Teaching About Racism

Introduction

A woman displays a banner opposing critical race theory at a school board meeting in Loudoun County, Va., in October. Although many K-12 educators say this legal theory is not part of classroom instruction, measures to ban it are being debated and adopted in many states and school districts. (AFP/Getty Images/Andrew Caballero-Reynolds)

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Overview

Soon after being sworn in as Virginia's governor on Jan. 15, Glenn Youngkin issued a series of executive orders. The first one was aimed at ending the use of what Youngkin called “inherently divisive concepts” in Virginia's K-12 public schools. The order singled out one such concept: critical race theory (CRT).1

“Inherently divisive concepts, like Critical Race Theory and its progeny, instruct students to only view life through the lens of race and presumes that some students are consciously or unconsciously racist, sexist, or oppressive, and that other students are victims,” Youngkin said in his order.2

While the ultimate impact of Youngkin's order is uncertain, the fact that he issued it was no surprise. Throughout his campaign last year, Youngkin, a Republican, repeatedly promised to ban critical race theory — even though many educators in Virginia and elsewhere denied that CRT was being taught in any way in their schools.3

Youngkin's words and actions reflected a heated national discussion about how racism should be addressed in both the classroom and the workplace. The global COVID-19 pandemic that coincided with a racial reckoning following the nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd created a perfect climate for this debate. To date, around 30 states, along with several local school boards, have banned or are considering banning CRT from K-12 classrooms. And some disgruntled employees are suing employers that have mandated certain types of training on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).4 The issue has been injected into political races, especially in suburban swing districts.

Authors of anti-racism books such as Robin DiAngelo, shown here, and Ibram X. Kendi have become part of the national debate over critical race theory and anti-racism education. DiAngelo and Kendi argue that being “colorblind” or “not racist” is not enough to remedy racial inequality. (Screenshot)

Given the pandemic, the contentious 2020 presidential election and the racial equity protests, “our society was going to find something to have a loud, angry debate about,” says Colin Sharkey, executive director of the Association of American Educators, a nonunion professional educators’ organization. “Something was going to become a wildfire [and cause] this kind of intense debate.”

Legal scholars developed critical race theory in the 1970s as a framework to examine how racial inequality is embedded in U.S. laws and institutions.5 Other key concepts include that race is socially constructed rather than rooted in biology or physiology; that racism is systemic within U.S. laws and institutions; a “colorblind” approach to race is insufficient to dismantle racism; and scholarship can inform activism and advocacy.

There is ample historical evidence of racism being encoded into laws and institutions. For example, New Deal measures adopted in the 1930s offered loans to homeowners and protections for workers, but they were written in ways that excluded Black neighborhoods and exempted job categories often filled by people of color.6 The effects of such measures can resonate through the years and into the present.

“This evil manifests itself in our individual thoughts, and also in the workings of our society itself,” the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a pamphlet for parishioners explaining systemic racism. “Today's continuing inequalities in education, housing, employment, wealth, and representation in leadership positions are rooted in our country's shameful history of slavery and systemic racism.”7

In its original incarnation, critical race theory is a highly effective tool to address unequal social outcomes, says Adam Goldstein, senior research counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a nonpartisan free speech advocacy group. However, in the past two years, the definition of CRT has morphed into something very different than what its founders intended. Some founding scholars are concerned that the distortions of their ideas could have a “chilling effect … on teaching about race and racism in America,” The Washington Post reported last year.8

In July 2020, Christopher Rufo, a right-leaning journalist and a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, seized the moment, redefining and vilifying the term critical race theory to mobilize conservative action. He deftly transformed critical race theory into a catch-all for a wide swath of material, ranging from The New York Times’ 1619 Project, which asserted that the institution of slavery played a central role in the development of the country, to anti-racist books by authors such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo. Rufo unapologetically rebranded critical race theory to encompass and demonize nearly every progressive ideology related to race and gender. “We've needed new language for these issues,” Rufo told The New Yorker. “‘Critical race theory’ is the perfect villain.”9

“Rufo has been very openly explicit about his agenda … and what the larger political project that he has promoted is,” says Rutgers University journalism professor Chenjerai Kumanyika. “That is, for someone trying to understand what's going on, really important to study.”

In an August 2020 Fox News interview, Rufo called on then-President Donald Trump to ban CRT from workplace DEI trainings for federal employees — which Trump did through an executive order the following month.10 This kicked off anti-CRT legislation and resolutions at the state and local levels.

Critical race theory is hard to define, even among CRT scholars, says Danielle Kie Hart, a professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles. But for conservatives, “any discussion of race is being lumped under this moniker, critical race theory,” she says.

Definitions may vary, but opponents are fairly united on what they see as the harm CRT poses. Many feel that CRT unfairly casts white people as oppressors and Blacks as “hopelessly oppressed victims.”11 Others find the academic framework at odds with the approach of the traditional civil rights movement. “For me, there is a critical race. It is the human race,” says Alveda King, a former Georgia state representative and the niece of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. She cites her uncle's dictum that “we must learn to live together as brothers … or perish together as fools.” She adds, “Not separate skin colors. Not separate races… . That's very, very clear to me.”

Another concern is that people can be triggered by the combination of words.

“When you say ‘critical,’ that means that somebody is being criticized. Then when you put race in the middle of it … that means that somebody is gonna get criticized about race,” says Eric Collier, a board member of E4Youth, a workforce preparedness program in Austin, Texas. “And when you add theory to the end of it … it's kind of like ‘defund the police’ … easily co-opted.”

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K-12 schools have been the main battleground in the war over critical race theory. Some conservatives see evidence of CRT in public schools, while many liberals — and nervous school administrators — vehemently insist it is absolutely not being taught in classrooms.

Goldstein finds such denials unconvincing. “There's this countervailing, dismissive argument that ‘we don't teach critical race theory,’” he says. “It's a little bit like I go to a restaurant and say, “I ate too much salt in your restaurant,” and they say, ‘We don't serve salt. There's no salt on the menu.’”

“Critical race theory isn't a curriculum,” reads a recent Education Week headline, and the theory's founding legal scholarship is likely beyond most K-12 students.12 A recent Association of American Educators survey found that more than 95 percent of teachers report never having been asked to teach CRT, says Sharkey, the group's executive director.

Still, school systems can use the CRT framework to understand observed inequities, such as in disciplinary action and academic outcomes — which is its intended purpose, says Goldstein. Ideas and strategies such as systemic racism, white privilege and contemporary social justice activism relate to critical race theory, and more recent anti-racist scholarship is interwoven in some schools’ DEI trainings and K-12 lesson plans.

“It's in classrooms the same way … everything that that teacher has learned and absorbed is in a classroom,” says Natasha Capers, a parent organizer and director of the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice, a parent-led organization that advocates for more culturally responsive and equitable public-school education.

That is not necessarily a negative, say some CRT proponents. “I think that critical race theory can be in the classroom. It should be in the classroom,” says George Lee, a former high school teacher and speaker who uses Instagram and TikTok to educate his nearly 2 million combined followers about social justice issues.

The insistent narrative that CRT is not being taught in classrooms can be damaging because it implies that critical race theory is in some way harmful, says Cierra Kaler-Jones, a social justice educator and director of storytelling with Communities for Just Schools Fund, a network of education-focused donors. “[W]hat we should be saying is, ‘Actually we should be teaching CRT.’”

The reflexive rebuttal to complaints about CRT also antagonized parents who had valid concerns about schools’ opacity around curriculum content, a long-standing problem, according to Goldstein and other experts.

“Pre-COVID, we, like many, many parents, were struggling to get access to learning materials,” says Kim Walters, who founded the advocacy group Oregonians for Liberty in Education to address the issue of parental rights. The pandemic-forced switch to at-home education gave parents a first-hand look at “what students are actually learning, leaving many parents outraged,” she says.

In a recent CBS News documentary, Robin Steeman, chair of the Williamson County, Tenn., chapter of Moms for Liberty, another parents’ advocacy group, voiced concerns about the age-appropriateness of K-12 classroom materials on racism and policing. She said social justice learning should take place at home, at parents’ discretion, not in classrooms.13

Many opponents echo the sentiments of Columbia University professor and New York Times columnist John McWhorter: “That is some strong stuff to be giving to 8-year-olds, to teach that whiteness is potentially evil, and that Blackness means you have to constantly be on guard against it,” he said in an appearance on PBS. 14

Newly elected Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, seen speaking at a campaign rally in June, issued an executive order on his first day in office that seeks to ban the use of critical race theory in the state's K-12 public classrooms. (Getty Images/The Washington Post/Michael Blackshire)

In Virginia's 2020 gubernatorial race, the left alienated centrist voters by ignoring the fact that parents are concerned about more than the textbook version of critical race theory, says Jean Card, a Virginia-based political communications writer and consultant. When Youngkin took a stand against CRT, he signaled to parents that he was on their side — a strategy other Republicans are likely to adopt in upcoming races, Card continues.

Kumanyika, the journalism professor, says those in the media writing about CRT are not debating the actual, seminal texts of the theory. “That's not what they're up to,” Kumanyika says. “And I think that reveals that this is not a serious engagement with the theory, or really any serious study.”

Instead, news and social media have often amplified what opponents of anti-racist education and training seem to regard as the most extreme missteps of these programs: teaching that America is fundamentally and irredeemably racist and making white people, especially children, feel bad about being white.

While critics such as McWhorter believe critical race theory could also be damaging to students of color, Capers of the Coalition for Educational Justice says Black and brown students are already being harmed by public schools’ lack of cultural responsiveness. This is visible in classroom activities such as mock slave auctions and simulations of slave ship ocean crossings.15

But all students are affected by the heated CRT controversy, which shows no signs of abating with the 2022 midterm elections on the horizon.

“So much of what makes this moment so challenging is that there has been so little trust in the institution of public education for so long,” says Jaime Koppel, a public-school parent and co-director of the Communities for Just Schools Fund.

She laments that “the spaciousness that this moment could have offered us” to reimagine public education has been lost, and “instead, the air has been sucked out of that by this really, really artful effort to distract us all from that opportunity.”

As the controversy around CRT in classrooms continues, here are some questions that concerned parents, educators, lawmakers and voters are grappling with in the lead-up to the 2022 and 2024 elections:

Should K-12 students be taught that there is systemic racism in America?

How to teach what the Conference of Catholic Bishops called the “shameful history” of racism has become a subject of heated — and partisan — debate. At the crux of the controversy is whether K-12 students should learn about systemic racism in school.

Systemic racism, a core CRT tenet, maintains that racism permeates systems and institutions and that they — and not just individual racists — perpetuate racial inequality.

A recent poll by USA Today and Ipsos found that “more than 60 percent of American parents want their kids to learn about the ongoing effects of slavery and racism as part of their education.”16

Students at a Los Angeles middle school attend class on the first day of the academic year in August. Most parents want their children to learn about the effects of racism and slavery, a recent poll found. (Getty Images/Los Angeles Times/Allen J. Schaben)

However, looking at racism as a systemic problem with deep historical roots is antithetical to how most Americans were enculturated to think about race, and how many want their children to be. “The dominant way of understanding race in this country is still an individualistic one,” says Kumanyika, the Rutgers journalism professor, who was a recurring guest on the 2017 podcast series “Seeing White,” which explored this theme. He says that most Americans define and interpret racism in terms of the actions of individuals, rather those than of institutions.17

Some opponents to teaching systemic racism worry about judging historical figures by contemporary ethics. Walters, of Oregonians for Liberty in Education, believes a curriculum should cover “difficult parts of history,” but urges educators “to refrain from villainizing historical figures based on whether or not they adhered, in their time, to 21st century morality.”

