Across the country, Republican lawmakers are taking aim at “critical race theory” and other race-conscious pedagogics. These lawmakers take their inspiration (and frequently, their language) from an executive order issued in the final months of the Trump administration, which decried “divisive” teachings on race and gender and mandated a “patriotic” education that presents our history in a positive light.
In Indiana, where I live, legislation on the brink of passage draws verbatim from Donald Trump’s order, prohibiting, among other things, lessons or curriculum that suggest that “any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex.” The punishment for violating this vague prohibition includes hefty fines for schools and decertification for offending teachers.
While not explicitly stated, it becomes clear upon examination that the sort of “psychological distress” their authors are concerned with is white psychological distress: the discomfort that creeps up in many white students (and, more frequently, their parents) when encouraged to reflect on their race-based advantages or wrestle with the historical atrocities committed by whites against people of color. This is the sort of distress that sociologist Robin DiAngelo names “white fragility.”
This prohibition looks different, however, when viewed from the perspective of students of color. Imagine the discomfort an Indigenous student might feel sitting through a “patriotic” lesson on Christopher Columbus’ “discovery” of the Americas or being asked to consider why Indian removal “will help the United States grow and prosper.” Imagine the discomfort of an African American student encountering a textbook’s characterization of slaves as “workers” and slavery as a form of immigration, or a disparaging rant about the Black Lives Matter movement. Now imagine the families of these students taking legal action against their teachers and schools for running afoul of the vague prohibitions contained in anti-CRT legislation.
That Republican lawmakers seem not to have considered this possibility reveals two important weaknesses in their legislation. First, it reveals the narrow epistemological perspective these (overwhelmingly white) lawmakers draw upon when imagining the effects and impact of their legislation. Second, it reveals the extent to which their own education may have indoctrinated them into a whitewashed “patriotic” understanding of U.S. history, such that they sincerely believe that teaching that history accurately could produce anything other than pride and reverence at our shining “city upon a hill.”
Both assumptions can be exploited, with the result that ill-conceived and poorly designed laws intended to subvert critical discussions of our country’s legacy of white supremacy might become vehicles for challenging white supremacy as it arises in our public education systems.
To be clear, this is not an endorsement of these Orwellian, propagandistic laws. The question of how a nation should teach its citizens its history — how it balances its inspiring ideals with its mistakes, atrocities and injustices — is not an easy one. Focusing too much on the negative risks creating a nation of cynics who feel no real allegiance to our founding values. On the other hand, ignoring or downplaying the negative, and presenting an uncritical, mythologized version of history, risks repeating our worst mistakes, and is widely recognized as a distinguishing feature of fascist and authoritarian regimes.
By suppressing ideas that they perceive to be insufficiently patriotic (or sufficiently discomfiting to white students and families), these lawmakers forge further down the path toward authoritarianism. At the same time, they create additional stress for schools and teachers already stretched to a breaking point by pandemic-era challenges.
Still, if Republicans insist on politicizing public education, progressives can and should beat them at their own game. A flood of lawsuits challenging racist assumptions and approaches in public schools will force these lawmakers to either more carefully tailor their prohibitions to the interests of white constituents (a challenging task given the formally race-neutral character of post-civil rights law), or abandon their efforts to transform public schools into anti-anti-racist indoctrination centers.
By framing their legislative projects in the misleading terms of “critical race theory,” Republican lawmakers have picked a fight with a group of scholars and jurists who likely understand the law better than they do and are equipped to use that understanding to undermine these authoritarian laws. This is precisely what critical race theory does best: identify ways to subvert a legal system that covertly attempts to promote and protect white interests and use that system as far as possible to provide relief to Americans of color. Just as shortsighted attempts to ban books can end up increasing circulation of the books, this wave of anti-CRT legislation might provide an opportunity for CRT to achieve its goals.
CRT has been much maligned but little understood by conservative lawmakers. This latest backlash provides an opportunity for critical race theorists to educate them, demonstrating the framework’s relevance not in the classroom, where they fear it lurks, but in the courts, where its true power resides.
