It’s Not About CRT. It’s About Ignoring Racism

CRT is not being taught in our schools.

The concept of racism is being taught in our schools.

The history of racism is being taught.

First, that racism in America was created by, perpetrated by and perpetuated by white Americans, and white Americans alone.

Then they are taught about Slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow, “Separate but Equal,” the Civil Rights Movement, etc.

But racism is not history. Racism is happening now. And the most important part of education is connecting the past to the present. So kids are learning how vestiges of Jim Crow still exist.

And that means white kids are taught to understand what their whiteness means. That racism exists, and that to ignore it makes its continued existence possible. Kids are not taught that they are racist, or that they are evil. They are taught to identify the signs of racism, and to understand they can play a role in eradicating racism in America.

When conservatives say they do not want CRT in classrooms, what they really mean is they don’t want the past to be connected to the present and future. They do not want their kids to understand that simply being an American in 2021 means you will experience the effects of racism as a matter of fact. They want to pretend that racism isn’t a big problem, or that it doesn’t exist at all.

Those conservative parents want their kids to remain ignorant, as many of them have remained, to those subtle and not-so-subtle built-in advantages that white Americans have always been able to rely on in America, going back even further than the Nation’s own independence.

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