The Legislature is all aboard the “critical race theory” crazy train this session. It has introduced not one, not two, but four anti-CRT bills. These bills are based on a willful, fundamental misunderstanding of what critical race theory is: a tool university-level law students use to examine how racial bias is built into the judicial system. It is not taught in elementary or secondary school classrooms, nor in run-of-the-mill college courses. What these bills attack is not critical race theory, but honest teaching, with the intent to scare teachers into avoiding unpleasant historical facts.
The most innocuous of the bills, HB 4011 has so far traveled the furthest, passing out of the House Education Committee and on to Judiciary. Called the “Anti-Stereotyping Act,” it says schools may not compel students, teachers or employees to “affirm, adopt or adhere to any belief or concept that: One race, sex, ethnicity, religion or national origin is inherently superior or inferior to another …; an individual, by virtue of his or her race, sex, ethnicity, religion or national origin should be blamed for actions committed in the past …; or an individual’s moral character is necessarily determined … by his or her race, sex, ethnicity, religion or national origin.”
On the surface, HB 4011 seems fairly harmless, but it’s legislating a problem that does not exist. No teacher has ever looked at a white male student and said, “Slavery is your fault and you should be ashamed.”
Then there’s HB 4016, which contains everything that’s in HB 4011, then makes it worse. Because the Legislature never passes up an opportunity to punish transgender individuals for existing, HB 4016 includes language that would prohibit schools/teachers from compelling teachers/students to use a transgender person’s preferred pronouns.
HB 4016 also mandates that schools cannot teach about any foreign political or economic system without “the inclusion of the historically documented occurrences, scope and scale of state sponsored terror and murder, absence of legal process and protection of civil and political rights, forced labor, economic inefficiency and starvations which have transpired under such forms of political economy” without dedicating equal time and material to “the western tradition of constitutional representative democracy” and the supposed superiority of capitalism.
We assume, then, that after teaching about communism and Hitler, teachers must then teach about American slavery and the Confederate fight to keep it, the Three-Fifths Compromise, segregation and Jim Crow and the Tulsa Massacre; the Trail of Tears, Native American “assimilation” schools, reservations and forced sterilizations; as well as Japanese internment camps during WWII and police raids on LGBTQ clubs in the 1960s and beyond. But teachers won’t, because these are the very topics the bills seek to censor.
In addition, teachers will have to provide equal time and materials to opposing points of view (à la the Texas administrator who told a teacher she had to present “opposing views” of the Holocaust). Any perceived violation of this act can lead to being fired.
Then there’s this gem, hidden in both HB 4016 and SB 498: A teacher cannot teach that “an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of the individual’s race, sex, ethnicity, religion, or national origin.”
No one teaches a student to feel discomfort, guilt or anguish, but if the language is codified, anytime a student is uncomfortable in history, English or even health classes, there could be dire legal repercussions for schools and teachers just for teaching or fostering classroom discussion.
Because, SB 498 takes the worst of its House equivalent, then gives “any student or employee” permission to sue the teacher, the school and/or the school board and applies all aforementioned rules to higher education, too.
Finally there’s the fourth “anti-CRT” bill: SB 587, which creates a tip line to the governor’s office for when parents or students observe the teaching of “critical race theory” in West Virginia public schools.
Republican politicians created this “critical race theory” boogeyman and pushed the specter of “subversive” content in schools that teaches children to hate themselves, and now they proclaim to have the only solution to a problem that never existed.