Goldstein brings up an entirely different concern: that teaching systemic racism is incompatible with the foundational goals of public education, namely, “to make us all get along and have a functioning government.”

“If you tell students something that undermines their belief in the government or … the ability of government to correct itself and to evolve, you're actually making it a bad value proposition to have public school [or] mandatory school at all,” he says.

A prominent argument against teaching about critical race theory in schools also applies to systemic racism: Both center racism as the cause of all social inequities and unduly cast certain groups as oppressors and victims, CRT critics assert.

“Investigating the role race may have played in any event is necessary and fair,” says Walters. “But it is inappropriate to assume racism is always afoot… . We strongly object to teaching children that they are victims of the past or powerless to shape their own futures.”

Proponents of teaching students about systemic racism say it actually has the opposite effect. “If we learn about racism as a social construct and as a structural and systemic issue, we then know that, because it is … made up by people, it can be changed by people,” says educator Kaler-Jones.

Sharkey, of the Association of American Educators, adds: “Viewing things in terms of how systems and institutions were created fundamentally unequally” could help higher-level students contextualize current events they see in the media.

Students themselves offer a multiplicity of perspectives on how to teach race and racism in schools.

When The New York Times asked students to weigh in on the issue, respondents “were overwhelmingly opposed to the legislative measures” attempting to curtail discussions of race and racism from classrooms, the newspaper wrote. Still, some were opposed to instruction on critical race theory, the 1619 Project, or even current events. “From my personal experience, students at my school already have ample opportunity and time to learn about the horrific events that have taken place in the past,” wrote one student. “I think there should be topics on slavery and redlining but I don't think we should allow teachers themselves to speak on current events regarding race,” said another.18

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While some teens are using social media to attack critical race theory, others are on TikTok teaching about the very topics that anti-CRT legislation bans.19

The current controversy may focus on what students are learning in classrooms, but many students from historically marginalized groups already have working knowledge of systemic racism and discrimination from their public education experience.

White educators often have lower expectations for Black students and a grim outlook on their future academic achievement, which becomes a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” according to researchers Nicholas W. Papageorge, Seth Gershenson and Kyung Min Kang in a 2018 paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.20

Minority students also rarely see themselves reflected in course materials beyond their groups’ struggles, says Capers, of the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice, which helped develop an English Language Arts scorecard to rank curricula around the country on a scale of “culturally responsive” to “culturally destructive.” They found most were the latter.

“They just didn't tell our stories,” Capers says. “It's just a lot of tone deafness, just a lot of leaving people behind.” Even when diverse materials are present, they often lack guides to help educators effectively teach them, Capers’ group found. Classroom activities such as a Holocaust gas chamber simulation for third graders or re-enactments of slave auctions suggest such guidance is sorely needed.21

There are resources available for teachers who want to do better, such as the Harvard Graduate School of Education's “Teaching the Hard Histories of Racism” or The Zinn Education Project. The latter creates downloadable teaching materials that reflect the ethos of Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, by delving into systemic issues such as reparations and voter suppression.22 The Anti-Defamation League also has a guide for discussing race in predominantly white classrooms.23 Other experts suggest exploring systemic racism outside social studies classes, in settings such as biology and economics courses.24

Another option: Look to Black pedagogy, which has long used generational wisdom, poetry and music to celebrate the history of the Black diaspora, while also teaching Black children about the realities of race in America. This rich tradition has been entirely unacknowledged in the CRT debate, argued Harvard education professor and author Jarvis Givens.25

E4Youth board member Collier is more focused on extracurricular ways to help young people unlearn damaging messages and prepare for reality outside the classroom. “For too many of our kids, we have to undo what the culture has trained them to believe about themselves,” he says of minority youth. “Their core identity is one of creativity, innovation and a relentless drive to survive. I want them to understand that they are the masters of their destiny.”

Does training on diversity, equity and inclusion make workplaces more equitable?

Some of the same issues that have animated the debate over how to discuss racism in the classroom are present in assessments of efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace.

Since the 1960s, DEI has swelled to an $8 billion-plus industry that encompasses everything from mandatory on-site trainings to anti-racism retreats led by DEI influencers.26 But questions have been raised about whether these efforts demonstrated any real-life return on investment.

A recent survey of companies found that 89 percent had a formal DEI strategy in place. “These numbers are a significant indicator of how seriously HR departments and their organizations are taking DEI,” said the study. “This is due to increasing awareness of issues of discrimination and bias in the workplace and multiple analyses of how discrimination and bias impact the economy at large.”27

However, the same study also found that 57 percent of the companies surveyed lacked an approved budget or dedicated resources to finance DEI efforts.28 As of 2017, an overwhelming majority of companies did not track or release diversity data.29

One ongoing source of concern is the composition of upper-management ranks in the business world. In 2021, there were just five Black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies; venture capitalists disproportionately invest in white founders; and even supposedly progressive sectors, such as tech, remain persistently white.30 Between 2018 and 2020, white women largely outpaced other historically underrepresented groups in increased presence on Fortune 500 boards.31

There have been some meaningful strides toward greater inclusion in leadership positions. Between July 2020 and May 2021, Black people comprised 32 percent of new board members for S&P 500 companies — a 200 percent increase over the previous year.32 Still, white people fill 85 percent of high-level executive positions, “demonstrating the promotion gap that minorities face,” reported CNBC. 33

One study, published in 2016 by sociologists Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev, identified a number of limitations in corporate DEI programs. Such programs are popular, with nearly half of all midsize companies and most of Fortune 500 firms having adopted one, the study reported. Yet making trainings and recruitment and hiring protocols compulsory also tends to “activate bias” and rebellion, said Dobbins and Kalev. After five years of diversity programming, companies in their study actually saw a decline in the representation of certain minority groups, including Black women and Asian men.34

The way in which DEI developed divorced it from the activism that initially informed it, according to anti-oppression consultant Kim Tran. The goal of diversity programs, she said, is to act as a “corporate litigation shield to prevent costly discrimination suits. “The multibillion-dollar juggernaut has left its social justice principles, and the people who established them, far behind,” wrote Tran.35

The number of DEI professionals more than doubled from 2015 to 2020 as President Trump's racially charged rhetoric and subsequent bans on government diversity initiatives spurred companies to bolster their DEI efforts.36 When the pandemic slashed corporate budgets, many companies tabled DEI — until 2020, when sweeping racial justice protests and PR optics demanded public recommitment to DEI efforts, even if it sometimes came off as performative.

In the context of the ongoing critical race theory debate, DEI programs are increasingly controversial. Many progressive critics of DEI are frustrated that after more than a half century of diversity programs, minority employees continue to be underrepresented, undermentored, underpaid and the frequent targets of microaggressions at work.37

Conservative critics of DEI programs see them as another manifestation of critical race theory and mandatory workplace trainings as tantamount to indoctrination. Many have concerns about how some DEI facilitators draw from scholar-activist Peggy McIntosh, who popularized the term “white privilege”; Tema Okun, an educator who equates the concepts of individualism and objectivity with white supremacy culture; and authors DiAngelo and Kendi. In their books, DiAngelo and Kendi argue that being “colorblind” or “not racist” is not enough to fix racial inequality in America — a position which can put people on the defensive.38

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And that can create some perverse effects. Alienating white participants through coercive re-education can create a more hostile work environment for already marginalized employees.

“Trainers tell us that people often respond to compulsory courses with anger and resistance — and many participants actually report more animosity toward other groups afterward,” Dobbin and Kalev wrote.39 According to a 2013 study by the management consultant Greatheart Leader Labs, white men especially tend to feel attacked and unsure if they are even “wanted” in these spaces.40

Companies also frequently ask or require people of color on their staff to spearhead diversity task forces and other initiatives, increasing their workload and emotional burden while making them more of a target for DEI-resistant colleagues.41 Workers who find themselves the only minority identity in a DEI training session are often singled out by trainers trying to create teachable moments.42

Dobbins and Kalev's research did uncover a few glimmers of hope. Voluntary training, in-house diversity task forces and recruiting and mentoring women and people of color really did move the needle on diversity. These programs were associated with slight decreases in the number of white male employees and increased representation of up to 30 percent for some minority groups. By far, the most promising strategies were diversity task forces and diversity managers, which tended to relate to the highest increases in representation for the most groups.43

“Companies do a better job of increasing diversity when they forgo the control tactics and frame their efforts more positively,” the researchers wrote. “The most effective programs spark engagement, increase contact among different groups, or draw on people's strong desire to look good to others.”

Does legislation banning the teaching of critical race theory violate the First Amendment?

The First Amendment right to free speech is one of Americans’ most cherished liberties — and one of the least understood, say some legal experts.

Contrary to popular belief, “It's not about the rights that we all have,” says Emerson Sykes, staff attorney at the ACLU, which recently filed federal lawsuits challenging CRT bans in Oklahoma and New Hampshire. “It's about the restrictions that we want to place on the government so that we allow a civil society to flourish.”

The U.S. Supreme Court began grappling with the implications of the First Amendment almost as soon as it was added to the Constitution as part of the Bill of Rights in 1791.44 Today, state laws outlawing the teaching of critical race theory in classrooms are raising new questions about freedom of speech in theory and practice. People across the political spectrum are invoking the First Amendment to bolster their differing positions about CRT bans.

Many proponents of anti-CRT legislation maintain that states have the right to determine K-12 curricula, that free speech applies more narrowly in K-12 settings and that the bans fortify First Amendment protections against compelled speech.

Setting curriculum standards is well within the purview of state legislatures, says Goldstein, of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, in part because they mandated public education in the first place. “These are things that the state legislatures decided to create themselves to accomplish their goals” of educating citizens so they could one day participate in state government, he says. “It's very tough to argue that the state can't dictate how to do the thing, at the thing it created, for the purpose it created [it for].”

In the 1960s and '70s, courts were more permissive about free speech in schools. This changed in 1988 when the Supreme Court ruled in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier that censoring in-school speech for “legitimate pedagogical concerns” is consistent with the First Amendment.45 A subsequent ruling in the 2006 case Garcetti v. Ceballos limited on-the-job free speech for government workers, which includes public school teachers.46

There is “this bizarre idea that public school systems should have unlimited rights to teach any ideology … because if we don't do that, it is a violation of free speech,” said Rufo, the conservative journalist, in a debate with right-leaning political commentator and former attorney David French, who opposes CRT bans. “K-12 education isn't a free market in ideas,” Rufo said. “It's a state-run monopoly.”47

Rufo applauds anti-CRT bills for protecting students from compelled speech. Students nationwide are being forced “to say, in essence, ‘I am so-and-so, I am a white male, and I am a member of the oppressor class, and I must atone for these inherent sins of my existence through these kinds of ritual mechanisms that have been devised by the department of equity and inclusion,’” Rufo said in the debate.48 “This isn't free speech; this is compelled speech.”

