Words Matter
This week the Michigan State House joined the effort to ban the teaching of ideas attributed to Critical Race Theory in public schools. By a vote of 55 to 0, lawmakers approved a bill to ban teaching “implicit race or gender stereotyping” in K through 12 schools. In a contentious session, Democrats refused to vote on the bill because those who wanted to speak against it were not allowed to do so.
Critical race theory examines how race, racism and other forms of oppression operate on an institutional or structural level. The attacks on this theory by right wing forces surfaced in direct response to the New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project which recast the telling of U.S .history by beginning when the first African people to be enslaved arrived in Virginia. A similar effort in the state senate goes further and penalized schools that teach the U.S. is “fundamentally racist” along with a litany of other ideas by taking away 5% of their allocated funds.
Michigan is not alone in this latest effort to dictate curriculum. More than a dozen states have introduced some variation of these bills. Most are drawing on the inspiration of Donald Trump who issued an Executive Order in September of 2020 to exclude from federal contracts diversity and inclusion training that contained “divisive concepts” such as “Race or sex stereotyping, Race or Sex Scapegoating and Critical Race Theory.”
Right wing legislators attacking school curriculum is a tried and true strategy to whip up outrage for the republican base. In the past, there have been efforts to remove any references to gay rights, Roe v. Wade, and climate change from social study standards. I vividly remember the attacks on “calm breathing” by legislators claiming it was a pagan inspired practice. In the present they are also attacking transgender students.
Many scholars, educators and activists are defending CRT and the importance of teaching concepts of systemic racism, implicit bias, and alternative views of history. In a recent article, Erika Geiss and Pamela Pugh explained the importance of looking critically at the fullness of our history saying:
That kind of history isn’t something we talk about. And we haven’t even begun to breach the topics of redlining or the history of structural disparities in health care, education, housing, and policing that continue to marginalize groups across the country. There is a reason these disparities exist, and that is the crux of critical race theory, despite what others would have you believe.
They go on to denounce the legislature for meddling in such serious intellectual ideas, concluding:
Age-appropriate education on these and other matters in school is not — and should not — be something term-limited elected officials tinker with, much less seek to punish schools that might decide to employ critical race theory or adjacent topics in their curriculum. Passing such legislation is another form of violence, an erasure of the story of millions because of the inability of others to accept the true story of this nation, both the good and bad.
Right wing forces take ideas seriously. In spite of denying climate change, disbelieving the results of the 2020 election, and denouncing vaccines, they know ideas have power. They know that language that illuminates our reality, that gives us ways to understand our world and suggests actions to change it, is dangerous. Thus, they mount campaigns to obscure, attack, and confuse people as we attempt to become more precise, more insightful and more analytical about social reality.
In the 1980’s, seeing the power of the word racism as it replaced the use of bigotry and prejudice in public discourse and illuminated the systemic power relationships surrounding race, Ronald Regan and the far right effectively campaigned to empty the term of meaning. They created the term ”reverse racism.” This became the concept behind eliminating affirmative action programs across the country.
The fight against Critical Race Theory is an effort to destroy our capacity to be critically aware of our world and to develop more precise and clear understandings of what it will take to change it. Words do matter.