How Removing Critical Race Theory From Schools Is Dumbing Down America
It doesn't make any sense.
Mike Albright Photography / Shutterstock.com Mid-term election season has started and with that comes even more political divisiveness among citizens of the United States — including parents with children in school.
In recent years, GOP pundits and supporters have been trying to move away from teaching Critical Race Theory in schools — especially in Grades K-12.
The only problem is, some people don’t even know what that means.
Critical race theory isn’t a curriculum. It isn’t a book, it isn’t a subject — it’s simply a concept that has been around for over 40 years.
The core tenets of the concept are to interrogate the role of race and racism in society and includes critiques on the social construction of the concept of “race” and how it was manipulated to create a caste system in which people of color were systemically forced to the bottom of the totem pole.
What's so wrong with Critical Race Theory?
The problem for some people is that they believe it targets white people in some sort of reverse racism that explains what white privilege is and how everyone who wasn’t white was oppressed — so basically the truth.
Instead of taking their issues with CRT and challening it into an open and honest conversation about race and racism in America, Republicans are suggesting we push the whole thing under the carpet and pretend as if racism has never existed.
Some Virginia voters are voting to remove CRT from schools.
Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin had some choice words to say about the concept and why he vowed to do away with the concept in schools.
"[I]n the immortal words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we're called to judge one another based on the content of our character and not the color of our skin," Youngkin said in an interview with Fox. "And that's why there's no place for critical race theory in our school system, and why, on day one, I'm going to ban it."
Youngkin believes that it’s wrong to teach critical race theory, that it “teaches children to see everything through a lens of race and then to divide them into buckets and have children [who] are called privileged and others [who] are victims."
The other problem lies with the fact that nobody actually knows what critical race theory is or even means — they just hear their political party representatives say it’s a bad thing and jump on the bandwagon.
On Monday, a two-man comedy act named The Good Liars posted a video to Twitter where they asked a Virginia voter what the most important issue in the gubernatorial race was.
"Getting back to the basics of teaching children, not teaching them critical race theory," he responds. Upon being asked what critical race theory was, he responded unintelligibly.
"I'm not going to get into the specifics of it because I don't understand it that much but it's something — what little bit I know — I don't care for," he responds.
The interviewer, of course, presses further to see whether he really knows anything about it at all, to which he responds: "I don't have that much knowledge on it but it's something that I don't care for."
Clearly, it’s not something that he cares much for if he doesn’t know anything about it, despite him saying it’s the most important issue in the election right now.
Removing Critical Race Theory means ignoring American history.
This is the sad reality that a lot of school districts around the country are dealing with similar problems — a fight against teaching the history of the United States.
None of these anti-CRT critics have suggested an alternative framework in which to teach children about racism. Probably because they haven't even bothered to research it themselves!
Earlier this week during a town hall meeting in Douglas County, Nevada, parents were expressing their outrage against the critical race theory concept.
"I don't know about you, but I don't want Marxist blood in this country," said Bob Russo, a concerned resident.
"I'm concerned about kids being taught theories, ideologies that are going to divide them and set them apart from each other," Russo said to CNN in an interview. "I'm concerned about our freedom."
“‘Who’s the oppressor?’ I am because I am white,” said another outraged parent. “That’s what’s being taught. It’s getting in the hands of kids, and it’s sick.”
“CRT is cancel culture,” said a concerned mother. The only problem is, CRT is not being taught in any of the Douglas County schools.
But it doesn’t matter to them, just like it didn’t matter to that Virginia voter, and just like it doesn’t matter to the GOP who are against it in order to push their own agenda.
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Follow him on Twitter here.