But instead, this barrage of draconian legislation is having a chilling effect on speech in the classroom.
In 2022, Florida passed the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act,” which prohibits teaching that could lead to a student feeling “discomfort” because of their race, sex or nationality. But the law’s vague language makes it difficult for educators to determine what they can or cannot teach, ultimately restricting classroom instruction. In my home state of Texas, SB3 similarly restricts these classroom discussions.
Running afoul of these laws can get teachers and school administrators in trouble. As a result of this hostile environment, the RAND Corporation found that two-thirds of K-12 school teachers have decided “to limit instruction about political and social issues in the classroom.”
Notably, this self-censorship extends beyond states with such policies: 55 percent of teachers without state or local restrictions on CRT have still decided to limit classroom discussions of race and history.
Censoring history
As a student, I find this distressing.
My high school history classes gave me a much richer understanding of race in our history, especially the discussions we had at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests. And in college, I’ve gotten to learn about racial inequalities in everything from housing and real estate to health care, politics, education and immigration policy.
As a person of color, I can’t imagine where I’d be without this understanding. Neither white students nor students of color will benefit from laws designed to censor their understanding of history, critical thinking and open dialogue in the classroom.
The fight against CRT is a fight against the principles of education that encourage us to question, learn and grow. Rather than shielding students from uncomfortable truths, which they can certainly handle, we should seek to equip them with the knowledge to navigate the world, think critically about our history and institutions, and push for a more inclusive country.
Ian Wright is a Henry A. Wallace Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and a student at Rice University from Dallas, Texas. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News. FāVS News values diverse perspectives and thoughtful analysis on matters of faith and spirituality.
To the victor goes the history. Every society creates their own culture around a narrative that exalts them and puts “the other” down. Honesty is hard for the proud. That is why I like the Bible: it is honest and describes humanity in its rawest forms, evil, corrupt, selfish, sinful.
We do not like to hear that. We want to think of ourselves as noble, honorable, generous and kind. But that is against our base human nature of “me first”. We will do and be those things IF it is what benefits us. OR unless God changes our heart, our default human nature, to His nature of selflessness, “others first”.
To do so requires us to give up our goals, dreams, desires, relationships, everything we are and everything we have and give it to Him. He will then cleans and change our heart and make us in His own likeness, making us into what He created us to be.