Along With Three R's, U.S. Teaching Racist "Critical Race Theory"

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

Since there was limited seating inside, parents voiced their concerns about critical race theory being taught in schools with other parents outside the Plano ISD board meeting inside the Plano Independent School District Administration Building in Plano, Texas, Tuesday, May 4, 2021.(Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News)(Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)   Several testified against teaching this concept, calling critical race theory an ideological cancer and a way of making kids feel bad.

"In the early hours of Saturday morning, after hours of debate on how Texas should teach issues of race and racism in its public schools, the Senate passed legislation aimed at banning critical race theory. The revised bill, approved on an 18-13 party line vote, heads back to the Texas House, which approved similar legislation earlier last week."  Notice, this was not an issue of teaching about racism but of teaching issues about racial problems with police.    If that were the case, then they might be teaching the history of the Holocaust, which no one seems to know about or understand these days in certain parts of our country.                                                                                                             

                                       Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice ​

A lesson plan I found  is teaching race, racism and police violence. " In 2014, the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Eric Garner in New York City, Tamir Rice in Cleveland and too many others caused waves of nationwide protest and appeals for stronger protections against police brutality.  This comes from LEARNING FOR JUSTICE.,  classroom resources.  The resources below can help spur much-needed discussion around implicit bias and systemic racism, but they can also empower your students to enact the changes that will create a more just society. " 

"These events—along with the lack of accountability for the police officers who shot and killed these unarmed victims—also prompted educators to seek resources on how to address these subjects in the classroom."

 "The racial theory being advanced is called the Critical Race Theory or (CRT).    Critical race theory (CRT) is an academic movement of civil-rights scholars and activists in the United States who seek to critically examine the law as it intersects with issues of race and to challenge mainstream liberal approaches to racial justice. Critical race theory examines social, cultural and legal issues as they relate to race and racism."

Where can we find it today?                   

Critical Race Theory is common in K-12 school curriculum and college classes. California’s new K-12 ethnic studies course has an entire section dedicated to intersectionality and lists “identity” and “systems of power” as “primary themes.” Illinois’ “culturally responsive teaching and leading standards” say that there “is often not one ‘correct’ way of doing or understanding something, and that what is seen as ‘correct’ is most often based on our lived experiences.” In the workplace, businesses are increasingly requiring employees to undergo diversity trainings in which advocates of Critical Race Theory explain that persons who are not minorities are part of a systemically racist culture.

"Critical race theory originated in the mid-1970s in the writings of several American legal scholars, including Derrick Bell, Alan Freeman, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, Cheryl Harris, Charles R. Lawrence III, Mari Matsuda, and Patricia J. Williams. It emerged as a movement by the 1980s, reworking theories of critical legal studies (CLS) with more focus on race. Both critical race theory and critical legal studies are rooted in critical theory, which argues that social problems are influenced and created more by societal structures and cultural assumptions than by individual and psychological factors.

Critical race theory is loosely unified by two common themes: 

1.  white supremacy, with its societal or structural racism, exists and maintains power through the law; and 

2.  transforming the relationship between law and racial power, 

     racial emancipation and anti-subordination more broadly, is possible.

Under cover of sophisticated wording, this is talking about laws as they exist in the USA which was  the haven for white people from Europe and populated and fought for from 1620 throughout to 1776 and 1812 by Europeans.  It is populated by Europeans disgruntled with Europe's society founding their own freedom in a newer continent.  They brought a fresh new look and freedom from serfdom habits of England and Europe to give all people equality, something new to even them."  

                                                         

The Goldwater  Institute of Barry Goldwater in Arizona  stated that  "Rioters topple statues of our Founding Fathers, activists are rewriting school textbooks, mobs are eroding freedom of speech, and the virtues of hard work and commitment we hold dear are being eviscerated. So-called “woke” crusaders have redefined the vital concept of justice in America.

Though it may seem as if American society has collectively reached this cultural tipping point overnight, the attacks on individual freedom and civic institutions are the effects of a decades-old worldview known as Critical Race Theory. Once we consider what Critical Race Theory is all about, we discover that this view of our country does not intend to give more people a chance at the American Dream but to engage in a never-ending struggle for power."Critical Race Theory is a perspective on modern life—a worldview—that believes all the events and ideas around us in politics, education, entertainment and the media, the workplace, and beyond must be explained in terms of racial identities.

Calling the people "white supremacists" is ugly, calling attention to their white skin of Europeans as if it were something to be apologetic about.  Of course, this is in view of the growing population of the Black slaves brought over from Africa who where freed of their slave existence from the Civil War which was just the start of a change for both the main population of Americans and the Blacks,, trying to adjust to a different but wanted way of life and had many pitfalls to jump over to achieve actual freedom of their person, mentally and physically.  Whites settled this country-pushing down the native Americans who were here, of course, but it was the whites who braved the elements and brought the USA to this point in time with the help of other minorities, naturally.  They just happen to be the founders of this nation with a huge goal in mind.  We all were swept up in the zeal of coming here or maintaining the country in slavery that finally ended, It had the shelf life from 1620 to 1865.  

