The Center Square
By John Haughey
June 10, 2021
(The Center Square) – The Florida Board of Education (BOE) will meet Thursday in Jacksonville to discuss a proposed rule prohibiting teachers from teaching K-12 students about critical race theory.
Critical race theory (CRT) is, in brief, an academic concept that racism is not just an individual bias or prejudice but is systemic, embedded in institutions, courts and economic policies.
Although not included in state-approved curriculum or taught in Florida’s K-12 schools, CRT has emerged as a lightning rod for Republican criticism nationwide and in Florida with Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s two U.S. senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, issuing recent statements condemning the theory.
CRT is “basically teaching kids to hate our country and to hate each other based on race. It puts race as the most important thing. I want content of character to be the most important thing,” DeSantis told reporters in March.
The governor, seeking re-election in 2022 and a 2024 GOP presidential favorite among possible candidates, has maintained a steady drum beat in blasting CRT since, including during appearances on TV and radio outlets in recent days.
On Fox News last weekend, DeSantis said he has asked Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, a former Florida Speaker of the House, to present the proposed rule to the BOE to ensure “any departure from accurate history” is banned.
Appearing on Fox’s “Unfiltered with Dan Bongino” Saturday night, DeSantis threatened to target Republican school board members who support CRT or “mandatory masking of school children.”
School board races in Florida are nonpartisan, but DeSantis said he’ll make them partisan to ensure CRT is banned.
“Local elections matter. We’re going to get the Florida political apparatus involved so we can make sure there’s not a single school board member who supports critical race theory,” he said.
The proposed rule would impose strict guidelines on teaching U.S. history.
“Instruction on the required topics must be factual and objective and may not suppress or distort significant historical events, such as the Holocaust, and may not define American history as something other than the creation of a new nation based largely on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence,” it states.
The rule would require any classroom discussion be deemed “appropriate for the age and maturity level of the students,” and prohibits teachers from “sharing personal views or attempt to indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view.”
The Florida Education Association (FEA), the state’s largest teachers union, in a Tuesday letter urged the BOE to have “some respect” for teachers and nix or dramatically amend the rule.
The FEA alleges the rule “appears to have a political rather than educational motive.”
“Students deserve the best education we can provide, and that means giving them a true picture of their world and our shared history as Americans. Hiding facts doesn’t change them. Give kids the whole truth and equip them to make up their own minds and think for themselves,” FEA President Andrew Spar said.
The FEA wants to expand “acceptable topics” for discussion.
“Identifying the Holocaust as the only listed example of a ‘significant historical event’ omits important areas for instruction and discussion that are specifically included in the statute this rule addresses,” the FEA states. “If giving students a good education is the goal, the rule could be amended to say in part: ‘Instruction on the required topics must be factual and objective, and may not suppress or distort significant historical events, such as the Holocaust, slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow.’”
CRT teaches people to love America, with all its faults. It embraces truth, accuracy, and a complete and comprehensive telling of the American story. It is inclusive. CRT is not the problem, it is white people desperately hanging onto a narrative that “whitewashes” our history and keeps whites superior. So sad, and so dangerous.
That is factually untrue. CRT teaches that skin color is the only thing that matters. If you are white, you are automatically a racist. If you are not white, you are automatically a victim of oppression by whites. The real harm of CRT is that it is a fraud, dishonestly claiming to be sensitivity training under the false euphemism that it’s for “the good” of white racist supremacist oppressors while all others are presumed innocent. Why? Allegedly because of one’s skin color – but only white is accused. All others are said to be incapable of racism, prejudice or malice.
It replaces individual choice and judgement with group identity and collective guilt. i.e., its Marxist.
It replaces basing judgments about a person’s character with instead basing all on race or sex or skin color, etc. In other words, it relies on what is a given in life, not subject to our choices, (what we cannot control – what we are born with) rather than what we choose and our individual judgements.
It’s Alice in Wonderland: Guilty by birth and group instead of by individual choices and values. It’s the opposite of what Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated – to be judged on one’s character rather than skin color.
CRT is not “diversity training.” Peter Kirsanow, the current commissioner of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, has said that CRT seminars violate the civil rights act. Why would we sanction isolating a particular group of people based on the color of their skin and holding them responsible for all of society’s ills? Opposing CRT is to oppose racial discrimination in all of its forms. It is myopic to paint with a broad brush, regardless of one’s intention for doing so.
I understand your fear of demonizing all current white people for discrimination that has gone on. Your surely not against just teaching the historical facts though, correct? Regardless of the need to constantly remind ourselves of American exceptionalism, we do have a really dark past. From the immediatle killing off the indiginous people, to enslaving others who actually built the wealth of this country with their toil. With the end of the civil war and the loss of our free labor we then continued for decades to oppress the group we so surely abused. My neighbor here in town who is my age went to the Peck School. When it was segregated. The cultures were kept apart, and it was the white folks doing. Instutions were a part of it. Because the institutions were a part of white culture. It is good we have moved beyond that on some levels. There is no need for American Beach today. Still the past happened and regarding the actual past, the Jim Crow, the redlining. I assume because that is all historical it is fine with you to teach how wrong that all was. You can blame it all on the democrats if it makes you feel better.