Christopher Rufo, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. (Screenshot)

According to David L. Hudson Jr., a professor at Belmont University College of Law in Nashville, the legal doctrine of compelled speech “sets out the principle that the government cannot force an individual or group to support certain expression.”49

However, some conservatives, such as French — one of the founders of Goldstein's free-speech group FIRE — vehemently oppose state CRT bans, a view that highlights the schism between traditional conservative and New Right ideologies.50 The bans are unnecessary because the First Amendment already “offers ample protections against compelled speech [and] the kind of speech codes on campus that are sometimes inspired by radical anti-racist or DEI initiatives,” French tweeted last year. The bans may also undermine past free speech advocacy by conservatives and compromise their future interests: “As the anti-woke efforts metastasize, they're defying key, hard-won precedents that protect conservative dissenters in progressive spaces.”51

In a Washington Post op-ed, Keith Whittington, constitutional scholar and chair of the Academic Committee of the Academic Freedom Alliance, a free speech defense group, wrote: “Legal measures like this one are a blunt instrument that will make education worse rather than better, even if you share the political ideals that these proposals are supposed to advance.”52

The ACLU contends that anti-CRT bills violate First Amendment protections for academic freedom in higher education and all students’ right to receive information, says Sykes, the ACLU staff attorney. “Courts have recognized that the First Amendment protects a concept of academic freedom, especially in higher education,” Sykes explains.

But the ways in which these laws violate the First Amendment rights in the K-12 setting may be less clear-cut.

The Hazelwood decision allows censorship of in-school speech for legitimate pedagogical reasons — but who defines “legitimate”?

Nate Hochman, a fellow at the National Review, a conservative publication, has argued that the 1619 Project, which some anti-CRT bills specifically ban by name, serves no “genuine pedagogical purpose” that would entitle it to be taught in taxpayer-funded K-12 classrooms.53

But Sykes argues that “there's no legitimate pedagogical interest in banning particular words or ideas that are necessary for students to function in a heterogeneous society.” And he adds that “bans on inclusive education become a First Amendment issue when they infringe on the rights of students to receive information. The First Amendment protects the right to speak, but it's also been found to protect the right to receive information.”

Sykes says the vague language of CRT bans infringes on teachers’ rights to due process, a 14th Amendment protection that bars punishing someone — in this case, potentially revoking their teaching license — for breaking a law that is so vaguely written that it is impossible to know what is allowed and what is prohibited. The ACLU is also arguing an equal protection claim based on the 14th Amendment.

“We argued that the law was passed with racial animus and has … a disparate impact based on race,” Sykes says. “[W]e point to the clear statements of legislators saying that they were essentially trying to protect white children and trying to silence BLM, and all sorts of other things that they kind of throw in there under sort of quote-unquote critical race theory.”

Rufo has a very different view. “The beauty of these bills [is that] they're ideologically neutral,” he said in the debate with French. “They simply say, ‘You can't promote race essentialism, you can't promote collective guilt, and you can't promote racial discrimination and treatment of students.’”

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Background

Birth of a Nation

While many CRT opponents take umbrage at the assertion that the nation's founding documents and laws are not — and have never been — racially neutral, history reveals many examples of such institutions being used to maintain white hegemony in America.

Within a generation of the arrival in 1619 of the first enslaved Africans — approximately 30 people — in Virginia, white colonists had erected laws to protect slaveholders’ economic interests and create class divisions between white indentured servants and Blacks to prevent unified uprisings:54

• The later adaptation of the Roman livestock law partus sequitur ventrem not only dehumanized enslaved people, it also established that children inherited the enslaved status of their mothers. This ensured that when white men sexually assaulted Black women, their mixed-race children were slaves from birth.55

• A 1732 law, also in the colony of Virginia, prohibited “Negroes, mulattoes, and Indians” from testifying in court “except in the trial of slaves for a capital crime.”56 Later, free Native Americans and Black Christians were permitted to testify in trials of non-white people.57

• Between 1740 and 1831, slave colonies and states passed anti-literacy laws criminalizing teaching enslaved people to read and write, because acquiring this skill could help them forge passes to free states and better coordinate revolts against their masters.58

By the 18th century, “you can trace the laws and language around race. You can see the constitution of race being built,” says Kumanyika, the Rutgers professor. By 1790, there were around 700,000 enslaved Africans in the United States.59

The nation's founders were deeply aware of slavery's positive economic impact. The Constitution, written in 1787, was “riddled with provisions tied to slavery which protected it without naming it,” wrote legal historian Paul Finkelman.60 For example, the now-notorious “three-fifths clause” allowed states to count three-fifths of their enslaved populations for the purposes of congressional representation and taxation — although the enslaved had no civil rights of any kind, much less the right to vote.61

Some historians, including Harvard University history professor Annette Gordon-Reed, have argued that founders such as Thomas Jefferson left a contradictory legacy, idealizing freedom while still owning slaves themselves.62

But Collier, the E4Youth board member, who grew up in the segregated South, sees no ambiguity whatsoever in Jefferson's work. “He created the structural basis for racism and to count us as three-fifths of a person, [giving] power to Southern politicians that they have never relinquished.”

The Constitution and Supreme Court interpretations of it gave Congress power to engage in commerce with Native American tribes and, ultimately, to take their land. A key purpose of such land seizures was to facilitate the growth of slavery.

“Indian removal was all about expanding slavery,” said Ojibwe scholar and author David Treuer on a recent podcast.63 “To recognize that, to un-invisible us, would mean that this country has to confront its behaviors that drift pretty far from its stated ideals: liberty, justice, pursuit of happiness, of fair play.”

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Gains for minority groups are routinely met with backlash from those seeking to maintain the status quo, says Hart, the law professor.

In the antebellum era, many aspects of American society upheld slavery, from demeaning social stereotypes casting Blacks as violent, sexual predators to slave patrols that used extreme violence to control the enslaved population and prevent their escape.64 An increasingly vocal abolitionist movement ignited a national debate about enslavement that, in part, led to the Civil War — and the emancipation of slaves.65

But even emancipation was fraught. President Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation did not completely eradicate slavery. It freed enslaved people in the states that had seceded to form the Confederacy, but not those in border states that remained in the Union. Enslaved people in Texas, who were covered under the proclamation, did not learn they were free until June 19, 1865 — a day now commemorated by the national holiday Juneteenth. And the sharecropping system that replaced slavery created a different form of bondage for Black farmers and their families. In just one example, historian Antoinette Harrell discovered that at least 20 Black people remained enslaved through the mechanism of debt into the 1950s, or, for one woman, until 1963.66

An artist depicted President Abraham Lincoln reading the Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet in 1862. The proclamation freed enslaved people in the states of the Confederacy, but not in Union states. The 13rd Amendment, adopted in 1865, ended slavery throughout the nation. (Getty Images/Universal Images Group/Universal History Archive/Contributor)

The 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery throughout the country. But it also contained a provision that allowed a form of continued slavery for the incarcerated. Under the Convict Lease System, underresourced prisons in the South could offset costs by leasing facilities and labor to companies.67 Today, at numerous prisons, some built atop former plantation sites, inmates provide practically unpaid labor, doing everything from staffing call centers to picking cotton, The Atlantic reported in 2015.68

The Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War created a brief period of Black empowerment in the former slave states. But it was uneven and did not last, mainly because of white Southern resistance and the actions of President Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln in 1865.69

Johnson, a Southerner and former slaveholder, had a vision for Reconstruction that prioritized swiftly reintegrating Confederate states into the Union, not equal rights for the newly emancipated. This put him at odds with Congress, particularly the Radical Republican faction, which endorsed broad civil rights for Black people, believed Southern whites were extremely unlikely to uphold any such rights and installed federal troops in former Confederate states, along with other sanctions, with the Reconstruction Acts of 1867.70

“The upsurge of black political activity was met with a racist propaganda campaign and terrorist tactics implemented by Southern whites to intimidate both black and white Southern Republicans,” writes University of Virginia history professor Elizabeth Varon.71

Southern states began devising “Black codes,” which, wrote historian Nakia Parker, “were ways to keep a de facto slavery system in place” by restricting everything from Black gun ownership to interracial marriages.72 The Ku Klux Klan, “America's first terrorist organization,” emerged in 1865.73 Southern whites suppressed Black voting rights through violence, poll taxes and literacy tests.74

President Ulysses Grant, who followed Johnson, relied on federal authority and troops to thwart early white attempts to terrorize Black Southerners through violence. But the “compromise of 1877” withdrew the troops in return for white Southern acquiescence in the ascension of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes to the presidency, opening the door to segregation and systematic violence against Black people.75

Southern states began to enact “Jim Crow” laws mandating racial segregation in schools and public places. In the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of these laws, saying the institutions created by them were “separate but equal.”76

This system of subjugation was often enforced by violence — including extrajudicial killings known as lynchings. According to a 2020 report by the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal nonprofit based in Alabama, whites lynched 6,500 people between 1865 and 1950.77 Lynchings were often celebratory events — many were immortalized on picture postcards — “imbued with the force and authority of law because police officers, judges, sheriffs, and deputies were active as participants and bystanders to the violence,” according to State Sanctioned, a website that documents officially sanctioned violence in the United States.78

During the “Red Summer” of 1919 and into the 1920s, white mobs massacred hundreds of Blacks and burned down more than two dozen Black communities across the South, including in the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, but no whites were ever prosecuted.79

The destruction caused by white rioters in Tulsa, Okla., in 1921 was part of a wave of violence against Black Americans in that era. (Getty Images/Universal Images Group/Universal History Archive/Contributor)

Black people migrated north in waves to escape violence and seek economic opportunities between 1916 and 1970, which came to be known as the Great Migration. Yet their escape from racism was far from complete. In many Northern states and communities, and in Washington, D.C., racially discriminatory policies were enacted in law enforcement, labor law and housing:

• When a race riot was ignited in Chicago in 1919 by the fatal stoning of a Black teenager, Eugene Williams, “there was systemic participation in mob violence by the police,” a commission that investigated the riots found. Police “chose to either aid and abet white mobs or to disarm black people or to arrest them.”80

• In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's National Recovery Administration mandated workplace protections for many employees — but contained rules that largely excluded jobs often staffed by Black and brown workers, including agriculture work and domestic service.81

• Also in the 1930s, the Federal Housing Administration refused to insure mortgages in predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods that were outlined in red on maps — “redlined” — as high-risk by the Home Owners Loan Corporation, reducing investment and property values in those neighborhoods and increasing racial housing segregation.82

Following the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that found segregated schools to be unconstitutional, Southern whites redoubled their efforts to protect the status quo. For example, in 1956, U.S. Sen. Harry F. Byrd Sr., D-Va., called on Southerners to engage in “massive resistance” against desegregation.83

While white men were more likely than women to wield direct political power, Southern white women shaped public education using an array of strategies, including a 1960 student essay contest about the virtues of segregation; checking with children to make sure educators were teaching about “the war between the states,” the preferred Southern label for the conflict, rather than the Civil War; and textbook approval committees that framed the way K-12 curriculum discussed U.S. and Black history, says Elizabeth Gillespie McRae, author of Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy.

“White segregationist women are saying, ‘You know, the federal government might be able to mandate racial integration, but they probably won't look at curriculum and textbooks,” says McRae. It is a tactic she sees echoed in today's conservative activism in education. “For most of the 20th century, the history textbooks spoke to a less diverse history than they did in the 1880s.”

