GOP To Strengthen White Supremacy Out Of Fear of Critical Race Theory

While most Republicans can’t define what “Critical Race Theory” is, they’ve started a crusade against it, in turn offering up bills to strengthen white supremacy and systematic racism.

Over the weekend, all of the municipal candidates in Southlake who were against diversity and inclusion won. This is a huge blow to the students of color in the Southlake-Carroll ISD. Recently a bill banning Critical Race Theory made its way through the Texas Senate, and a companion bill has passed through the committee and is making its way to the Texas House. However, after reading these bills and watching the shitshow in Southlake, what’s clear more than anything, is that Republicans don’t understand what Critical Race Theory is.

In layman’s terms, Critical Race Theory recognizes that systemic racism is embedded in every facet of American life and challenges the beliefs and practices that allow it to flourish.

• And CRT recognizes that racism is not a bygone relic of the past. Instead, it acknowledges that the legacy of slavery, segregation, and the imposition of second-class citizenship on Black Americans and other people of color continue to permeate the social fabric of this nation. 

All of these things are facts most of us know to be true.

Racism in America is still real and exists in our government, our schools, and our laws. The Texas legislature is knowingly and intentionally implementing Jim Crow-style voting laws. Police in America kills Black and brown people disproportionately. Our schools teach our children that men who committed racial genocide are heroes.

From the Oxford Research Encyclopedia:

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a framework that offers researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers a race-conscious approach to understanding educational inequality and structural racism to find solutions that lead to greater justice. Placing race at the center of analysis, Critical Race Theory scholars interrogate policies and practices that are taken for granted to uncover the overt and covert ways that racist ideologies, structures, and institutions create and maintain racial inequality.

The far-right has been calling Critical Race theory “anti-white, reverse-racism, and Marxism.” They’ve made up lies like, “Critical Race Theory teaches white students they are inherently bad” and “it’s racism against white people.”

These are the same hyperbole arguments used against Sharia Law a decade ago.

In the 2010s, Republicans used racist based attacks against Muslims while citing their interpretations of Sharia Law as the reason for their attempts to pass racist legislation against Muslims. If you remember, Texas led the Muslim hysteria, with now Congresswoman Beth Van Duyne at the forefront of it. Van Duyne had targeted a Muslim teenager and turned every Mosque in Irving into a target for white supremacists.

Now, these same Republicans are targeting programs and ideas that advocate anti-racism, anti-oppression, and Diversity and Inclusion. Southlake is a perfect example. The residents of color and their allies in Southlake wanted to end the culture of racism in their school system, so they made a Diversity and Inclusion program. We all saw the racist backlash to this. The racists in Southlake have jumped through every hoop they could find to stop marginalized groups in their city from being included in their diverse schools because to them when others are no longer oppressed, they feel as if they are losing something.

They call the 1619 Project Critical Race Theory. It is not. The creator of the 1619 Project won a Pulitzer Prize for it, and it takes a brutal truth look at the history of America.

Republican attacks on Critical Race Theory are an extension of white supremacy.

The argument Republicans are using is that “America is not a racist country, but if we teach this country about all of the racist things we’ve done, they might think our country is racist.”

Recently, Senator Brandon Creighton introduced SB 2202 to ban Critical Race Theories from public schools. Listen to how he laid out the bill:

What other incorrect things did Creighton say about Critical Race Theory?

He said that his bill would prevent teachers from teaching that our country is fundamentally bad. Here is an article Newsweek just published yesterday, “Critical Race Theory Does Not Present The U.S. As Evil.” Creighton would know that he understood what Critical Race Theory was instead of listening to sound bites from Fox and OAN.

Creighton went on to say that his bill would ensure that Texas children are taught “traditional history.” What is “traditional history?” In Texas, schoolchildren were taught Lost Cause Mythology as history, which IS racist, revisionist history. Judging by Creighton’s age, he was likely taught Lost Cause Mythology when he was in school. Is he suggesting that this bill will teach Lost Cause Mythology? Or maybe he meant “traditional history,” as in the whitewashed narrative children are being taught today?

So, what exactly in Creighton’s bill is problematic?

• A school a teacher may not be compelled to discuss current events or widely debated and currently controversial issues of public policy or social affairs.

This will prevent a principal or superintendent from becoming aware of new research in the field, and they want to introduce new approaches for instructional effectiveness in their school. This will prevent schools from teaching their staff new instruction methods that are equitable.

• A teacher, administrator, or other employees of a state agency, school district, or open-enrollment charter school may not:
  • be required to engage in training, orientation, or therapy that presents any form of race or sex-stereotyping or blame based on race or sex.
    • require or make part of a course the concept that:
      • meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist or created by members of a particular race to oppress other races.

Hard work ethics are racist? This goes to show how ignorant Republicans are. What he’s referring to there is “white privilege.” You know, how some white people say, “I don’t have white privilege because I was poor when I was a kid.” This “meritocracy concept” will directly teach school children that systematic racism doesn’t exist or can all achieve the same goals. It’s easy to understand why the older generations began a color-blind America, but it hasn’t worked, and it’s put us where we are today. Continuing to miseducate children about the history of our country isn’t going to fix it.

America will never move forward as long as we don’t come to terms with our past.

“It is silly to talk of race prejudice as simply a child of ignorance and poverty. The ignorant and poor may lynch and discriminate but the real deep and basic race hatred in the US is a matter of the educated and distinguished leaders of white civilization.”

W. E. B Du Bois

Creighton’s bill would prevent teachers, even high school teachers, from teaching any of this to students.

Did you know that Carolyn Bryant, the white woman who caused the murder of Emmitt Till, is still alive? Did you know still, to this day, she’s never faced charges over her involvement with the lynching of Emmitt Till?

If you went to school in Texas, where did you go to school at? Schools in Odessa were not desegregated until 1980, in Houston, it was 1984, and in Tyler, as of 2016, they were still fighting desegregation orders.

Keeping people ignorant about the severity of American racism and it’s still affecting many aspects of modern American culture only perpetuates the myth of colorblindness and contributes to systemic racism. A big reason why racial tensions have escalated in this country is that white America refuses to acknowledge that these things happened and are still happening.

If we continue only to teach “traditional history,” as Creighton’s bill frames it, then we will continue to be a country divided. White denialism is racism.

We want our teachers being able to teach our children the truth.

Not that America is bad, not that white people are bad, and not that any race is superior. That’s Creighton’s stupid interpretation about what Critical Race Theory is.

Teaching “traditional history,” “Lost Cause Mythology,” and interpretations based on white denialism is not teaching much of the fundamental lessons we want our kids to understand about the way our society is and how we got here. We will be charging our children to become the new generation that makes this world a better place. Brandon Creighton seeks to stop that by ensuring that the lessons of white superiority and white accomplishments dominate Texas school curriculums. Look at where that’s gotten us so far.

We won’t ever be better until we want better.