Exploring Resistance to Teaching Critical Race Theory: A brief note as I try to find more information
I am still gnawing at this bone of the laws being passed to stop teachers from teaching “Critical Race Theory” in K-12 schools. I feel like I’m swimming in place because some of the information I want doesn’t seem to be available. I spent most of yesterday trying to track down information on the people who added amendments to HB 3979 (see Part 3 of this series). I know these amendments are important because Governor Abbott has vowed to bring the legislature back to fight them, even as he signed the bill into law.
[Aicha Davis] suspects that in sending the issue back to legislators, Abbott intended for them to strip out some language added by House Democrats. They tried to make the bill more palatable by adding provisions to require students to learn about diverse communities and leaders.
Those amendments require teaching about the Chicano movement, Native American history and the history of white supremacy and the ways it is morally wrong, among other things.
You can see the some of the debate about the Senate Amendment to remove the amendments here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u2fIRzqdSU. The quick summary of that video is that Representative Talarico pushes Representative Toth, the author of the original bill, to include the amendments because otherwise it makes the bill a whitewashing of history.
I am working to find more on these amendments and also on how teachers are responding to this bill. I hope to have something concrete soon. In the meantime, here are two great opinion pieces on the topic from the Washington Post:
Michael Gerson: Opinion: I’m a conservative who believes systemic racism is real
Paul Waldman: Why conservatives keep creating imaginary enemies to fight
If you need help getting the text for those articles, let me know. I hope to have more information soon…. Thanks for reading.