The civil rights era of 1954 to 1968 saw real wins for Black Americans and other groups, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and the workplace and the 1968 Equal Housing Act. President Lyndon Johnson's 1964 Economic Opportunity Act provided federal funding for Black leadership of community programs aimed at reducing racialized economic disparities, which prompted a white backlash.84

Despite these gains, during the 1960s the persistence of social inequities, the systematic abuse and killings of Black citizens by mostly white police and finally King's murder in 1968 prompted riots in more than 120 U.S. cities.85

A federal commission headed by Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner said in 1968 that “white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.” (Getty Images/Bettmann/Contributor)

The Kerner Commission, formed in 1967 to investigate the causes of the riots, famously concluded the following year: “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal… . What white Americans have never fully understood — but what the Negro can never forget — is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”86

Despite this warning and similar ones about the true sources of the violence, the riots — along with a rising crime rate — provoked a fearful reaction among many whites. White politicians such as Johnson reacted by declaring a “War on Crime” — a campaign that paved the way for increased policing and mass incarceration of Black people.87

Critical Race Theory

A group of scholars, frustrated with the limitations of traditional civil rights strategies, used critical legal theory — an approach that questioned the law's neutrality but did not focus on race — as a springboard to develop critical race theory, says law professor Hart.88

While CRT scholars sometimes debate how to define the theory, most agree on these key tenets:

• Race is a social construct, with no biological or physiological basis.

• Racism is commonplace, pervasive and perpetuated by systems and institutions, not just by individual racists.

• Counterstorytelling, centering minority perspectives and lived experiences in public discourse, is needed to disrupt dominant narratives about race.89

• Racial progress only occurs when it presents a positive benefit to white people, a phenomenon known as “interest convergence.”

  But as critical race theorists and activists imagined new ways to achieve equity, many whites continued what Hart calls a “second retrenchment,” a backlash with similarities to that following the Reconstruction period.

• Libertarians called for smaller government following the sweeping civil rights legislation, says Hart.

• President Richard Nixon's 1971 proclamation of a “war on drugs” increased policing in Black communities and mass incarceration of Black and brown people.

• The federal Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 imposed sentences for possession or use of crack cocaine, a type of the drug associated with Black urban communities, that were much harsher than those for powder cocaine, a form of the same drug more accessible to affluent whites.90 The policy was in effect for nearly 25 years, until President Barack Obama's 2010 Fair Sentencing Act reduced the disparity.91 Nearly 80 percent of people in federal prison for drug crimes are Black and Latino.92

To many, the election of Obama, the first Black president, heralded the end of racism in America.93

This prospect vanished amid a series of highly publicized police killings of Black people and Trump's election to the presidency, despite — or perhaps because of — his highly charged rhetoric against immigrants and Muslims.

In 2013, Black Lives Matter was created as a social media hashtag after a Florida jury acquitted a white man, George Zimmerman, who was charged in the shooting of Black teenager Trayvon Martin. Black Lives Matter became an increasingly visible movement after the 2020 police killing of Floyd in Minneapolis. This movement sparked a global racial reckoning and renewed public interest in critical race theory, anti-racism and restorative justice.

Protests over the police killing of George Floyd, such as this one in Minneapolis in May 2020, became a nationwide movement and sparked renewed interest in efforts to combat racism. (AFP/Getty Images/Kerem Yucel)

In its original incarnation, critical race theory is a highly effective tool to address these kinds of racial disparities and unequal social outcomes, says Goldstein, of FIRE. However, in the past two years the definition of CRT has morphed into something completely different than the founding scholars intended.

It also sparked a backlash. As Rufo, the conservative journalist, worked to stoke this reaction, local and state politicians adopted his anti-CRT rhetoric, using it to “generate a certain kind of rage among their political base [that] authorizes their ability to pass laws, take power and shut down curriculum,” says Kumanyika.

News and social media reported and amplified what many saw as examples of far-left DEI trainings and age-inappropriate anti-racist lessons in K-12 classrooms. The latter included a fifth-grade civil rights lesson that “celebrated” activist Angela Davis and Black communism, which Rufo cited in an article for the conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute, and an “Emancipation Curriculum” used in the Buffalo, N.Y., public schools, which included a section on the way “white elites” perpetuate systemic racism, wrote Newsweek. 94

Parents, many of whom had become more involved with their kids’ education during the pandemic, flooded into school board meetings in several communities, demanding that CRT be removed from their children's schools.

In response, many states and school boards adopted or began considering bans on the teaching of a number of concepts that Trump and other CRT opponents condemned as “divisive.” The forbidden ideas include the notion that American society is fundamentally racist, that the concepts of meritocracy and individualism stem from white supremacist culture, or things that make people feel guilty about their racial identity.95

Opponents of these bans believe that they are less about critical race theory and more about controlling the recent public discussion about the legacy of enslavement and racism in America.

“This pushback is because we saw what many are calling a racial reckoning in the past year with the murder of George Floyd,” says Kaler-Jones of the Communities for Just Schools Fund. “We always see periods of white backlash to Black advances.”

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Current Situation

National

The controversy over critical race theory has led to anti-CRT bans proposed at the federal and state levels, with repercussions for educators and families at the local level.

The proposed federal legislation is largely preoccupied with workplace diversity trainings for federally affiliated groups. In September 2020, the Trump administration banned teaching “divisive concepts” in DEI trainings held at government institutions, the armed forces, federally funded agencies or by government contractors.96

Immediately after taking office, President Biden revoked Trump's action with an executive order that affirmed the systemic nature of racism and inequality and called for “advancing equity, civil rights, racial justice, and equal opportunity” across government institutions.97

Republican lawmakers have responded with proposals in the spirit of Trump's 2020 order.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., proposed the Combating Racist Training in the Military Act to remove “anti-American and racist theories” from the armed forces and academic institutions affiliated with the Department of Defense, including the service academies.

The bill specifically names critical race theory: “Anti-American and racist theories, such as ‘Critical Race Theory,’ teach that the United States is a fundamentally racist Nation, that the Constitution is a fundamentally racist document, and that certain races are fundamentally oppressive or oppressed.”98

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has proposed banning the teaching of critical race theory in the armed forces and in academic institutions connected to the U.S. military. (Getty Images/CQ-Roll Call, Inc./Bill Clark)

In July, Cotton sponsored another measure, called the Stop CRT Act, to strip federal funding from any educational institution “that promotes race-based theories or compels teachers or students to affirm, adhere to, adopt, or profess beliefs contrary to title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”99

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, had introduced similar bills the previous month.100 Such “messaging” legislation — introduced mainly to communicate a position — stands virtually no chance of being enacted in the current Congress, according to an analysis by Education Week. 101 But it could curtail “the larger public discussion” about race ignited by the deaths of Floyd and Breonna Taylor, a Louisville, Ky., woman who was killed by police in her own home in 2020, says McRae.

By conflating CRT with “any discussion of race” and demonizing it, Republicans can “scare all those suburban housewives who voted for Joe Biden into not voting for the next Democrat,” says Hart, the law professor.

State

Education policy and critical race theory are on voters’ minds in the run-up to the 2022 election, reports USA Today. 102

Around 30 state legislatures have passed or are considering bills to ban K-12 teachers from discussing certain controversial topics related to racism, race and gender in the classroom. Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas have passed anti-CRT measures, though Arizona's was overturned by the courts.103 In Alabama and Florida, the State Board of Education passed resolutions restricting critical race theory and similar concepts from public schools. In December, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed the STOP W.O.K.E Act, which would enable parents to sue schools that teach critical race theory in violation of the existing ban.104

The bills largely focus on public K-12 schools, though some also include mandates for universities and certain workplaces. Two proposed measures in Kentucky would ban mandatory diversity training and teaching certain concepts at public universities. Idaho's law applies to public schools, charter schools and universities. Only the laws in Idaho and North Dakota explicitly mention critical race theory, although many ban classroom use of the 1619 Project.105

Some proponents of these measures, such as Newsweek columnist Josh Hammer, argue that the bills enhance Civil Rights Act protections and prevent “CRT pedagogy from corrupting … impressionable youth.”106 Two other proponents, Sherry Sylvester and Carol Swain, senior fellows at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, wrote: “The teachings of CRT go beyond simply learning America's history and, in fact, require white people to accept blame for all economic and social disparities experienced by people of color today. That is what is being banned … and for good reason.”107

Opponents say the measures’ language is vague, which leaves many educators unsure of what they can teach.

“Laws forbidding any teacher or lesson from mentioning race/racism, and even gender/sexism, would put a chilling effect on what educators are willing to discuss in the classroom,” according to a report by the Brookings Institution, a centrist Washington think tank.108

A recent Association of American Educators survey found that 53 percent of teachers “expressed apprehension about saying the wrong thing regarding race and negative repercussions.”109 Even teachers who comply with anti-CRT guidelines may run afoul of administrators if parents and colleagues believe they are teaching controversial content, says Sharkey, the group's executive director.

“They're so worried that something bad would happen, which is horrible,” he says, adding that his legal team has already been fielding calls from worried educators.

In October, the ACLU filed suit in federal court against Oklahoma's statute, claiming that it “not only chills students’ and educators’ First Amendment right to learn and talk about these issues, but it also prevents students from having an open and complete dialogue about American history.”110

Arizona's law was overturned in November by the state Supreme Court, which found that it violated the state Constitution by addressing multiple issues in a single measure.111 Teachers in numerous states have signed the Zinn Education Project's “Pledge to Teach the Truth” in defiance of state CRT bans.112

Local

State laws matter, but “the most important level of governance over what is taught, which materials are selected, and what training is provided” belongs to school districts, wrote Education Week. 113

Many school leaders echoed the refrain of left-leaning scholars and politicians that CRT is taught only in graduate and law schools. At the same time, a number of school boards passed resolutions banning CRT, DEI and anti-racism from classrooms and diversity trainings.

A Paso Robles, Calif., school board resolution condemned critical race theory as “fatally flawed” due to its focus on systemic rather than individual racism.114 In Washington state, numerous school boards have passed resolutions to assuage concerns that state-mandated DEI training would apply to students.115

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Outlook

No End in Sight

Many experts predict that the controversy over critical race theory is unlikely to abate anytime soon, since CRT bans are being challenged in court and the 2022 elections loom.

Hart, the Southwestern Law School professor, says conservative politicians will continue to oppose the core tenets of critical race theory as diametrically opposed to any “foundational principle of their worldview.”

“I don't think anyone on the right is ever going to [concede that] the law isn't neutral,” Hart says. If they did so, she says, “then everything gets called into question.”

Other observers say repudiating critical race theory could hamper Americans’ future ability to effectively interrogate and redress unequal outcomes in government, institutions and public education.

“There's a tragedy to undermining belief in critical race theory,” says Goldstein. “If we believe the government can be improved, if we believe we can be better than we are, [critical race theory] is one of the tools we use to get better than we are.”

Walters, of Oregonians for Liberty in Education, hopes for more viewpoint diversity in classrooms, as opposed to unilateral bans on critical race theory, which she says could be explored in upper grade levels.

“Bringing in various accounts from various sources is ideal. Presenting facts from primary sources and acknowledging biases is ideal,” says Walters. “The objection isn't that controversial issues from history and current events are discussed and examined, rather it is that offering a singular viewpoint to explain all history and events is intellectually absurd and lazy.”

