What is danger of critical race theory, and is it coming to a Kansas school near you?
Just how incendiary is the topic of critical race theory? All Brenda Dietrich did was ask a question about it, and suddenly she’s got interview requests from as far away as Canada.
It’s not like the state senator from Topeka was even looking to take sides on the issue of how America’s racist legacy is taught in schools.
“I did not request a list of courses from the Kansas Board of Regents that teach critical race theory. I don’t have a list. I don’t want a list. That’s not what I asked,” she says. “Just asked the question that my constituents have been asking of me: Are we using public dollars to teach critical race theory at our public universities?”
The topic is so radioactive right now that her simple question to another state official grabbed international attention — and prompted a spokesperson for the American Association of University Professors to, completely unfairly, call the question “entirely inappropriate.”
Hardly. Parents deserve to know what their children are being taught in K-12 and higher education, and so do their elected representatives.
In this case, it’s an absolute obligation to know, with growing concerns that students might be indoctrinated into anti-white, anti-American views.
Don’t take my word for it. That’s from two young Black Republicans in Johnson County.
“Critical race theory is very, very dangerous,” says Rashard Young, a recent legislative candidate. “I believe it is an ideological weapon. I don’t believe this theory has emerged from a very pure place of wanting to seek true equality and unity within the country. It views everything is about race — that that’s the nucleus and the source of the problem, which I do not agree with.”
Whether or not the Kansas Board of Regents or individual universities have sanctioned it, Young says he’s heard from students on the state’s campuses that some of them are being taught “that America is this white male patriarchal structure. And these white young men are being taught that they are the problem, and that their heritage is the problem. How destructive, how dangerous is that for a young man who’s trying to find himself in the world as a freshman?”
Risks demoralizing children of all races
It’s difficult to even put your finger on a definition of critical race theory — which is a red flag that perhaps we ought not be teaching something to kids for which we haven’t even agreed upon a definition, much less how to teach it. At its best it is, as Education Week claims, an affirmation “that racism is a social construct, and that it is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.” Well, duh. If that were all it was, there wouldn’t be such a wildfire of controversy sweeping the countryside.
On the other hand, if the idea is that the nation and all its institutions are hopelessly, systemically racist, then we’ve got a pitched debate ahead, and we risk demoralizing kids of all races by teaching it.
We also risk endowing our progeny with an ominous and unwarranted contempt for 21st century America.
Indeed, Young says a 17-year-old he was recently talking with was ruminating about renouncing his American citizenship. Young joked that the youth might find Venezuela, China or Russia more to his liking. “And he sincerely started to make an argument of why those countries weren’t so bad. And that’s when I realized the public school system in some ways has failed our youth.”
We do need to teach America’s considerable warts, most of all our racial past, and much more so than we have historically. But it needs to be carefully balanced with information about what makes this country great. Otherwise we are only sowing the seeds of the nation’s doom.
Does critical race theory achieve that balance? I’m not convinced it does, and neither are a great many parents around the nation. A dozen or so states have even banned its teaching, and there’s a growing support among Kansas legislators for doing something to forestall the spread of CRT here.
If it hasn’t seeped in already.
“I have anecdotal evidence that it is in the schools from various conversations with parents and retired educators,” says state Sen. Mike Thompson, Republican of Shawnee — adding that he also heard concerns about it on the campaign trail last year. “I think it’s naive to think that it is not here, given the proliferation of CRT across the country. I hate to tell educators what to teach, but if things like CRT are being inserted into curriculum, then we need to address it.”
I’m not sure legislative bans are necessarily the answer, as much as having open and honest debates about what children should be taught regarding the past, present and future of race in America. But I can tell you with some confidence that anything resembling critical race theory is going to be a tough sell in these parts. Just a few weeks ago, citizens lined up at the Manhattan-Ogden school board meeting to pounce on the least notion that critical race theory’s tenets might be imported there.
‘Does absolutely zero to bring people together’
Appropriately enough, the Kansas State Board of Education is likely to discuss the topic at its meeting Wednesday.
For his part, Army combat veteran Bonquay Bryant, the Black vice president of Johnson County Young Republicans, considers critical race theory to be a detriment to race relations.
“Basically, they’re using critical race theory as the end-all, be-all excuse for the failures of the Black community. And me being Black, and a part of the community, I don’t believe that’s the case at all,” he says. “Just the entire premise that race is not natural, but rather a social construct used to oppress Black people, is totally absurd. And it shouldn’t be given any credence in any serious conversation, in my opinion.
“I believe critical race theory poses a serious mental health risk to white students in their childhood. Hearing things like that when you’re growing up, and you’re such a sponge, could make a negative impact on your life in the long run.
“It does absolutely zero to bridge the gap when it comes to racial tension. It does absolutely zero to bring people together.”
The whole CRT controversy could even fuel efforts to provide parents with more school choice — and should prompt educators to refocus on core academic subjects that are suffering from chronic low test scores and pandemic losses, says Dave Trabert, CEO of the Kansas Policy Institute think tank.
Thompson agrees — as does a report from the Heritage Foundation, which argues that critical race theory “distracts educators and students away from rigorous (academic) content.”
For now, proponents of critical race theory will have to prove to skeptics that it isn’t, as one news story put it, “divisive ideas about race, collective guilt for dominant groups, and assigning racial significance to seemingly neutral concepts.”
