THE central question? Really?Szdfan wrote: ↑Wed Nov 17, 2021 10:33 am This morning, I taught the Langston Hughes's poem, "I, Too" for an exercise on voice.
I think that this poem encapulates what Boot is driving at. Part of the fight over this is the question over which story of America gets told and taught in the schools. In the past, "America" was understood as being one thing -- a narrative about liberty and freedom. The historical truth is a lot more complicated and difficult -- liberty and freedom in America has always been incomplete.I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
I think what Hughes is saying in a rather gentle way is that his story and experience is also part of America. He also "sings America" and he also "is America." He also belongs even though he has been sent to eat in the kitchen.
The central question of the CRT debate is how full of a picture of American history -- whose stories do we also include? It's not always pretty or comfortable, but its honest.
That may be the way you see the debate, but I've yet to come across someone either saying or writing that they're opposed to CRT in schools for the expanded historical content, viewpoints, etc. Indeed, the Texas-Anti-CRT bill forbids requiring school employees to participate in training that “presents any form of race or sex stereotyping or blame on the basis of race or sex.” but it says that students should understand the following:
and that if teachers explore controversial topic they should: “explore the topic from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective.”(7) the history of white supremacy, including but not limited to the institution of slavery, the eugenics movement, and the Ku Klux Klan, and the ways in which it is morally wrong;
(8) the history and importance of the civil rights movement, including the following documents:
(A) Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and “I Have a Dream” speech;
(B) the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. Section 2000a et seq.);
(C) the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education;
(D) the Emancipation Proclamation;
(E) the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
(F) the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution
I'm sure you're not a fan a of Chris Rufo, investigative journalist at City Journal - his substack though functions as a sort of clearing house for examples of CRT in education. No of course Derrick Bell and Kimberle Crenshaw are not being taught to school children - theirs is high academic and largely unreadable theory. The theory though is being put into action - that is what parents and others are so incensed about. It has nothing to do with the teaching of history (who among us was not taught about slavery, Jim Crow, rampant racism, Civil Rights, The Harlem Renaissance etc.?) and everything to do with the application of bad and dangerous academic clap-trap:
These examples, as well as examples of children going on privilege walks, the creation of 'affinity spaces' and readings of everyone's favorite race-grifter, Mr. Kendi - are what parents bang on about when they complain about CRT in school. They may not have the academic vocabulary to distinguish between the argle-bargle of Peggy McIntosh or Ms. Fragility and that of their children coming home to talk to them about how they mapped their privilege or that America was created specifically as a 'slaveocracy' but, they don't need to because, like porn, they know when they see it.Seattle Public Schools tells teachers that the education system is guilty of “spirit murder” against black children and that white teachers must “bankrupt [their] privilege in acknowledgement of [their] thieved inheritance.” Link
San Diego Public Schools accuses white teachers of being colonizers on stolen Native American land and tells them “you are racist” and “you are upholding racist ideas, structures, and policies.” They recommend that the teachers undergo “antiracist therapy.” Link
A Cupertino, California, elementary school forces third-graders to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities, then rank themselves according to their “power and privilege.” They separate the eight-year-old children into oppressors and oppressed. Link
A middle school in Springfield, Missouri, forces teachers to locate themselves on an “oppression matrix,” claiming that white heterosexual Protestant males are inherently oppressors and must atone for their “covert white supremacy.” Link
A Philadelphia elementary school forces fifth-graders to celebrate “Black communism” and simulate a Black Power rally to “free Angela Davis” from prison. At this school, 87 percent of students will fail to achieve basic literacy by graduation. Link
Buffalo Public Schools teaches students that “all white people” perpetuate systemic racism and forces kindergarteners to watch a video of dead black children warning them about “racist police and state-sanctioned violence” who might kill them at any time. Link
The Arizona Department of Education created an “equity” toolkit claiming that babies show the first signs of racism at three months old and that white children become full racists—”strongly biased in favor of whiteness”—by age five. Link
The California Department of Education passed an “ethnic studies” curriculum that calls for the “decolonization” of American society and has students chant to the Aztec god of human sacrifice. The solution, according to one author, is “countergenocide.” Link
North Carolina’s largest school district launches a campaign against “whiteness in educational spaces”—and encourages teachers to subvert families and push the ideology of “antiracism” directly onto students without parental consent. Link
Santa Clara County Office of Education denounces the United States as a “parasitic system” based on the “invasion” of “white male settlers” and encourages teachers to “cash in on kids’ inherent empathy” in order to recruit them into political activism. Link