In the near term, Goldstein anticipates more lawsuits on CRT at the K-12 level. But whether or not K-12 CRT bans remain in place, political consultant Card anticipates that other Republicans will adopt Virginia Gov. Youngkin's pro-parent, anti-CRT platform, which she says played well in November among voters, especially parents, who prioritized policy and education.

The ongoing debates could continue to have negative effects for public schools, teachers and students because it distracts from more important issues, says Sharkey, of the Association of American Educators.

“The schools and the parents … aren't talking about issues that do matter to kids — or that matter more — when they're talking about this,” Sharkey says. “The kids are not winning by what's going on.”

The ACLU has argued that “banning conversations about race — and gender and sexuality — in schools also risks maintaining or creating education environments that are unwelcoming to students of color.”116 CRT opponents are also beginning to decry public school programs related to mental health and social emotional learning, reports NBC News. 117

Kaler-Jones of the Communities for Just Schools Fund says that avoiding topics that are “intertwined” with systemic racism — including redlining, workers’ rights and climate justice — leaves students underprepared to take an active role in critiquing and dismantling it.

Still, the controversy around CRT may have unintended effects that opponents did not anticipate.

“Like anything else, the banning it … magnifies its significance,” says Sharkey, which may compel students to learn about “divisive concepts” outside of school.

“They spend more time on social media than they do in the classrooms,” says Lee, the former teacher. “Little Timmy didn't learn about [CRT] in the classroom. He got it on Google right now. He's [already] read Kimberlé Crenshaw,” he said, referring to a prominent CRT scholar.

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Pro/Con

Do schools need to make new efforts to ensure that the history of slavery and racism is taught with greater accuracy?

Pro Natasha Capers Director, NYC Coalition for Educational Justice; community organizer; public school parent.. Written for CQ Researcher, January 2022 U.S. history is not taught accurately in American schools because they do not teach, and have never taught, the brutal and horrific truths of chattel slavery. Textbooks often try to water down the language of slavery. For example, just a few years ago, Texas curricula began to describe enslaved Africans as “migrant workers” — as if the enslaved had the ability to make choices about their lives and work after they reached American shores. Textbooks also do not teach that slavery happened not only in the United States but also across the Caribbean and Latin America. In fact, we still don't know just how much wealth enslaved Africans created for European nations such as Great Britain, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark and Sweden. Also, many lessons on slavery seemingly intend to illustrate why Black people should never want to be enslaved again. Imagine being a young Black child in a classroom, a place where you are supposed to feel safe and be able to learn. Instead, you are standing on an auction block being sold off to a classmate, to demonstrate that you should never want to be like your ancestors and that your ancestors didn't know any better than to allow themselves to just become slaves. What is that lesson supposed to leave in your psyche? Who does that lesson build you into? Year after year, I see lessons from schools across the country that attempt to compare and contrast the pros and cons of slavery; there were no pros for the enslaved. I've seen assignments of mock slave auctions or that have children create posters of runaway slaves. In multiracial classes, Black children are often the ones chosen to be on the posters. In reality, American schools should teach about the absolute lack of humanity of thinking it's okay to go to another part of the world to steal millions of people, rip them away from everything that they are and everything that they have ever known, and then force them to create wealth that they will never obtain. Lessons should center the absolute humanity of the enslaved and explain slavery's aftermath: systemic racism and oppression. If they don't teach all of U.S. history accurately, how will white children and adults reconcile themselves with the lived experience of their own ancestors, or learn about Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people with whom they share space? That is what needs to be grappled with.

Con Oregonians for Liberty in Education Excerpted from blog post of Aug. 15, 2021 On July 19th, 2021, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed into law HB 2166. This bill is the fruit of Gov. Brown's Racial Justice Council, an organization set up … for the purpose of providing the governor with policy recommendations that “center racial justice.” In line with that goal, the new law makes sweeping changes to the educational standards of the state of Oregon. The most drastic change is the creation of a new K-12 education standard and framework called Social Emotional Learning. The intention is … that the “social emotional learning should be incorporated into all academic content standards as part of an integrated model of mental and emotional health … to promote antiracism and educational equity and to create conditions for all students to thrive.” The bill further reveals itself in multiple places with the use of language such as “antibias,” “institutional racism,” and “positive racial identity development.” Far from being common and agreed-upon language, this is rhetoric associated with … critical race theory. CRT views all American institutions from a racial identity perspective and encourages class struggle from that basis. The Social Emotional Learning framework makes critical race theory the law … in Oregon, making public school students as young as kindergarten see the world through the lens of race. The bill also adds a mechanism to force this on children outside the public school system. The Early Childhood Suspension and Expulsion Prevention Program primarily provides resources for early childhood educators on how to incorporate the ideals of critical race theory into their curriculum. This includes everything from information on how to encourage “positive racial identity development” to what it means to have “antibias practices.” … Any early childhood care and education programs “certified or registered” in the state of Oregon must request services from the Early Childhood Suspension and Expulsion Prevention Program when a young child is facing potential expulsion. Under this bill, early childhood educators and providers are no longer able to exercise their own professional judgment in matters of discipline, but are subject to the oversight of a centralized and racially motivated government body… . This bill is a drastic departure from the educational standards of the state of Oregon and the historical values of fairness and equality guaranteed by the Civil Rights Act and the Constitution. It ends the debate on critical race theory by cutting off the voices of local school boards, parents and educators, in favor of a biased sense of morality from the governor's office.

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Discussion Questions

Here are some questions to consider regarding how U.S. schools teach about slavery and racism:

• What are the key elements of critical race theory? To what degree, if any, is this theory being taught in K-12 classrooms?

• Why do some parents say that schools need to do a better job of teaching children about the history of slavery in America and the realities of racism? Why do other parents oppose efforts to do this?

• How and why has teaching about racism become a political issue in the United States today?

• What have some companies been doing to promote greater diversity, equity and inclusion in their workplaces? Why have some employees criticized these efforts?

• What is the concept of intersectionality? How does it affect the debate over classroom instruction on racism?

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Short Features

Intersectionality Seeks to Broaden Critical Race Theory's Reach

In 1989, legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw expanded critical race theory to include the concept of intersectionality.

While civil rights laws traditionally protected only a single marginalized identity, such as race or gender, Crenshaw argued that people are often discriminated against in multiple ways, based on intersecting identities, such as being both Black and female or Indigenous and queer. Intersectionality is a way to understand the implications of these layered identities and center them in the law to better protect people, she wrote.1

It can also help us to more effectively examine systems and hierarchies of privilege, such as how being white, male and affluent provides immense status and privilege, advantages that being a white woman or a Black man does not confer, according to Crenshaw.2

“White supremacy also brought a particular understanding of what it means to have gender roles,” says George Lee, a former high school teacher in Oklahoma, who has become a TikTok celebrity with videos covering topics ranging from transgender rights to settler colonialism and Black masculinity.3

“I'm a cisgender, straight, Black man, from Bryan-College Station, Texas, [who] has a particular education … a particular understanding of the world,” says Lee, who is now the coordinator of policy debate at the University of Oklahoma. “All that intersectionality makes up who I am, how I understand it, how I would describe it, how I first started to really internalize that white supremacy is always already intersectional. It's not just about race.”

Rather, he explains, “white supremacy also has ideas of beauty [and] different standards of ethics or morals when it comes to sexuality. So, in my mind, colonialism, white supremacy and racism [have always been] intersectional.”

Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, seen speaking at a 2018 event, developed the concept of intersectionality to explain how some marginalized people, such as Black women, can experience multiple forms of discrimination because of their identities. (Getty Images/The New York Women's Foundation/Monica Schipper)

Individuals also use Crenshaw's concept of intersectionality to better understand their own personal identities and how they may be marginalized. Many people of color, for example, develop an intuitive understanding of intersectionality as children, often as a survival tool. “I recognized at a very early age that the way that my Black body was identified by the laws in Bryan, Texas, at 12 was not the same way that my sister's Black body was identified at 11,” says Lee.

As an adult, “I'm not followed through the store just because I'm Black. I'm followed … because it's assumed that I'm Black and poor,” he says. Lee owns a home, has never committed a felony and holds three academic degrees, including master's degrees in Human Relations and Adult Higher Education. “But because I look the way I look and I speak the way I speak … there's a lot of assumptions made about how many baby mamas I've got, how many [laws] I broke, what my politics is on the police. To me, it's already intersectional.”

Some scholars have found fault with critical race theory for focusing so much on Black-white racial dynamics that it sidelines other groups or forces them to reframe their experiences in terms of the Black American struggle.4

However, in recent decades critical race studies have expanded to include a host of other identities, according to Danielle Kie Hart, a professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles. “We see a whole bunch of other crit movements — Lat crit, the new fem crit … queer legal theory, Asian-Pacific American crit,” she says.

Intersectional scholarship can also provide a framework for investigating how minority social and legal status changes over time, and how marginalized groups often are pitted against each other.

Chinese, Jewish, Italian and Irish immigrants to the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries all faced discrimination. Certain laws, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, barred specific immigrant groups. In this century, the Trump administration banned visitors from six majority Muslim countries and made a point of denigrating undocumented immigrants.5

Activists have been pushing for K-12 education to more accurately depict this intersectional history — and not just the ugly parts.

For example, “If you are an Asian child in the school system, you probably will never see yourself on the cover of a book or be the protagonist in a book … until probably high school, and even then, it's probably going to be about war,” says Natasha Capers, director of the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice, which advocates for culturally responsive public education. Textbooks typically center white narratives that explore a range of human experiences, while the already limited content on historically marginalized identities usually only tells “the tragic story of their existence,” Capers says.

For Jaime Koppel, a public-school parent and co-director of the Communities for Just Schools Fund, a coalition of philanthropists and community partners in Washington, D.C., the raging controversy around critical race theory in public schools presents an opportunity to discuss “the importance of talking about intersectional identities as a matter of course in the ways that we teach children.”

Outside the classroom, according to Lee, young people have demonstrated an incredible appetite for the kind of varied and intersectional social content that has brought Lee success on Instagram and TikTok, where he has over 200,000 and 1.7 million followers, respectively. “That's what kind of gave my appeal to different people,” says Lee. “I try to make everything intersectional and interdisciplinary because it's really how my background is.”

— Ruth Terry

[1] Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989, https://tinyurl.com/y6g9znys.

[2] Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review, July 1991, https://tinyurl.com/ybx7aexa.

[3] George Lee, TikTok channel, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/ykwk2y9n.

[4] Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (2017).

[5] “Chinese Exclusion Act,” History.com, updated Sept. 13, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/mrykb8mn; “Presidential Documents: Executive Order 13769 of January 27, 2017,” Federal Register, https://tinyurl.com/ewvmukmn.

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Virginia Suburb Becomes “Epicenter of Conservative Outrage” on Schools

Sign-wielding parents at angry rallies. School board meetings marked by vitriol and sometimes violence. Complaints about discrimination, and countercomplaints about efforts to mitigate discrimination.

It is all part of the toxic stew that has turned Loudoun County, a suburban community 45 miles west of Washington, D.C., into what The New York Times called “the epicenter of conservative outrage over education” and critical race theory. And it propelled the county and its schools into the middle of Virginia's hotly contested gubernatorial election last fall.6

In June of last year, hundreds of white parents, angrily accusing Loudoun schools of teaching their children that racism in America was structural and systemic, stormed into a school board meeting and chanted “Shame on you!” at board members, Reuters reported. Some held signs defiantly proclaiming “We the Parents Stand Up!”7

A man attending a school board meeting in Loudoun County, Va., in October shouts at board members, angered that his one-minute time limit to speak expired. The school district has been engulfed in controversy over how racism is addressed in its classrooms. (Getty Images/The Washington Post/Katherine Frey)

Katrece Nolen, a Black parent with two children in Loudoun schools, retorted that offensive school activities damaging to Black children elicited no such ire on the part of white parents.

