Another ban?

In Loudoun County, Virginia this week, a group of anti-critical race theory parents gathered in a parking lot outside a school board meeting, “All’s they keep doing is changing the narrative. Critical race theory is ‘culturally-responsive framework,’ ‘culturally-responsive teaching’. It’s all just Trojan horses,” one bloviating parent said.

Some of the proposed bills, like the bill that failed to pass in the Rhode Island state legislature earlier this year, unveiled the real intentions of those banning critical race theory. “This act would prohibit the teaching of divisive concepts and … prohibit making any individual feel discomfort, guilty, anguish or any distress on account of their race or sex,” the bill’s sponsors wrote.

That anyone would define “divisive concepts” as the equivalent of teaching the full history of the US and its history of systemic racism is ludicrous. The part about making anyone “feel discomfort” or “distress”, though, is incredibly revealing.

The Rhode Island bill lays bare white fragility, the absolute narcissistic desire for myth-making, for denying, deflecting and defending racism by labelling any anti-racism efforts as racist. Never mind the need to teach the truth, to hold peoples and systems accountable for the past and present racist and sexist injustices in the US.

The truth is, any explanation of history and the human condition is bound to bring ‘distress’ or ‘anguish’ because there is a very ugly side to both. The nature of all bans on critical race theory is a bait and switch, to declare the teaching of a more-inclusive history of the US and its racism as a racist act. This tactic centres whites and especially white males as victims, and Black and Brown scholars, especially Black women public intellectuals, as villains.

There is no consideration about Black, Brown and Indigenous American ‘discomfort’ or ‘distress’ with the teaching of a white-centred and white-washed history at all. There is no concern for Black or Indigenous students when they do somehow learn about the racism that led to their ancestors’ systemic enslavement or when they discover the genocidal policies against their people, whether in or outside a classroom. The majority of students in America’s public schools are Black and Brown, yet the bill’s only concern is fundamentally about white ‘individuals’.

But absolutely none of the current fake controversy over critical race theory is about critical race theory. Critical race theory is much more than just the infusion of Black, Brown, and Indigenous history into US history. The theory is quite complex and grew out of critical legal studies in the law school community.

It focuses on exposing the systemic racism that is embedded in every area of American law, in local, state and federal policies, and in everyday American culture and customs.

Excerpted: ‘Critical race theory and the scam of the ban’

Aljazeera.com