“Mommy, am I a racist?”
The sad tale of a child coming home from school and asking that question was put forth in the Tennessee General Assembly as one of the reasons the state needed to pass a bill forbidding the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) in the state’s schools. Teachers are indoctrinating our children with trauma-inducing leftist bilge, said the legislators. So they passed a law banning the teaching of CRT and anything else that implies that “an individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously.”
Pshew! That was close. Can’t have
our students learning anything about race or privilege.
This concern about CRT isn’t limited to Tennessee. Fourteen other states have passed similar laws. It’s the topic du jour in the right-wing media ecosphere. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Mary Kay) and other GOP camera-sniffers bloviate about it whenever someone puts a microphone in front of them. Their message is always the same: The crazy, leftist, socialist liberals want teachers to tell your kids they’re racists!
Actually, critical race theory is a decades-old, elective, college-level area of study, often taught in law schools, where it’s used to examine how race has historically shaped our current legal system. CRT studies racism as a social construct — as opposed to something tied solely to an individual — and the effects it has upon society.
Those who are demanding that it shouldn’t be taught in our public schools might as well be demanding that teachers quit telling kids the Earth is flat. Little Braxton and Brittney are not being taught that they are racists by their teachers in public schools. The right-wing anger machine is trying to ban something that isn’t even happening. Which, of course, is the whole point. Faux outrage is a feature, not a bug.
Critical race theory is just the latest in a long line of false fear-mongering tactics, what passes for Republican policies these days. Put it up there with “caravans are coming,” “they’re gonna take your guns,” “Obama is a Kenyan,” “Fauci caused COVID,” and, of course, “the election was stolen.” It’s a distraction, something to keep folks riled up against each other.
So what are children actually learning about race these days? If my long-ago junior high education is any indication (hopefully, it is not), they might learn that the Civil War wasn’t just about slavery, that it was also fought for economic reasons (as if the entire economy of the South wasn’t based on slavery). They’ll probably learn there were some great generals: Grant, Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee (and his noble surrender at Appomattox). They’ll learn about the glorious and bloody battles. They might learn about Harriet Tubman.
They probably won’t learn about what it felt like to be sold as livestock at a slave market or about the dozens of “race riots” around the country in the decades after the war — in Tulsa, Memphis, Chicago, Atlanta, Eufaula, Wilmington, and elsewhere — “riots” being a more comfortable word for lynchings, murders, and the wholesale destruction of Black communities. They might learn about segregation and the Civil Rights movement, but they probably won’t read firsthand accounts of what it felt like to be denied voting rights or refused service at restaurants, stores, and lunch counters. They might learn about fire hoses, dogs, burned buses, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but they won’t learn what it was like to have experienced the countless put-downs, slurs, insults, and indignities large and small suffered by Black Americans throughout our history.
Maybe these things aren’t taught because our educators don’t want children to be uncomfortable. More likely they aren’t taught because the entire structure of the American education system was historically created by white people. It’s almost as though we needed a critical theory about our racial history, something that could help all of us understand the fallout from hundreds of years of slavery and oppression of Black Americans, something that could help parents have a calm, informed discussion with their child when she comes home and asks, “Mommy, am I a racist?”