US fights back as states move to ban on critical race theory

Parents accuse schools of teaching their children to ‘loathe our history’; one mum said it reminded her of her childhood in Mao’s China

Laws banning the teaching of “critical race theory” are being proposed in state legislatures all over America as part of a new culture war.

The theory holds that racism is not simply a personal prejudice but a broader social disease, embedded in institutions and government policies. Discussed for decades in academic circles, it jumped into the national consciousness last year after the police killing of George Floyd and a reckoning on the issue that was felt on city streets, in corporate boardrooms and in schools.

Parents protesting about critical race theory regard it as an insidious and divisive ideology to which they were alerted during the pandemic when they happened to overhear their children’s lessons during remote schooling. In Virginia a mother named Xi Van Fleet became a heroine for opponents when she compared it to the doctrines she had been taught as a child in Mao’s China. “You are now teaching, training our children to be social justice warriors and to loathe our country and our history,” she said to cheers at a meeting of the Loudoun County school board.

Six states have passed laws banning its use in schools and a further 13 are considering similar legislation. In Montana the theory was effectively blocked by Austin Knudsen, the state’s attorney-general, who released an opinion declaring it “discriminatory”.

Some of the loudest arguments in the battle over the theory have erupted over its teaching at private schools, which are freer to make changes to their curriculums, but which have to answer to wealthier, more influential parents.

Last week an English teacher at a private school in New Jersey said she had resigned because the principal had begun dividing staff according to their race. “I was asked to see myself as a white woman primarily, as the most important defining characteristics of myself,” Dana Stangel-Plowe told NBC

The push, advanced by Republican-held legislatures, has alarmed some teachers who say the laws are so broad that they could effectively ban discussions of large sections of American history and literature. “This is an assault on the craft of teaching,” Brittany Paschall, an English teacher in Nashville, said. Paschall, who is black, said the new law passed in Tennessee was “asking me to ignore parts of my own identity”.

The law bans teachers from “promoting” the idea that “an individual, by virtue of race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously” or that they bear responsibility for actions committed by others of the same race in the past.

It also bars the idea that “a meritocracy is inherently racist or sexist” or might be designed to exclude others.

That is a hot topic in the broader debate over the theory, which often pits advocates of equality of opportunity against those who seek to recognise that some students are disadvantaged.

There have been disputes in school board meetings about the use of tests and selective admissions policies in public schools.

Many conservatives see the fight against critical race theory as a rallying cry, but it has not been universally adopted by Republicans. A bill targeting the theory in the classrooms of Kentucky was opposed by Mitch McConnell, 79, the Republican Senate minority leader, who said he did not believe the government should “be able to dictate, in effect, what’s taught”.

WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA

Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, legal scholars at the University of Alabama School of Law, co-authored a widely used primer on critical race theory first published 2001. The theory holds that white supremacy, and the racism that stems from it, is deeply embedded in laws and institutions and is not merely a personal prejudice. It had its origins in a recognition among academics in the 1970s “that the heady advances of the civil rights era of the 1960s had stalled and, in many respects, were being rolled back”. Delgado and other scholars such as Derrick Bell, the first African-American to gain tenure at Harvard Law School, argued that new theories were needed to combat “subtler forms of racism”. While traditional discussions about civil rights stress incremental change and “step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order”, they write.

Critical race theory has ignited a debate over equality of treatment and equality of outcomes. In education, this has led to arguments over whether admissions tests for elite public high schools enforce inequality by effectively discriminating against disadvantaged students. Critics of the theory say it does a disservice to black pupils by suggesting that they should be held to a lower standard.

The Times