Exploring Resistance to Critical Race Theory: Part 5 — a timeline

Timeline of Critical Race Theory mentions on Fox News and Legislation around the idea of Critical Race Theory. Data on mentions of CRT on Fox News are from Media Matters.

This blog series attempts to clarify what is happening with legislation and conversation around Critical Race Theory in the United States, starting generally, and then specifically what happened in Texas. Fox News, as can be seen above, is mentioning Critical Race Theory more and more frequently. At the same time, Republican law makers have been passing laws, which often do not name Critical Race Theory, but which aim to eliminate the teaching of ideas around systemic racism or white privilege from schools. I am attempting to better understand exactly what is happening, how Republican law makers are writing laws and trying to legislate on this topic, and to think about why. This post does just the first two of these pieces, and you can also see Part 1, 2, and 3, for more on what is happening and what the conversation around what is happening is.

Note: Critical Race Theory (CRT) argues that societal structures and institutions imbed power structures around race, and these power structures are more powerful than individual actions. Schools are key societal institutions, and what they teach, how they teach it, what resources they have to support teaching and learning, and how they receive funding are often part of studies using CRT.

Above, is a timeline of events. First, early in September, 2020, Christopher Rufo appears on Tucker Carlson and mentions a training for federal employees, which he said used tenets of Critical Race Theory. This moment is acknowledged by Media Matters and others as the start of the conversation about CRT. On September 22, 2020, President Trump signs Executive Order 13950. I discussed what is in this order in Part 2 of this series.

On January 20, 2021, President Biden rescinds Executive Order 13950 in a statement that notes the existence of systemic racism. To quote: “Equal opportunity is the bedrock of American democracy, and our diversity is one of our country’s greatest strengths. But for too many, the American Dream remains out of reach. Entrenched disparities in our laws and public policies, and in our public and private institutions, have often denied that equal opportunity to individuals and communities.

In February, Delegates Keaton, Holstein, Barnharts, and Wamsley of West Virginia introduces House Bill 2595 using the language from the executive order to prohibit “divisive acts” in the workplace and the teaching of “divisive acts” in West Virginia schools. This bill has not moved forward in the legislative process from that time. I include mention of this here, just to note that states were still using the language of the rescinded executive order. I believe 20 other states are also writing and trying to pass this type of legislation, but I did not find a complete list.

In March, Texas Representative Toth introduces House Bill 3979 with the same list of “divisive acts” to the Texas legislature. The bill is brought to the floor on May 10th and 11th. A number of YouTube videos of that debate can be seen here: Texas Impact.

Texas Impact’s videos were all I could find of the legislature’s debate of this bill, and they are all from representatives and senators who opposed the bill. My understanding of the debate, therefore, is one-sided. The following are a few of the moments I was able to witness through these videos:

The bill passed out of the house with amendments as I noted in this blog series Part 3. On May 23rd or 24th, it was debated on the Senate floor. Senator West states during that debate that the bill was using language from the Executive Order 13950, and Representative Toth states that he did not know this.

On June 15th, the bill was signed into law by Governor Abbott with all of the amendments in place (you can see the details in Part 3 of this blog series). Governor Abbott also indicated that he would have a special session of the legislature to address the problems with the amendments to the law.

While HB 3979 was making its way through the Texas legislature to the Governor’s desk, another law, HB 1504, was also introduced. HB 1504 was introduced February 1, 2021. It allows two elective courses, Mexican American History and African American History, to be part of the social science requirements for graduation in high schools. This bill is on the “intent calendar” as of May 26, 2021. The bill builds on a project that first introduced these two courses as electives to school boards. The courses are currently taught in 21 school districts in Texas. I learned about this bill in this video from the Education Committee of the Texas Senate.

This blog post was difficult to write. I was expecting better access to information about what happened on May 10th and 11th in the House sessions. I feel like I am missing key components of the arguments for and against the bill. I do hope it gives some sense of what happened. Next I am going to attempt to think about why all of this is happening.

--

--

Social Media Listener and Avid Knitter

Get the Medium app

A button that says 'Download on the App Store', and if clicked it will lead you to the iOS App store
A button that says 'Get it on, Google Play', and if clicked it will lead you to the Google Play store