Earlier this month, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves signed legislation intended to ban the precepts of Critical Race Theory from that state’s public schools. According to Campus Reform, Mississippi is the fifteenth state to enact such a ban.
The tricky thing, of course, is characterizing the teachings of CRT. The point is not to ban teaching about CRT, but rather to ban the pernicious doctrines that flow from CRT. Mississippi’s approach is simple and is based on the inherent racism of Critical Race Theory:
The new legislation states that public institutions cannot teach that any “sex, race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior” nor that individuals should be “treated adversely” on the basis thereof.
Furthermore, the bill prevents instructors from conducting a lesson that “compels students to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere to” the above description.
You wouldn’t think such legislation would be controversial, but CRT, enthusiastically endorsed by the nation’s teachers’ unions, does in fact teach that “whiteness” is a defect that makes whites inferior to other races. And it is commonly believed that women are superior to men–it is only masculinity that is “toxic”–or, at least, that was commonly believed when people could remember what women are.
It is rather comical to see liberals objecting to anti-CRT legislation because it infringes on free speech. Apparently this is the only subject on which the Left is still willing to stand up for the First Amendment. But CRT bans don’t inhibit teachers and administrators from voicing their beliefs like all other citizens, no matter how noxious those beliefs may be. It simply prevents them from using the public schools to indoctrinate our children in racist doctrines. The public schools are, after all, run by and on behalf of the public.
While I endorse bans like Mississippi’s, the only real defenses against an aggressive Left that has almost entirely taken over public education are 1) alert parents, and 2) local school boards. Parents need to know what is actually going on in their children’s classrooms, and voters need to turn out of office school board members who employ superintendents that promote or allow the teaching of racist, anti-American doctrines. The public schools won’t be cleansed of CRT until parents demand it.
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