"Republican legislation to limit teaching a historically accurate picture of U.S. history in public institutions has advanced in some half a dozen states."
Mind-boggling propaganda.
Mind-boggling propaganda.
NPR is usually a more balanced news source, but that last paragraph takes a definite one-sided stance in the phrase "a historically accurate picture" in reference to critical race theory. Critical race theory is not about historic accuracy (non-normative fact), it's a very normative activist perspective.
That being said, I'm strongly against any form of the law restricting what ideas can be taught, even wildly wrong and dangerous ones.
It's good, but not balanced.
There are very few places that are, and everyone is covering 'different things' it's like there is no accepted version of reality anymore.
If i’m wrong, i’ll donate $10 to NPR.
ETA: unsurprisingly, my money was safe. But at least they linked to the Juneteenth bill. That’s rare enough. I think it should be considered a bare minimum in modern reporting to link to the original sources.
Also, it's not 6 states banning CRT, it's 20 states now.
(CRT is calling white children oppressors, and black children victims. Neither is accurate or helpful. CRT is derived from Marxist Critical Theory. Since the US doesn't have a class struggle, racism has been inserted to make it a racism struggle.)
Perhaps a more accurate way to frame this is that both CRT and Marxism are separate instances of a collectivist way of thinking that tries to categorize people into groups based on their perceived power, where what informs that categorization is low dimensional (e.g merely class or merely race+gender). In that sense they're similar ideologies.
This is just incorrect. Critical Theory is a product of the Frankfurt School. They were explicitly applying Marxist thought to twentieth century politics, and wanted to understand why Marxism wasn't successful in the west.
This is a basic matter of record, not some wing-nut attempt to slander. Critical Theory is reworked Marxism to try to apply it to the modern West.
https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB3979/2021
That's its full text. You can read it, it's short.
Some highlights are that the bill mandates (that's mandates - not prevents) that Texan schoolchildren are educated about:
* "the history of Native Americans;"
* "the history of white supremacy, including but not limited to the institution of slavery, the eugenics movement, and the Ku Klux Klan, and the ways in which it is morally wrong;"
* "the history and importance of the civil right movement"
* "the history and importance of the women's suffrage movement"
* The Indian Removal Act
* the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850;
* Brown v. Board of Education;
* The Underground Railroad
The bill also mandates that Texan schoolchildren learn about such historical figures as MLK, Frederick Douglass, Sally Hemings and Cesar Chavez, to name but a few.
So tell me: who wants to prevent a "historically accurate picture of the United States" from being taught in schools - those who support a bill that requires children to be taught about the history of slavery, Indian genocide, the civil rights movement and white supremacy, or those who oppose such a bill?
And I've only talked about what what the bill requires. What does it prevent? What does HB3979 ban from Texan classroom? Again, I encourage you to read the whole thing yourself, but I know that most people don't click through to the source, so I'll quote again.
Some of the things that HB3979 bans from being taught to Texan schoolchildren include that:
* "an individual, by virtue of the individual's race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;"
* "an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of the individual's race;"
* "an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual's race or sex;"
Similar wording appears in most of the anti-CRT bills working their way through state legislatures.
You need to understand this: critical race theorists want to teach the above. They oppose these bills (and lie about their contents) because they want to discriminate on the basis of race, make people feel discomfort, guilt and anguish based on their race, hold entire races collectively responsible for the actions of individual members of that race, and engage in racial stereotyping and scapegoating. The sooner you realise this, the sooner you'll be able to make sense of our current moment.
For example, one question you should be asking is, why does the article contain a quote only from one side of the aisle? I think a lot of people are likely to conclude that only one side thought it was important, and that's not so - there was strong bipartisan support for this bill.
> the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons.
CRT by this definition is an objective historical fact. The effect of white supremacy on the legal system can be seen from the end of reconstruction, to Jim Crow laws, to government officials allying with the Klan, to the modern-day carceral state. All of these topics were covered in my public school education.
If you want to argue that some works of CRT are flawed, that’s one thing, but substituting the objective historical facts of critical race theory with nationalist propaganda, as these CRT bans explicitly aim to do, is irresponsible and a disservice to the public education system. As NPR correctly points out, it “limit[s] teaching a historically accurate picture of U.S. history”.
[1]: http://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/19958/urlt/7-4.pdf