“The parents who are outraged right now and spreading this misinformation about teaching critical race theory… . Why were they not concerned about [slavery] being taught as if it was a game?” Nolen said, referring to a classroom activity in which a Black child was asked to pretend to be a fugitive slave.8 “If they don't like equity and what's discussed and taught now, what's their answer to what was being taught to our kids?”

White conservative activism has deep and complicated roots in Loudoun, which has the highest median household income of any county in the United States.9 It was a “hotbed of Confederate resistance” during the Civil War, according to The Washington Post, and later flouted the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 mandate to desegregate public school systems until 1968, while continuing to severely underresource local Black schools.10

Since then, the county's population has become increasingly diverse. Between 2000 and 2020, the number of white residents fell by 25 percent. Now, only about 46 percent of Loudoun's 83,000-plus public school students are white, while just under 23 percent are Asian, almost 18 percent are Hispanic and nearly 7 percent are Black. More than 15 percent are economically disadvantaged.11

Efforts to promote equity and inclusion in the Loudoun public schools have not kept pace with the demographic changes. There have been isolated incidents of a divisive nature, including a textbook that associated Muslims with terrorists and a mock slave auction classroom activity.12

Accusations of institutional racial bias led concerned Black parents to protest for years at local school board meetings.13 In 2019, the local NAACP said the county's magnet schools discriminated against Black and Latino students, prompting an investigation by then-State Attorney General Mark Herring, which ultimately corroborated the NAACP complaint.14

Equity Collective, a consulting firm the school system hired in February 2019, found that Loudoun's minority students were disproportionately disciplined and frequently the targets of racial hate speech and violence. In addition, the group's report said, “principals and teachers indicate a low level of racial consciousness and racial literacy. People are unclear and fearful on how to participate in conversations about race, let alone respond to racially charged incidents.”15

In 2020, board member John Beatty provoked deep anger when he commented during an equity training session that newly emancipated Blacks struggled during Reconstruction because they lacked “the patronage of a master.” Beatty was later removed from the board's equity and discipline committees.16

Soon after, the school system created “Action Plans to Combat Systemic Racism.” Goals included mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) trainings for school staff; finalizing a protocol for responding to racial slurs and hate speech in schools; and revising the dress code policy to prohibit displays on school property “of flags, images, or symbols … that represent racist or hateful ideology.”17 In 2021, Loudoun schools formally committed to honoring the attorney general's guidelines for reforming magnet school admissions, which came out of the 2019 investigation.18

But these strides toward equity provoked swift opposition. Some teachers disliked the DEI trainings, calling them “ham-handed and over the top,” The New York Times reported.19 Many taxpayers said they resented the $6 million earmarked for DEI training and related programs in 2022.20 And the conservative political action committee Fight for Schools started a campaign to recall school board members over what the committee said was the board members’ support for critical race theory (CRT).21

Most newsworthy were the explosive school board meetings in which parents accused the school system of teaching critical race theory, school administrators denied these accusations — and local police were called in to subdue disruptive and occasionally violent demonstrators.

In board meetings and in comments to journalists, Superintendent Scott Ziegler repeatedly denied that Loudoun schools are teaching critical race theory. However, he did acknowledge that “culturally responsive instruction” and CRT do have overlapping terminology. “All of us in this work [of equity and diversity] are using this common vocabulary because it defines this work,” Ziegler said.22

Virginia's 2021 gubernatorial race played out against this seething backdrop. Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe was the early favorite, according to polls and pundits. But Republican Glenn Youngkin surged to victory, in part by championing the issue of parental choice in education. McAuliffe alienated many centrist voters and concerned parents when he said during a televised debate: “I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”23

Jean Card, a political consultant based in northern Virginia, said Youngkin, whose campaign repeatedly ran a video of McAuliffe's statement, capitalized on the resentment the comment generated. She said Youngkin's success with the school issue “was about parental involvement more than CRT itself.”

— Ruth Terry

[6] Stephanie Saul, “How a School District Got Caught in Virginia's Political Maelstrom,” The New York Times, Nov. 14, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yessfmn8.

[7] “Chaos at Virginia school meeting over history and race,” Video, Reuters, June 24, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y6hsrsdf; Saul, ibid.

[8] Melinda D. Anderson, “The Missing Voices In The Panic Over Critical Race Theory,” HuffPost, Nov. 30, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y4w5e5y9.

[9] Dan Burrows, “The 10 ‘Real’ Richest Counties in the U.S.,” Kiplinger, Aug. 2, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2p96u64f; Char Adams, Allan Smith and Aadit Tambe, “Map: See which states have passed critical race theory bills,” NBC News, June 17, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yfw4wyy7.

[10] Hannah Natanson, “How and why Loudoun County became the face of the nation's culture wars,” The Washington Post, July 5, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yz4gxb56; Rick Massimo, “Loudoun County apologizes to Black community for fighting school desegregation,” WTOP News, Sept. 25, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y42hkram.

[11] Natanson, ibid.; “Overview of Loudoun County Public Schools,” U.S. News & World Report, https://tinyurl.com/yxnf3vcz.

[12] Shomari Stone and Gina Cook, “Virginia Students Told to Be Slaves for Black History Month Gym Activity: NAACP,” NBC4, Feb. 21, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/2p8z5j96.

[13] Anderson, op. cit.

[14] Elliot C. Williams, “Loudoun County Public Schools Agrees To Policy Reforms Following State's Discrimination Investigation,” DCist, Feb. 19, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y2pbnrht.

[15] “Systemic Equity Assessment: A Picture of Racial Equity Challenges and Opportunities in Loudoun County Public School District,” Equity Collective, June 6, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yypf5awe.

[16] “Beatty to be Stripped of Committee Posts,” Loudoun Now, June 2, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y6dxu4po.

[17] “Action Plans to Combat Systemic Racism,” Loudoun County Public Schools, August 2020, https://tinyurl.com/yjkdosl5.

[18] “Resolution Agreement In re: Loudoun County Public Schools Virginia OCR Case No. 19-2652,” Office of the Attorney General of Virginia, Feb. 18, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yy9e2rrm.

[19] Saul, op. cit.

[20] Sam Dorman, “Virginia county allocating more than $6M for ‘equity and equity training,’” Fox News, April 21, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/ye85jjhq.

[21] Sam Dorman, “Virginia parents group launches PAC to unseat school board members over reopening, race controversies,” Fox News, April 13, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yfvea8ff.

[22] Hannah Natanson, “Top Loudoun school officials defend equity work against charges of ‘critical race theory,’” The Washington Post, June 2, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y6xgmtvu.

[23] Xander Landen, “Is Critical Race Theory McAuliffe's Kryptonite? Democrats’ Missteps Make It Hard to Tell,” Newsweek, Oct. 31, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y5w3zhvs.

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Bibliography

Books

Delgado, Richard, and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, NYU Press, 2017. In this updated third edition, two legal scholars explain the key tenets of critical race theory using easy-to-understand language and landmark court cases.

Givens, Jarvis R., Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching, Harvard University Press, 2021. A Harvard professor explores the achievements of Black History Month founder Carter G. Woodson within the enduring tradition of Black pedagogy.

Hannah-Jones, Nikole, et al., The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, One World, 2021. The Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter expands the original 1619 Project with additional essays, poetry and archival photographs.

McRae, Elizabeth Gillespie, Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy, Oxford University Press, 2018. A historian chronicles how white women used strategies from political lobbying to student essay contests to uphold segregation from the 1920s to the 1970s.

Okun, Tema, The Emperor Has No Clothes: Teaching about Race and Racism to People Who Don't Want to Know, Information Age Publishing, 2010. A practical guide that looks at how white supremacy manifests itself in daily life and how leaders and educators can disrupt it.

Rothstein, Richard, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, Liveright, 2017. A housing policy expert traces the link between state-sponsored redlining and today's persistently segregated communities.

Articles

Bell, Derrick, “Serving Two Masters: Integration Ideals and Client Interests in School Desegregation Litigation,” The Yale Law Journal, March 1976, https://tinyurl.com/y2eydcm6. In this landmark essay, a founding critical race theorist establishes one of the framework's key concepts: interest convergence, which maintains that racial progress only takes place when there are concurrent benefits to white people.

Benns, Whitney, “American Slavery, Reinvented,” The Atlantic, Sept. 21, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/hapunpl. A writer exposes modern-day forced labor practices that mimic historic slavery in today's U.S. prisons.

Crenshaw, Kimberlé, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989, https://tinyurl.com/y6g9znys. An iconic feminist legal scholar develops intersectionality — the idea that people with intersecting marginalized identities are oppressed in different ways than those with a single marginalized identity — to expand existing legal protections against discrimination.

Givens, Jarvis R., “What's Missing From the Discourse About Anti-racist Teaching,” The Atlantic, May 21, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yypvg6pz. The Harvard professor argues that media coverage of critical race theory in schools entirely overlooks Black American pedagogy and excellence in teaching.

Hannah-Jones, Nikole, et al., “The 1619 Project,” The New York Times Magazine, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6m2pten. A deeply researched series of 10 essays and interactive content that reframes the nation's origin story and delves into the legacy of enslavement in America.

Ray, Rashawn, and Alexandra Gibbons, “Why are states banning critical race theory?” Brookings Institution, November 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yhvmrzfw. A fellow (Ray) and a researcher at the centrist think tank explain the controversy over critical race theory in American schools.

Wallace-Wells, Benjamin, “How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory,” The New Yorker, June 18, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yjbsxqv9. A journalist chronicles conservative activist Christopher Rufo's campaign to rebrand critical race theory.

Reports

Friedman, Jonathan, and James Tager, “Educational Gag Orders: Legislative Restrictions on the Freedom to Read, Learn, and Teach,” PEN America, Nov. 8, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y4e9y8mc. Free-expression advocates decry legislation banning critical race theory and related concepts from classrooms.

Sailor, Angela, et al., “Civics Studies: Why They Matter, What Parents and Teachers Think, and How They Can Reclaim Truth,” The Heritage Foundation, June 14, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y4ln5u2h. A report by a conservative think tank asserts that critical race theory has infiltrated K-12 civics education.

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The Next Step

DEI

Bristow, Candice, “Why DEI programs are failing,” TechCrunch, Nov. 16, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/zn76h3ub. An expert on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs suggests that many companies are slow to diversify their workplaces because they do not put inclusive structures in place to support a diverse work culture.

Burwell, Martha, and Bernice Maldonado, “How Does Your Company Support ‘First-Generation Professionals’?” Harvard Business Review, Jan. 7, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/3p84k3yw. Research suggests that moving up the socioeconomic ladder is becoming more difficult, but there are steps companies can take to support first-generation professionals.

Hartmans, Avery, “Low pay isn't causing people to quit their jobs — toxic workplace culture is,” Business Insider, Jan. 13, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/2p8hd66p. An analysis of reviews on the Glassdoor job assessment site found that toxic workplace culture, including a failure to prioritize DEI, was 10 times more likely than compensation to contribute to an employee leaving.

