The above map reflects the status of anti- “critical race theory” (CRT) laws across the United States as of this summer. It is clear, particularly after the narrow recent victory of successful Virginia GOP Governor-elect, Glenn Youngkin, that the embrace of the “culture war” mantra by the Republican Party may just resonate with enough voters to make a difference in the upcoming mid-terms and even in the 2024 presidential election. It is equally clear that most Republicans who decry CRT are not particularly clear what that concept even means. See my recent OK, OK, It’s Really Bad… But What is It? blog for specifics. Yet the anti-CRT theme has become the overriding cornerstone, over and above the “stop cancel culture” tide, in the minds of those GOP culture warriors. They cast their battle as an effort to improve education, but the resulting forced distorted censorship seems to produce just the opposite effect. And then there is blue state backlash.
Just as it is impossible for a German high school student to graduate without a mandatory school trip to a WWII concentration camp restored and embellished with artifacts and horrific photographs, a “never again” mea culpa to the Holocaust, California is committed to make sure its high school students know and understand where oppression has defined American and California history. The notion is simple: if you tell the truth and actually show the injustices and horrors of past racial, ethnic and religious highly discriminatory realities, there will be fewer of such attitudes and practices in the future. That’s a tall order for a nation where polls show that at least half of US adults adhere to at least one factually unsupportable conspiracy theory.
Writing for the November 11th Los Angeles Times, Melissa Gomez explores a new mandate that will require an ethnic studies class as a condition for graduation from a California high school by 2030. “At a time when schools throughout the country are under siege for how race and history are taught — with at least 12 states passing legislation to limit the discourse — California is barreling in the opposite direction, the first state to mandate a high school ethnic studies course. The California law envisions a class designed to help students understand the historic and ongoing struggles of marginalized people — Black, Latino, Asian, Indigenous Americans and others.
“But ethnic studies courses have been dragged into political attacks by conservatives and right-wing activists against critical race theory, an academic framework used mainly in universities that examines how race and racism are embedded in American institutions, policies and law. Ethnic studies in California high school classrooms encourages students to think more broadly about history by considering the perspectives of other groups, races and cultures.
“The state law allows school districts to design courses that are particularly relevant to their communities. For instance, a high school in East Los Angeles may delve deeply into the Chicano movement while in Glendale, schools could decide to examine the Armenian immigrant experience… Yet, in California, too, activists have invaded school board meetings — often in communities outside their own — to protest ethnic studies curricula in Los Alamitos, Placentia-Yorba Linda, Tustin and Paso Robles.”
Scratch the surface of these anti-CRT protests, and there is a clear white underbelly of racial bias. An unequivocal reflection of the historical precedents set out in my October 26th An Underlying Notion of Superiority blog. Some communities focus on local cultural awareness with less of an emphasis on injustice, while other California school districts have more searching approaches. Topics like “settler colonialism” and “the hallmarks of oppression” are open for discussion. But there does seem to be a tempering among teachers who structure and present the courses that create “an environment without judgment, one where students are learning as much about their own cultural roots as those of others.” Gomez.
The GOP fear of teachers’ proselytizing Marxism and Communism as superior to our American form of government or casting the United States as the pariah scapegoat with all that is wrong with the nation (and the world) seems to have little real-world evidence, even as enraged GOP candidates need to fabricate such instances to make their point. Evidence from that recent gubernatorial election in Virginia suggests that the less education a voter has, the more likely that voter is to buy into this GOP posture.
Could book burning be far behind? On November 10th, Texas Governor Greg Abbott “wrote a letter directing the state education agency, library and board of education to create standards ‘to ensure no child is exposed to pornography or other inappropriate content in a Texas public school.’ Earlier this month, Abbott wrote to the Texas Assn. of School Boards, demanding they ‘shield children from pornography and other inappropriate content.’” LA Times, November 11th. Abbott launched a criminal investigation into such library material. The Governor cited the presence of LGBTQ characters in a high school library book as one example of inappropriate content. Texas is one of the states with the most far-reaching anti-CRT laws in the country.
When I watch GOP candidates raise their voices in angry condemnation of those they believe are teaching anti-American CRT theory, I am reminded of the infamous 1925 Tennessee vs Scopes (the “Monkey Trial). “[H]igh school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he incriminated himself deliberately so the case could have a defendant… Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 (equivalent to $1,500 in 2020), but the verdict was overturned on a technicality.” Wikipedia. It was “God’s word” vs. science. We laugh at that simplistic case today, but the anti-CRT movement proves that Scopes-like school censorship is still alive and well in the United States today.
I’m Peter Dekom, and we are watching a sad but growing tendency to condemn truth, support mythology, reject minorities and embrace an anti-science based “reality,” which has now found its way as a formal process to produce future voters who will be completely blind to so many highly relevant truths.
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