5 Things To Know About the Attack on Anti-Racist Education

As the right continues to attack anti-racist education, under the guise of stopping “Critical Race Theory,” there are some things to keep in mind that can help you understand what the conflict is (and isn’t) about.

Whether it’s their denial of the problem of racism itself, or their messaging about the dangers of anti-racist materials in schools, conservatives are offering a dishonest analysis of the nation’s history and disingenuous reasons for their opposition to addressing it.

Here’s what you should know.

First, the denial of systemic racism isn’t new — it’s been a constant among white Americans, even when that racism has been obvious.

When white people insist systemic racism is a myth, and thus, it’s wrong to suggest that America is a place of racial injustice, they’re working off an old script.

Fact is, white folks have never believed systemic racism to be a problem in the present — whether that present is today, or whether it was 60 years ago.

Although most would now agree that the early 1960s, before the passage of civil rights laws, were a time of deeply embedded unfairness, that isn’t how most whites saw it.

During the height of the Civil Rights Movement, most whites believed Black folks were already treated equally, even without new laws being passed. In fact, most whites objected to protests on behalf of Black liberty because they didn’t see the problem as worthy of such actions.

This matters. If whites denied the problem even when it was obviously among the nation’s most pressing crises, this can only mean one of two things.

Either we knew the truth but were lying about the problem to maintain dominance, or we weren’t very perceptive about the reality faced by Black and brown peoples.

But no matter which is true, the fact that whites couldn’t see (or admit) that America had a systemic racism problem even in the early 1960s tells you all you need to know about whose perceptions should be trusted.

This is especially true when you consider a few recent headlines.

Because while right-wing parents complain that leftists are brainwashing children into believing America still has a racism problem, case after case of actual racism in schools is happening.

To wit:

Parents in a semi-rural part of Washington State were forced to remove their child from school after he was subjected to racial slurs so often he came to think being called the n-word was “just normal.” Not only did the school not take action to stop the abuse, they also informed the parents that moving the child to remote learning wouldn’t work long-term because they weren’t set up for such instruction. In other words, the parents would either have to return their child to the abusive environment or move.
The Department of Justice released a report detailing how the Davis School District in Farmington, Utah covered up hundreds of cases of abuse aimed at Black and Asian students over five years. According to the DOJ, white students called Black students the n-word hundreds of times and referred to them as slaves, without punishment, while Asian students were told to “go back to China.” Even teachers participated in the abuse, according to the report.
White school board members in Prior Lake, Minnesota, recently stormed out of a meeting rather than listen to Black residents and students speak about experiences with racism in the school district. After a student video went viral, in which two white girls berated a Black student with racial slurs and told her to kill herself, residents and students came to the meeting to express their outrage. But when they began to do so, and when one student accused school staff of using racial slurs regularly, the Board members left the room.

This is all in the last two weeks.

As I’ve documented elsewhere, incidents of racist abuse are all too common in the nation’s schools, even as conservatives insist there is nothing wrong. Much as with their past denials, today’s denials rely on a deliberate decision to ignore the evidence.

Second, conservatives are not bravely “protecting kids” from being taught to hate America or that white people are inherently evil.

No anti-racist materials teach that America is inherently awful or that whites are inherently oppressive.

In fact, anti-racist theory holds that race has no scientific legitimacy.

As such, there can be no “inherent” tendencies among white people, or any racial group, because such groups are not scientifically real in the first place.

As for the anti-racist view of the nation, to note that the founders established a country rooted in the principle of liberty only for whites (especially men of financial means ), is not to suggest America is inherently evil.

It is simply to note that oppression and the evil of enslavement were there from the start, and not by accident.

The Naturalization Act of 1790 said only white people could be citizens. And it was the first law Congress passed after the Constitution was ratified, so they must have felt it to be pretty important.

They defined the nation as white before anything else — before figuring out taxes, the military, trade policy, anything.

In that sense, America has been inherently a contradiction from the start. It’s been a place of lofty principles intended only for whites at the outset, but one in which the struggle to expand those principles to all has defined it since.

America is neither inherently good nor bad, in other words. But in practice, it has been both.

Sadly, even that amount of honesty is too much for conservatives.

Third, the attack on anti-racist education is not about “keeping politics” out of the classroom.

Some critics of anti-racist instruction claim it amounts to political indoctrination and that politics should be checked at the schoolhouse door.

But all instruction is political.

If schools teach what conservatives prefer — something they call “patriotic education” — that too would be political. It would be a largely uncritical assessment of the nation’s history, which would have profound political implications.

