Oklahoma's lawmakers want to whitewash its history
Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma has fired the latest salvo in the culture war. On May 7, Stitt signed a law effectively banning the teaching of critical race theory in K-12 schools. Idaho has passed a similar law, and several other states have introduced such legislation. These laws have more to do with pandering to the Republican base than they do with teaching children. The Oklahoma Department of Education has received no complaints about anyone teaching critical race theory. Nonetheless, Oklahoma Republicans believe they can earn political capital defending a celebratory version of American history.
The Oklahoma law prohibits schools "teaching or training students to believe certain divisive concepts," including the idea that the United States is "fundamentally racist or sexist" and that individuals bear any responsibility for past actions committed by members of their race or sex. Most pernicious of all is a sweeping injunction against teaching any concept that makes any student "feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex." Given the highly subjective nature of "distress," this clause could be used by school boards, administrators, and even parents to veto any content they dislike.
Critical race theory became the bête noire of the far-right when President Trump condemned it in September 2020, but anger over the concept had been growing since the New York Times published the 1619 Project, a series of thought-provoking essays addressing the importance of slavery and segregation in American history. If the Oklahoma law is any indication, opponents of critical race theory have little understanding of it.
Legal scholars coined the term "critical race theory" in the 1970's to address what they saw as the failure of civil rights legislation to achieve racial equality. The crux of the problem, these scholars believed, lay in defining racism solely as discriminatory acts perpetrated by individuals or groups instead of seeing it as a systemic problem embedded in institutions, policies and society itself. "What good was the Fair Housing Act," they asked, if economic inequality meant African Americans could not afford to buy homes?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/oklahoma-s-lawmakers-want-to-whitewash-its-history/ar-AAKw0U1
= new reply since forum marked as read
