Critical Race Theory Hits the Campaign Trail

Parents and activists are running for local school boards on anti-CRT platforms. News outlets on the left are doing everything they can to smear them.

Summary

Critical race theory remains a hot topic on the local level, including in North Carolina where one school system superintendent had to reiterate to parents and concerned citizens that CRT is not part of their curriculum.

• One local history teacher in Nebraska felt the need to speak up in defense of teaching American history, incorrectly conflating the banning of critical race theory with banning lessons on slavery and segregation.*
• In blue state Minnesota, the Wrenshall School District voted to not teach CRT and follow the Minnesota Department of Education’s standards and requirements.
• The power of anti-CRT activism, typically reserved at the local level, is breaking through to national elections, with right-leaning Congressional Leadership Fund targeting Democrat Congressional representatives in three states for “indoctrinating kids by putting extreme politics in the classroom.”

• The Hartford Courant did everything it could to discredit the parents, grandparents, and activists running for local school board to stop CRT curricula, painting candidates as cranks who “have become attached to” “buzzwords” to express their fears.
• Writing for Esquire, Charles Pierce sneered at and condescended to those opposed to critical race theory, saying “it’s going to take less time than I thought to raise a generation of Americans who are ignorant of their history.”
• Washington Post, in reporting on penalties enacted by Tennessee officials for school districts and teachers using CRT in curriculum, quoted “critics of the restrictions” that it could “stifle much-need classroom and social discussion about racial division and inequity in America.”

• Fox News covered a teachers union in Rhode Island suing to prevent a mother from accessing documents and public records related to CRT on the basis that it will be used to harass teachers. The mother responded publicly saying “You cannot be employed by the state and also demand immunity from public scrutiny. That’s not how open government works in America.”
• The Federalist provided a commentary on the various methods anti-CRT activists can use to stop critical race theory proponents.
• Townhall.com reported on efforts in Virginia, which has become the largest hotspot in the battle over CRT curricula, with statehouse Democrats killing a legislative proposal that would limit the teaching of CRT in public classrooms.

Author’s Take

*Pro-CRT teachers, union reps, and activists are intentionally misleading in how they frame their argument. There is a huge difference between critical race theory, which holds that irreversible racism is at the center of American cultural, social, and governmental institutions, and teaching “the sad blemishes in American history.” Yet, their insistence that not being able to teach CRT-related curricula equates to not being able to discuss the history of slavery in America does not hold water: we’ve been teaching about the evils of slavery for decades before CRT was even theorized in the faculty lounges and ivory towers of Ivy League colleges.

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© Dallas Gerber, 2021