Race/Multiculturalism SIG Statement on Laws Forbidding Teaching about Systemic Racism – Lawrence Blum

Race/Multiculturalism SIG statement on laws forbidding teaching about systemic racism

Lawrence Blum

Members of the Race/Multiculturalism SIG wishes to call to the attention of the AME community an alarming development happening in many state legislatures in the US. As of this writing, as many as 15 such legislatures have passed or are seriously considering legislation that would forbid educators (at either secondary or higher ed level) from teaching about systemic racism in the US. The explicit targets (i.e. what is declared to be forbidden) of the legislation differ a bit from state to state. Sometimes the target is “critical race theory.” This label historically refers to an approach in the study of law that examined ways that law incorporates explicit or implicit racial bias. But the label is now used in a much more expansive and less definite way to refer to the study of systemic racism in its various forms: file:///Users/lblum/Dropbox/race,%20general,%20Nov%202019-/anti-CRT%20legislation/The%20Academic%20Concept%20Conservative%20Lawmakers%20Love%20to%20Hate.html. (In European context, a similar direction is called “decolonizing education.” That terminology is also used in the US often to highlight the historical oppression of Indigenous peoples, as the “critical race theory” terminology is also sometimes used in Europe.)

Sometimes the legislation’s target is the “1619 Project,” an initiative of the New York Times, spurred by their top school integration writer, Nikole Hannah-Jones, to create curricular materials that examine the history of slavery and the ways structures created by slavery continued to create racial disparities between Blacks and whites throughout US history and into the present. [The 1619 project won a Pulitzer Prize, for “Communication.”] The 1619 Project enlisted leading US historians, and it is fair to say that its academic perspective represents a developing (though not universally held) consensus among US historians that the impact of slavery on US history has not been fully appreciated. The “1619” in the title refers to the first year slaves were brought to the US.

The legislation takes different forms. Three examples: Republican legislators in Ohio introduced a bill recently to ban teaching that any individual “bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by the same race or sex.” The North Carolina legislature passed a bill to limit teaching that the country was “created by members of a particular race or sex to oppress members of another race or sex.” In Arizona, a bill that would fine teachers $5,000 for promoting one side of a controversial issue just passed the House.

This development is alarming for two distinct reasons, both of which strike at the heart of what we as moral educators and researchers stand for. One is that for state legislatures to weigh in on curricular issues in the state education system undermines the integrity of the educational process. It substitutes a political agenda for judgments made by educators as to what they should teach, and by scholars about what is true and significant. In Kansas, for example, the Board of Regents of the University system, in response to a request from a Republican state senator, asked all the campuses in the state system to compile lists of courses “that taught critical race theory.” Leaving aside the ill-defined nature of “critical race theory,” the prospect of a state legislature and the board governing the state universities examining specific course syllabi for something they regard as objectionable is a terrifying prospect from the perspective of the instructors teaching this material, and indirectly to the scholars whose work is on the syllabi. It would certainly have a chilling effect on non-tenured and possibly even tenured professors’ willingness to teach material they think appropriate but are aware that state legislators (or even the Board of Regents) think inappropriate.

This process would obviously deeply harm students’ education, as they would be deprived of exposure to perspectives and resources their teachers chose, or would have chosen, for them. It is an attack on academic and intellectual freedom, on the professional integrity and standing of educators and scholars, and on education itself. It forbids educators from teaching critical thinking and exposing their students to critical perspectives on American history and society.

One might think some of the concerns expressed in the legislation to be legitimate. Even if that is so, it is not appropriate, and is dangerous, for legislators to use such political educational judgments to coerce teachers and curriculum developers. Those concerns can be expressed by parents and citizens to their schools, and local school boards, the traditional channels for the public and school communities to have democratic input into school pedagogy and curricula.

This current development has a long and ignoble history of attempts to highjack public education to forbid critical perspectives. A very similar attempt was made in 1990’s in relation to an attempt to craft new national standards for teaching history and social studies in secondary schools that reflected then new developments in the understanding of American history in the general spirit of the 1619 project. The US Senate voted by a 99-1 margin to condemn the proposed new standards and they were abandoned. (This development is very well discussed in the 2000 History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past, by G. Nash, C. Crabtree and R. Dunn.) Of course attempts to silence critical voices and perspectives goes much further back, as for example the anti-communist crusades of the 1950’s were used to persecute and weaken labor and civil rights activists, thinkers, and struggles, and many teachers and professors lost jobs or were not hired in the first place as a result.

The second reason these legislative developments are so alarming is that they call for depriving students of an education that would help them understand and come to terms with systemic racism in American history and society. It can hardly be denied that US society continues to suffer from unjust racial disparities in virtually every socioeconomic domain of life, that have their origins in oppression and discrimination in the past and in ongoing disparity-producing processes in the present. This dimension of racial injustice is a core element in moral education for US students. Students of every race who emerge from public education without knowing about this systemic racism are put at a serious civic and moral disadvantage with respect to engaging with their society in productive and responsible ways post-education. Black and brown students will be most harmed, in their need to learn to challenge dominant narratives and ideologies of a color-blind and meritocratically just society. All students would be deprived of crucial tools and perspectives for understanding how to think about living lives of responsible citizenship.

This is by no means to say that it is obvious how best to teach this challenging material. The intensified partisan divisions of the Trump era have added new layers to what was already a charged educational terrain. But it should be up to educators and researchers, including those in AME, to work out how best to approach this challenge. Their (our) freedom to teach according to their best understandings of the evidence for the value of different approaches should not be curtailed by legislators who say they should not be permitted to attempt to do so.

For these two reasons—the attack on the integrity of the educational process, and on teachers and scholars; and the undermining of the ability of students to learn about race and racism—the current legislative attack on anti-racist education is an extremely disturbing development that we believe AME and its members should oppose whenever possible. Opposition seems to be beginning to build, and the “Zinn Education Project,” supported by “Black Lives Matter at School” held a day of action and protest on June 12 (Zinn Education site). Hopefully there will be more concerted campaigns of opposition to legislation in which AME members can participate. Meanwhile US members can write letters to their legislators in states contemplating such legislation, form reading groups on anti-racist education and on the 1619 Project in particular; and AME members from any country can sign statements of support.

Other European former colonial powers such as France and the UK have been roiled by controversy over decolonizing education. The Conservative government in the UK released a report (the Sewell Report) a few months ago that denies the presence of systemic racism in the UK. Academics have rallied to criticize the report. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EQwtYRfT6Mxx-30T-FGthcA5eaf8M5YuJSXBNnyN-Ww/edit. France also continues to have controversies concerning coming to terms with its colonial past. An unsystematic check-in by Larry Blum with colleagues from these two countries suggests that the kind of legislation being enacted in the US does not yet have a counterpart in those countries. A check with a Canadian SIG colleague (with respect to issues regarding its Indigenous population) suggests a similar absence of comparable legislation or policy. We should be alert to any manifestations of these educationally repressive developments, especially in relation to education about race and racism, anywhere.

Lawrence Blum

Signatories: Lawrence Blum, Michelle Forrest, Robyn Ilten-Gee, Glaucya, Enrique Delgado Ramos, Shawn A. Bultsma, Susana Frisancho, Nikki McDaid, Tatyana Tsyrlina-Spady, Bruce Maxwell, Janie Victoria Ward, Sharon Lamb, Maung T. Nyeu, Karin Sporre, Janet Orchard, Kevin van der Meulen, Victoria Foster, Vishalache Balakrishnan, Ann Higgins-D’Alessandro, Olivia Williams, Michael Warren