Elections

Crampton, Liz, “GOP sees ‘huge red wave’ potential by targeting critical race theory,” Politico, Jan. 5, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/2bm63sf6. Republicans in state legislatures are planning to push through dozens of anti-critical race theory bills, believing the issue will motivate their voters ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

Gaudiano, Nicole, “Rep. Steve Scalise and 15 other Republicans lay out their plan to use controversies over the teaching of race and gender in schools to beat Democrats in 2022,” Business Insider, Dec. 17, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/rytuxf6y. Republican lawmakers in Washington also see an opening on education issues, including controversies over critical race theory, ahead of the midterms.

Masters, Kate, “Can Youngkin really ban critical race theory in Virginia schools?” Prince William Times, Dec. 20, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2b3ywx9d. Education policy experts say there is no clear path for Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin to ban critical race theory in schools, even though he highlighted the issue during his 2021 campaign.

Legislation and Curriculum

Belsha, Kalyn, Marr Barnum and Marta W. Aldrich, “Teachers say critical race theory laws are cutting short classroom conversations,” Des Moines Register, Dec. 26, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yu2h3rzj. Iowa teachers have started to avoid discussing issues of racism and inequality in the classroom after a new state law came into effect that forbids teachers from describing the United States as “systemically racist or sexist.”

Krauth, Olivia, “Kentucky's anti-‘critical race theory’ bills draw ire of students, educators,” Louisville Courier Journal, Jan. 12, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/bdeys225. Kentucky teachers and students protested in the state Capitol in opposition to two anti-critical race theory bills that had been introduced in the legislature.

Leonard, Kimberly, “Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to let parents sue schools that teach critical race theory,” Business Insider, Jan. 11, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/2p889x8n. In his State of the State address, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis asked the Legislature to pass a bill that would allow parents to sue school districts teaching critical race theory.

School Boards

Boser, Taylor, “New USD 259 school board members are being sworn in Monday night,” KAKE, Jan. 10, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/32fz3zph. Republican candidates won school board seats in Wichita, Kan., with campaigns focused on opposing critical race theory and mask mandates.

Donahue, Allison R., “State education board passes measure countering GOP's ‘critical race theory’ bills,” Michigan Advance, Jan. 12, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/yvsy5cr7. The Michigan State Board of Education passed a resolution in favor of “teaching comprehensive history,” a response to the introduction of anti-critical race theory bills in the state Legislature.

McCallen, Scott, “Parents protest Farmington High school board meeting over CRT, 21-day equity challenge,” Iosco County News-Herald, Jan. 13, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/yyyexuta. Parents protested at a local school board meeting in a Detroit suburb in opposition to curriculum that they said asked students to “join a BLM or affiliated protest.”

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Contacts

American Civil Liberties Union
125 Broad St., 18th Floor, New York, NY 10004
212-549-2500
aclu.org
Pre-eminent free speech advocacy group founded in 1920.

American Federation of Teachers
555 New Jersey Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001
202-879-4400
aft.org
AFL-CIO affiliate that organizes collective bargaining and political activism on behalf of its 1.7 million members.

Association of American Educators
25909 Pala Place, Suite 330, Mission Viejo, CA 92691
800-704-7799
aaeteachers.org
Nonpartisan organization founded in 1994 to provide resources for professional educators.

Black Lives Matter
blacklivesmatter.com
A global network that aims to dismantle white supremacy and empower Black people and communities against police violence.

Communities for Just Schools Fund
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W., #300, Washington, D.C. 20036
202-792-6556
cjsfund.org
National coalition of donors and community partners that supports local action to improve public schools for all students.

Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism
485 Madison Ave., 16th floor, New York, NY 10022
fairforall.org
Recently formed nonprofit seeking to advance civil liberties and promote “a common culture based on fairness, understanding and humanity,” particularly in K-12 education.

Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
510 Walnut St., Suite 1250, Philadelphia, PA 19106
215-717-FIRE
thefire.org
Organization that advocates for free speech, due process and other constitutional rights of students and teachers.

NYC Coalition for Educational Justice
726 Broadway, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10003
212-998-5501
nyccej.org
Parent-led organization that seeks to shape culturally responsive and equitable public school education.

Oregonians for Liberty in Education
P.O. Box 2541, Hillsboro, OR 97123
971-317-8695
libertyineducation.org
A nonprofit that lobbies for parents’ rights and unbiased school curricula.

The Zinn Education Project
P.O. Box 73038, Washington, D.C. 20056
202-588-7205
zinnedproject.org
Educational nonprofit that offers free, downloadable lesson plans and teaching materials reflecting the ethos of historian Howard Zinn, whose A People's History of the United States centers the narratives of oppressed and marginalized Americans.

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Footnotes

[1] Hannah Natanson, “Youngkin takes office with immediate focus on education, thrilling some and terrifying others,” The Washington Post, Jan. 12, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/5n7nf8t6.

[2] “Executive Order Number One (2022),” Commonwealth of Virginia, Office of the Governor, Jan. 15, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/3eyzpk6h.

[3] Natanson, op. cit.

[4] David Zatuchni, “Are Employer ‘White Privilege’ Workshops Legal Under Anti-Discrimination Employment Laws?” Zatuchni & Associates, Sept. 14, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y477a7tq.

[5] Rashawn Ray and Alexandra Gibbons, “Why are states banning critical race theory?” Brookings Institution, November 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yhvmrzfw.

[6] Terry Gross, “A ‘Forgotten History’ Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America,” National Public Radio, May 3, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yyro935k.

[7] “What is Systemic Racism?” United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yyvhrzxq.

[8] Rachel Hatzipanagos, “What the founders of critical race theory have to say about the conservative attacks,” The Washington Post, July 22, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y32rkw4e.

[9] Benjamin Wallace-Wells, “How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory,” The New Yorker, June 18, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yjbsxqv9.

[10] Victor Garcia, “Journalist declares ‘one-man war against critical race theory’ after nuke lab holds ‘white privilege,’ training,” Fox News, Aug. 17, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y2o8mgeq; “Executive Order 13950: Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping,” The White House, Sept. 22, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y42ehqct.

[11] Ray and Gibbons, op. cit.

[12] Janel George, “Critical Race Theory Isn't a Curriculum. It's a Practice,” Education Week, May 26, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y5l93zqk.

[13] “The Trials of Critical Race Theory,” CBS News, Nov. 7, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y4oqz5g9.

[14] “John McWhorter on How Critical Race Theory is Taught in Schools,” Firing Line with Margaret Hoover, PBS, Aug. 20, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y4fd3teo.

[15] N'dea Yancey-Bragg, “Mock slave auctions, racist lessons: How US history class often traumatizes, dehumanizes Black students,” USA Today, March 4, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y2euo2f3.

[16] Erin Richards and Alia Wong, “Parents want kids to learn about ongoing effects of slavery — but not critical race theory. They're the same thing,” USA Today, Nov. 3, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yfcg7jen.

[17] John Biewen, “Seeing White,” Podcast, Scene on Radio, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y6h3yo3v.

[18] “What Students Are Saying About Teaching Race in Schools, Reviving Extinct Animals and Live Sports,” The New York Times, Sept. 30, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yjnwnksy.

[19] “‘Leftish Agenda In Class’: 15-Year-Old High School Student Exposes Critical Race Theory In Speech,” YouTube, June 17, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/ygkx3xrq; Noble Ingram, “Forget Critical Race Theory in the Classroom. Kids Are Learning About Race on TikTok,” EdSurge, July 27, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y5afa8f7.

[20] Nicholas W. Papageorge, Seth Gershenson and Kyung Min Kang, “Teacher Expectations Matter,” Working Paper 25255, National Bureau of Economic Research, Nov. 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y4rrablm.

[21] “DC 3rd graders made to reenact Holocaust ‘because Jews ruined Christmas,’” Times of Israel, Dec. 20, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y2st3y7k; “Parents Outraged After Black Student is ‘Sold’ During Class Assignment on Slavery,” Inside Education, March 20, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y56voqtd; Yancey-Bragg, op. cit.

[22] Emily Boudreau, “Teaching the Hard Histories of Racism,” Harvard Graduate School of Education, Feb. 22, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y37cfv2w; “Teaching Materials,” The Zinn Education Project, https://tinyurl.com/y3je3xyu.

[23] “How Should I Talk about Race in My Mostly White Classroom?” The Anti-Defamation League, https://tinyurl.com/y359tqo6.

[24] Michael Powell, “New York's Private Schools Tackle White Privilege. It Has Not Been Easy,” The New York Times, Aug. 27, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yxpjv555.

[25] Jarvis R. Givens, “What's Missing From the Discourse About Anti-racist Teaching,” The Atlantic, May 21, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yypvg6pz.

[26] Rohini Anand and Mary-Frances Winters, “A Retrospective View of Corporate Diversity Training From 1964 to the Present,” Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2008, https://tinyurl.com/y22y7fal.

[27] “How to Build an Effective DEI Program,” Traliant and WBR Insights, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y2eznpwk.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Beth Kowitt, “Companies are missing a critical first step when it comes to progress on diversity,” Fortune, March 5, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y3epm4cm.

[30] Arielle Pardes, “Yet Another Year of Venture Capital Being Really White,” Wired, Dec. 29, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/yznp7v9y; David Gura, “You Can Still Count the Number Of Black CEOs On One Hand,” National Public Radio, May 27, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/ygu88xp5.

[31] “Missing Pieces Report: The Board Diversity Census of Women and Minorities on Fortune 500 Boards, 6th edition,” Deloitte, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y57acv8j.

[32] Gavin Hinks, “S&P appoints nearly 200% more black board directors in past year,” Board Agenda, May 26, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y5mf7uov.

[33] Pippa Stevens, “Companies are making bold promises about greater diversity, but there's a long way to go,” CNBC, June 11, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y9hbqetm.

[34] Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev, “Why Diversity Programs Fail,” Harvard Business Review, July 2016, https://tinyurl.com/hqnyren.

[35] Kim Tran, “The Diversity and Inclusion Industry Has Lost Its Way,” Harper's Bazaar, March 23, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yj5v9d6y; Dobbin and Kalev, ibid.

[36] Sheryl Estrada, “D&I roles have more than doubled since 2015, report says,” HR Dive, July 9, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y63wxu3s.

[37] Stevens, op. cit.

[38] Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (2018); Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist (2019).

[39] Dobbin and Kalev, op. cit.

[40] “The Study of White Men Leading Through Diversity & Inclusion,” Greatheart Leader Labs, January 2013, https://tinyurl.com/y6qyaxfc; Lily Zheng, “How to Show White Men That Diversity and Inclusion Efforts Need Them,” Harvard Business Review, Oct. 28, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y57ay68g.

[41] Jennifer Miller, “Their Bosses Asked Them To Lead Diversity Reviews. Guess Why,” The New York Times, Oct. 12, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y252qerq.

[42] Amanda Sakuma, “When Implicit Bias Training Antagonizes the Workers It's Supposed to Help,” Vice, June 28, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y69bbyjd.

[43] Dobbin and Kalev, op. cit.

[44] “Free Speech Timeline,” Middle Tennessee State University, https://tinyurl.com/ye3kn967.

[45] “Text of the Ruling in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier,” Education Week, Jan. 20, 1988, https://tinyurl.com/yy8brnww.