I have not problem teaching the good, the bad, and the ugly. What I have a problem with is teaching that skin color is the only thing that matters. In case you have not noticed, there is movement in many of our universities to segregate based on race – and it is not whites that are pushing it.
And blaming it all on democrats is not about feelings, it’s about the truth if you bother to study historical facts. I suggest you look up Carol Swain on Prager-U and watch her videos for an accurate historical accounting.
Barnes. I suggest reading this. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/civil-rights-reimagining-policing/a-lesson-on-critical-race-theory/
Thank you Mark. We need to learn from history – all of it, not just the narrative we prefer.
Ok Christine. Here is some history along with what we see in our current culture. To the extent systemic racism exists can be laid at the feet of the democratic party. The democratic party is the party of slavery, Jim Crow, the KKK, Japanese (and Italian and German) internment camps, redlining, segregation, and in the modern day, it is the party of identity politics, cancel culture, crime infested, rotting inner cities with failing schools, and has been exposed since George Floyd as the party of anarchy. The most insidious action was the federalization of redlining under FDR’s administration when he created the Fair Housing Administration which introduced redlining policies in over 200 cities across the US. The filibuster that democrats now want to eliminate was used by them 314 times during Trump’s administration – more than any other president in history. It was also used by democrats in 1964 against the Civil Rights act and that filibuster lasted 60 days. So, when we teach history, we should include the whole truth – the ugly and the good – and it should be accurate. CRT does not teach history – it teaches racism pure and simple, and is frankly evil to the core.
Strom Thurmond led the filibuster against the Civil Rights Act. “In 1964, Thurmond switched his affiliation to the Republican Party”. The Republican Party is now comprised of former Deep South Democrats who opposed the Republican 1860’s anti-slavery movement. Following the Civil Right Act, the Republicans joined with the Southern Dems and devised the “Southern Strategy”. The two parties switched positions. Today’s Republican Party does not reflect the Party of Lincoln.
While Strom Thurmond did switch parties, he was only one of over 20 democrat senators to do so. The nonsense about the Southern Strategy is factually and demonstrably untrue. Since moderators here must review links, instead of posting a link, I suggest you look up Carol Swain’s youtube videos. She exposes the lies that get repeated ad nauseum by democrats.
Links provide direct input from competent sources, Barnes. Better than a paraphrase.
Ok Christine. Here is some history along with what we see in our current culture. To the extent systemic racism exists can be laid at the feet of the democratic party. The democratic party is the party of slavery, Jim Crow, the KKK, Japanese (and Italian and German) internment camps, redlining, segregation, and in the modern day, it is the party of identity politics, cancel culture, crime infested, rotting inner cities with failing schools, and has been exposed since George Floyd as the party of anarchy. The most insidious action was the federalization of redlining under FDR’s administration when he created the Fair Housing Administration which introduced redlining policies in over 200 cities across the US. The filibuster that democrats now want to eliminate was used by them 314 times during Trump’s administration – more than any other president in history. It was also used by democrats in 1964 against the Civil Rights act and that filibuster lasted 60 days. So, when we teach history, we should include the whole truth – the ugly and the good – and it should be accurate. CRT does not teach history – it teaches racism pure and simple, and is frankly evil to the core.
Barnes – A bit more “history”… You disingenuously use labels that actively mislead. It’s why teaching students to critically think is important. Thinking about just how labels are used to hide or distort historical reality is part of the learning process. Christine calls it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Democratic_Party_(United_States), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixiecrat
Sorry Robert, there is nothing disingenuous or misleading about about what I said, and in fact, it is worse than I stated. For the last few decades, Republicans have been consistently demonized as racist – it comes up in every single election – every.single.election. Democrats have become the part of identity politics. As to the “Dixiecrat” meme, I think I will take my history from Carol Swain, not wikipedia. “https://www.prageru.com/video/why-did-the-democratic-south-become-republican/” You might want to watch a few other of her videos as well. It appears you could use the education
Folks can research “Prager University” for themselves. As for Carol Swain, I’ll defer to Vanderbilt.
Thank you Governor for protecting our children from zealots who want to indoctrinate kids and promote racial tensions. Teaching kids that all white folks are white supremacists , with its societal or structural racism is just wrong. Marxism is not American.
These two links discuss just what “Critical Race Theory” is about and why it’s an important part of one’s educational learning process. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/civil-rights-reimagining-policing/a-lesson-on-critical-race-theory/, https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-12-2021