- Mar 11, 2015
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I Went to School in Alabama. We Desperately Needed Critical Race Theory
Jeffery Dingler
I heard about the Ku Klux Klan for the first time when I was 14, in school. The way I remember it, my eight grade teacher informed us during an English class that the KKK wasn't so bad at first, that it started out as a vigilante force for defenseless Southerners who were being preyed upon by Yankees and free Black Americans during Reconstruction. Of course, this isn't true; the Klan was always about racial oppression and white terrorism. That's not how we learned it in rural Alabama public school.
Incredibly, this wasn't the only false or outright racist thing I heard from educators in the six years I spent in middle school and high school there, from 1999-2005. I was also taught that there wasn't a "Civil War" but a "War of Northern Aggression," which was waged not to abolish slavery but to "end state's rights."
From all these alternate facts and twisted narratives, I did learn something true: that history is fungible and can be shaped to suit any region's needs. And it's this truth—along with a correct understanding of American history—that many across the nation are trying to ban from schools, stubbornly resisting hard truths about race and American history. The culture war over critical race theory—a loose academic framework that exposes systemic racism—has many white folks in an uproar over the thought of their kids learning that the United States is, and has been, a racist society.
That's what critical race theory is: another take on American history that focuses on what this country has always sought to bury: the systemic racial hierarchy that helped build it.
And that's what many oppose. Republicans in more than two dozen states have recently been proposing bills that limit educational discussions on race and racism in the U.S.—potentially stifling that conversation in schools before it's even begun.
As someone who was born and raised in the Deep South, I could not disagree more with these attempts to stifle an accounting of America's racist past and even present. To people like me who attended small public schools in rural or remote areas, classes that delve into CRT would be instrumental in countering what feels like an overwhelming culture of deliberate ignorance toward our own history.
This guy doesn't believe that teaching these subjects will make whites hate being white. Of course we'll get the he's filled with white guilt bs coming the USMB racists.
Jeffery Dingler
I heard about the Ku Klux Klan for the first time when I was 14, in school. The way I remember it, my eight grade teacher informed us during an English class that the KKK wasn't so bad at first, that it started out as a vigilante force for defenseless Southerners who were being preyed upon by Yankees and free Black Americans during Reconstruction. Of course, this isn't true; the Klan was always about racial oppression and white terrorism. That's not how we learned it in rural Alabama public school.
Incredibly, this wasn't the only false or outright racist thing I heard from educators in the six years I spent in middle school and high school there, from 1999-2005. I was also taught that there wasn't a "Civil War" but a "War of Northern Aggression," which was waged not to abolish slavery but to "end state's rights."
From all these alternate facts and twisted narratives, I did learn something true: that history is fungible and can be shaped to suit any region's needs. And it's this truth—along with a correct understanding of American history—that many across the nation are trying to ban from schools, stubbornly resisting hard truths about race and American history. The culture war over critical race theory—a loose academic framework that exposes systemic racism—has many white folks in an uproar over the thought of their kids learning that the United States is, and has been, a racist society.
That's what critical race theory is: another take on American history that focuses on what this country has always sought to bury: the systemic racial hierarchy that helped build it.
And that's what many oppose. Republicans in more than two dozen states have recently been proposing bills that limit educational discussions on race and racism in the U.S.—potentially stifling that conversation in schools before it's even begun.
As someone who was born and raised in the Deep South, I could not disagree more with these attempts to stifle an accounting of America's racist past and even present. To people like me who attended small public schools in rural or remote areas, classes that delve into CRT would be instrumental in countering what feels like an overwhelming culture of deliberate ignorance toward our own history.
This guy doesn't believe that teaching these subjects will make whites hate being white. Of course we'll get the he's filled with white guilt bs coming the USMB racists.