[46] “Garcetti Et. Al. v. Ceballos,” Legal Information Institute, 2006, https://tinyurl.com/y5w8qt2x.

[47] Bari Weiss, Christopher Rufo and David French, “Should Public Schools Ban Critical Race Theory? A debate between Christopher Rufo and David French,” Common Sense, May 30, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y4ocnvmz.

[48] Ibid.

[49] David L. Hudson, Jr., “Compelled Speech,” The First Amendment Encyclopedia, https://tinyurl.com/y3caay5t.

[50] Justin Lee, “David French and Conservative Opposition to Anti-CRT Legislation,” Arc Digital, June 21, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2vvzxxz7.

[51] Lee, ibid.; David French, “A thread on the folly of the anti-CRT bills and the danger of banning ideas …,” Twitter post, June 11, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y4oqcdnw.

[52] Keith E. Whittington, “Banning ‘critical race theory’ would be bad for conservatives, too,” The Washington Post, June 30, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y8soqnbe.

[53] Nate Hochman, “Critical Race Theory and Academic Freedom,” City Journal, June 17, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y6x4e4ax.

[54] Beth Austin, “1619: Virginia's First Africans,” Hampton History Museum, December 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3s54d98; Paul Finkelman, “Slavery in the United States: Persons or Property?” Duke Law Scholarship Repository, 2012, https://tinyurl.com/35zn923t.

[55] Finkelman, ibid.

[56] Robinson, W. Stitt, “The Legal Status of the Indian in Colonial Virginia,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, July 1953, https://tinyurl.com/y5pchlnv.

[57] Ibid.

[58] “Literacy as Freedom,” Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2014, https://tinyurl.com/y3oqnzfd.

[59] Jenny Bourne, “Slavery in the United States,” EH.Net Encyclopedia, March 26, 2008, https://tinyurl.com/pdc4z27.

[60] Finkelman, op. cit., and in Jean Allain, ed., The Legal Understanding of Slavery: From the Historical to the Contemporary (2012), ch. 6.

[61] “The U.S. Constitution, Article 1. Section 2. The ‘Three-Fifths Clause,’” Thirteen/WNET New York, Slavery and the Making of America, 2004, https://tinyurl.com/y7zusbvn.

[62] Shankar Vedantam et al., “The Founding Contradiction: Thomas Jefferson's Stance On Slavery,” Hidden Brain, National Public Radio, June 29, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y5z5aqfy.

[63] “Early Foundations of Federal Indian Law,” Federal Indian Law for Alaska Tribes, University of Alaska Fairbanks, https://tinyurl.com/y38sop6s; Ibram X. Kendi and David Treuer, “Repairing the Past: Returning Native Land,” Be Antiracist with Ibram X. Kendi, https://tinyurl.com/yyhln79c.

[64] Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., “The 1619 Project,” The New York Times Magazine, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6m2pten; “Slave Patrols: An Early Form of American Policing,” National Law Enforcement Memorial and Museum, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/y29wvatl.

[65] “Did Abolitionists Cause the Civil War?” The Abolition Seminar, The Library Company of Philadelphia, 2014, https://tinyurl.com/y5fm72c2.

[66] Antoinette Harrell and Jordan Fornal, “Black People in the US Were Enslaved Well into the 1960s,” Vice, Feb. 28, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yxzxj54o.

[67] Donald R. Walker, “Convict Lease System,” Texas State Historical Association Handbook of Texas, Dec. 1, 1994, https://tinyurl.com/y4hrg8ff.

[68] Whitney Benns, “American Slavery, Reinvented,” The Atlantic, Sep. 21, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/hapunpl.

[69] “Black Leaders During Reconstruction,” History.com, Jan. 26, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y8xcsex3.

[70] “Andrew Johnson,” History.com, Aug. 21, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yczh8qlh; “35b. Radical Reconstruction,” USHistory.org, https://www.ushistory.org/US/35b.asp.

[71] Elizabeth R. Varon, “Andrew Johnson: The American Franchise,” Miller Center, the University of Virginia, https://tinyurl.com/y3dfqyhr.

[72] Nakia D. Parker, “Black Codes and Slave Codes,” Oxford Bibliographies, March 25, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/yxebu4n8; “The Southern ‘Black Codes’ of 1865-66,” Constitutional Rights Foundation, https://tinyurl.com/y4p6o343.

[73] “Ku Klux Klan: A History of Racism,” Southern Poverty Law Center, March 1, 2011, https://tinyurl.com/y2q44jye.

[74] Carol Anderson with Tonya Bolden, “Voter Suppression and Literacy Tests,” Teaching Tolerance, https://tinyurl.com/y26zljpb.

[75] “Compromise of 1877,” History.com, Nov. 27, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/ycokg5h3.

[76] “Plessy v. Ferguson (Jim Crow Laws): Topics in Chronicling America,” Library of Congress, https://tinyurl.com/yjk5eqae.

[77] “Reconstruction in America: Racial Violence after the Civil War,” Equal Justice Initiative, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y2gxfrax.

[78] “Police and State Involvement with Lynching,” State Sanctioned, https://tinyurl.com/y4zn9p5z.

[79] Deneen L. Brown, “Remembering ‘Red Summer,’ when white mobs massacred Blacks from Tulsa to D.C.,” National Geographic, June 20, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yfbxnjcz; Audie Cornish, Lauren Hodges and Patrick Jarenwattananon, “Remembering Red Summer: Years Of Racial Violence ‘Set The Stage’ For Tulsa Massacre,” National Public Radio, June 2, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yxp9amt7.

[80] Anna North, “How racist policing took over American cities, explained by a historian,” Vox, June 6, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/yazqzock.

[81] “Minorities and the New Deal,” Lumen Learning, https://tinyurl.com/y44pfcy8.

[82] Gross, op. cit.

[83] “Segregation in America,” Equal Justice Initiative, https://tinyurl.com/ya9zjpx2.

[84] “The Great Society & Urban Riots,” University of Miami, https://tinyurl.com/y3nh7w2z.

[85] Ibid.

[86] “1968 Kerner Commission Report,” Othering & Belonging Institute, University of California, Berkeley, https://tinyurl.com/4y9etvxy.

[87] Elizabeth Hinton and DeAnza Cook, “The Mass Criminalization of Black Americans: A Historical Overview,” Annual Review of Criminology, January 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y6f6dl9x.

[88] John Ishiyama, William J. Miller and Eszter Simon, “Handbook on Teaching and Learning in Political Science and International Relations,” Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/emtya2hs.

[89] Janel George, “A Lesson on Critical Race Theory,” American Bar Association, Jan. 11, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yj5vmnog.

[90] “ACLU Releases Crack Cocaine Report, Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 Deepened Racial Inequity in Sentencing,” Press release, ACLU, Oct. 26, 2006, https://tinyurl.com/y444orpg.

[91] Jesse Lee, “President Obama Signs the Fair Sentencing Act,” Press release, White House, Aug. 3, 2010, https://tinyurl.com/y2oa9tc2.

[92] “The Drug War, Mass Incarceration and Race,” Drug Policy Alliance, June 2015, https://tinyurl.com/y6hqgfao.

[93] Bettina L. Love and Brandelyn Tosolt. “Reality or Rhetoric? Barack Obama and Post-Racial America,” Race, Gender & Class, 2010, https://tinyurl.com/yynne5nd.

[94] Christopher F. Rufo, “Bad Education,” City Journal, Feb. 11, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y4k2a8n3; Mary Ellen Cagnassola, “Fact Check: Are Buffalo Schools Teaching Students That All Whites Perpetuate Racism?” Newsweek, Feb. 26, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y9sy64pb.

[95] Ray and Gibbons, op. cit.; Stephen Sawchuk, “What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is It Under Attack?” Education Week, May 18, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yfdr6epo.

[96] “Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping,” Executive Order 13950, Federal Register, Sept. 22, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y42ehqct.

[97] “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” Executive Order 13985, Federal Register, Jan. 20, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y4bl3v5p.

[98] “S.968 — Combatting Racist Training in the Military Act of 2021,” Tom Cotton Senator for Arkansas, March 25, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y3jwghsj.

[99] “S.2346 — Stop CRT Act,” 117th Congress, Congress.gov, July 14, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y63jkahr.

[100] “Sen. Cruz Introduces Bill to Block Federal Funding for Critical Race Theory Training,” Press release, Ted Cruz U.S. Senator for Texas, June 24, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y4gv66u9.

[101] Andrew Ujifusa, “‘Stop CRT’ Bill, Votes in Congress Add to Political Drama Over Critical Race Theory,” Education Week, July 15, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y2s8nb5d.

[102] Ledyard King and Mabinty Quarshie, “It's not just Virginia. Education and critical race theory are on the ballot across the US in 2022,” USA Today, Dec. 5, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yxzg9wbg.

[103] Jonathan Friedman, “Educational Gag Orders,” PEN America, accessed Jan. 14, 2022, https://pen.org/report/educational-gag-orders/; Ray and Gibbons, op. cit.

[104] “Governor DeSantis Announces Legislative Proposal to Stop W.O.K.E. Activism and Critical Race Theory in Schools and Corporations,” Press release, Ron DeSantis 46th Governor of Florida, Dec. 15, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2p8rv2yw.

[105] Ray and Gibbons, op. cit.

[106] Josh Hammer, “Yes, We Should Ban Critical Race Theory from Our Schools,” Newsweek, July 1, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y5olmuxx.

[107] Sherry Sylvester and Carol Swain, “Critical race theory bans protect our history and students,” Washington Examiner, Nov. 10, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yxhsgpyf.

[108] Ray and Gibbons, op. cit.

[109] “AAE Releases Survey Results on Critical Race Theory and Culturally Responsive Teaching,” American Association of Educators, July 2, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y5rne42f.

[110] “ACLU, ACLU Of Oklahoma, Lawyers Committee File Lawsuit Challenging Oklahoma Classroom Censorship Bill Banning Race and Gender Discourse,” Press release, ACLU, Oct. 19, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y2n7endk.

[111] Ray and Gibbons, op. cit.

[112] “Pledge to Teach the Truth,” The Zinn Education Project, Sept. 15, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yznoaljp.

[113] Stephen Sawchuk, “Local School Boards Are Banning Critical Race Theory. Here's How That Looks in 7 Districts,” Education Week, Aug. 25, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yhnym52c.

[114] Michael Ruiz, “California school board bans critical race theory,” Fox News, Aug. 11, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yekk5vua.

[115] Liv Finne, “More school districts refuse to teach a person's race determines if they are guilty or innocent, more or less capable,” Washington Policy Center, July 27, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y5ya47kb.

[116] Emerson Sykes and Sarah Hinger, “State Lawmakers Are Trying to Ban Talk About Race in Schools,” ACLU, May 14, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y5byafgw.

[117] Tyler Kingkade and Mike Hixenbaugh, “Parents protesting ‘critical race theory’ identify another target: Mental health programs,” NBC News, Nov. 15, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/ygt8um5s.

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About the Author

Ruth Terry is a Black and Puerto Rican American freelancer based in Istanbul. She earned a master's of public administration and worked in nonprofit fundraising before transitioning to journalism in 2010 — a career shift that began with a nonprofit best practices column for a regional business magazine. Since then, Ruth has written about food, culture, race and travel for national and international outlets, including Al Jazeera, National Geographic, Nature, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time.

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