Teaching that racism was a problem of the past is a political judgment. It sends a message bound up with conservative beliefs about progress. This message, in turn, has implications for public policy favoring conservative preferences.

If unjust inequalities have been remedied, such that lingering disparities are the fault of those on the bottom for not having worked hard enough, then there is no need for policies to equalize resources in education, health care, employment, or housing.

Whether one decides to teach about racism as a problem or not, the choice is political either way.

So the question shouldn’t be, “is this analysis political?” It should be, by definition, “is this analysis truthful?”

After all, that’s what education should be about — what is true.

At the very least, education requires that all reasonable theories be considered as explanations for various social phenomena. Even if one rejects the notion of systemic racism, surely it’s not so bizarre as to merit exclusion. It’s simply one way of understanding ongoing inequality despite the victories of the civil rights era.

If the right’s explanation for inequality — cultural pathology or personal decisions by Black people — is going to be offered for consideration, it’s only proper that an explanation focused on systemic injustice be considered too.

Students can accept it or reject it. But to not teach it will not keep politics out of schools — it will simply make that politics entirely one-sided.

Fourth, the attack on anti-racist scholarship is backlash to the uprising of 2020 and the threat of a growing movement for racial justice.

Although Critical Race Theory has been around for 40 years and holds minimal sway with most K-12 educators, it’s only been since the racial justice uprising in the wake of the George Floyd murder that conservatives decided to make it an issue.

The timing is no coincidence.

In the summer of 2020, millions of Americans expressed outrage over racial injustice within policing and society generally. There were more than 10,000 demonstrations across the country, involving vast numbers of white folks who had not previously been active around issues of race.

But not only that.

Companies large and small began pushing for diversity and equity trainings and talking about their commitments to doing better by Black and brown employees and communities.

Whether or not these moves were genuine or for PR purposes is irrelevant. Either way, they forced white Americans to deal with race issues in ways we weren’t used to doing. They forced us to think about our place in the school, neighborhood, or workforce and what our obligations might be to help move America to a more equitable place.

This heightened awareness made the backlash inevitable and even necessary for the right.

To allow millions of white folks to enter into the racial justice dialogue on the side of those seeking change would be to lose control of those voters the right needs to maintain power.

If the racial justice uprising continued to grow, picking up the allegiance of more white folks, the demographic group upon which right-wing politics depend would be split, with real consequences for the conservative camp.

By fomenting backlash against all things anti-racist, the right is seeking to stanch the movement for cynical political purposes.

It isn’t happening because CRT has taken over the nation’s schools or because some incipient wokeness has upended corporate capitalism.

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It’s happening because white rage and grievance are the principal fuel sources for MAGA nation.

And finally,

Fifth, the attack on anti-racist scholarship is a form of “border control,” where the border is not physical but narrative — an attempt to define the nation as fundamentally white, no matter the demographic changes underway

The same people who’ve pushed for a physical border wall with Mexico and who scream the loudest about demographic changes in the U.S. are the most upset about anti-racist scholarship.

These are the folks who wish to impose “patriotic education” and eliminate discussion of racial injustice from the nation’s classrooms.

It’s almost as if they’re hedging a bet.

On the one hand, they’re saying they wish to control the literal borders of the nation, but if that fails, then by God, they’ll make sure to control its narrative borders — the story we tell about ourselves.

By telling a story of America as a fundamentally fair and just place for all, the right hopes to limit any progressive political tendencies or justice-minded activism among newcomers of color.

The goal is to assimilate newcomers not only to the dominant culture but also to the dominant version of history itself.

By papering over the history of injustice (including the unjust conquest of half of Mexico), they hope to minimize the political impact of migration, even if they can’t stop it entirely.

They hope to split brown newcomers from those Black folks who have long led the march for equity and liberty.

The entire effort, in other words, is political. It’s not about principle. It’s not about patriotism. It’s about power.

It’s about crafting a story and selling that story in the hopes that white men will remain disproportionately in charge of the nation’s institutions, even as the country’s culture and demographics shift.

The right is, as it has always been, about the maintenance of existing lines of hierarchy and authority — white, wealthy, male, Christian, and straight.

And they will do anything to perpetuate that traditional arrangement.

They will censor alternative perspectives and lie about the nation’s past and present — and their own motives — all to retain power.

It is incumbent upon the rest of us to see them for who they are and deny them their desires by exposing them and telling the truth, even when it isn’t popular.

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This post was previously published on Age of Awareness.

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