                                                      

The most interesting learning experience I have had about Blacks was reading about the Black scientist, George Washington Carver in a book about him in school.                                             

Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. is an American literary critic, professor, historian, filmmaker, and public intellectual who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.

Another lesson I have had is in my DNA studies, watching the TV program, FINDING YOUR ROOTS,  of genealogists telling a person of their background  by using their genealogy skills, going back for generations and giving that person a book about it all.  That goes through their family history of struggles and successes and doesn't use any Critical Race Theory.  As a family genealogist, it is a fantastic program led by Henry Louis Gates, jr..   

 Critical race theory has been used to address racial injustice to students in grade school and throughout, even to seniors in high school.  

Critics of critical race theory argue that it relies on social constructionism, elevates storytelling over evidence and reason, rejects the concepts of truth and merit, and opposes liberalism.  This highbrow sentence means that the social strata of the rich, middle class and poor depend on having skills developed from higher education that decide where one lived or ate and storytelling means taking facts and changing them to fit their purposes.  

Those that are for the Critical Race Theory to be taught, present this evidence.  "One hundred years ago this week, a White mob massacred Black residents in the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma, ending generations of Black wealth-building that has yet to recover. But if lawmakers in a number of states and a growing chorus of conservative critics of “critical race theory” have their way, students might learn the facts about the Tulsa Massacre, but not the direct connection between the demise of Black Wall Street and current racial wealth gap. The same would happen when it came time to learn about Indian Removal: Students would learn the facts, but without fully understanding the relationship between an attempt at ethnic genocide and the plight of Indigenous Americans today."  All this is way over the head of children.  It should be presented to college students with a list of reading to do connected to it.  Those teaching such a subject should have their masters in history, and at that, American history.  Heavens, it's way over the head of the average elementary and high school teachers!  

Racism is a very heavy subject, something most adults are in the dark about.  Children copy their parents' behaviors.    They'll copy the way most people around them  treat each other.  Children are mostly the mirror images of their parents.  My question is about what we teach at the level of elementary, junior high and high schools.  What they need mostly is the skill of reading and telling what is fact and what is fiction.  Such a concept as "Critical Race Theory" might be left for college. The title itself doesn't give one a clue as to how they are teaching about races.  This is quite vague to me, a teacher.   

"The agenda item in question was a contract renewal for an elective college preparation course (high school) that helps students develop study skills. The AVID program has been in Plano — and many area districts — for more than a decade.  What is AVID program? "Teacher Preparation Program - Delivered Entirely Online,   Designed For The Future. Start Now! Industry Leading Learning Modules Delivered All-Online. Learn more. Get Your Master's in Ed. Get Your Teaching License. Degree programs: Master's in Education, Teacher Preparation".    I am shocked that teaching has come down to this:  teaching a race theory to children and creating teachers with an online program only where they and a master teacher have no chance to see them react in a classroom.  Yikes! 

Critical race theory is an academic framework that probes the way policies and laws uphold systemic racism.“At a time when racial tensions are at a boiling point, we don’t need to burden our kids with guilt for racial crimes they had nothing to do with,” Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, declared after a divided House approved his bill. "   Though a sharp teacher reading Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn  to her classroom could easily point out the differences in his world and today's world.  It might cause interest in further reading by the students to read more.  

"The concept that mankind is divided into different races is found in a vague and imprecise fashion  in the Bible where, however, the essential unity of all races is suggested.  This is seen and emphasized by the rabbis in the story of the Creation and of the common origin of all men.

The conception of racism began to take on a new aspect in the 19th century.  The realization of the existence of the Aryan and Semitic families of languages led to the theory of the existence of Aryan and Semitic races and later, to the classification of their subsections, the Teutons exemplifying the former and the Jews the latter.  The theory was based on the belief, since rejected by scientists, that :

1. Jews were physically homogeneous : as in consisting of parts all of the same kind.  "culturally speaking the farmers constitute an extremely homogeneous group."  

2. There was a correlation between physical type and mental-cultural characteristics.  

"Jews and certain other groups were regarded as "racially inferior." by the Nazis of Germany.  At the end of the 19th century, this became a basic conception of the revived anti-Jewish movement in "Germany which, in the new era of tolerance, could no longer base itself exclusively on religion and, moreover was confronted with large numbers of Jews in whose lives Judaism played no part."  

"Thus, what had been an innocuous if unsound theory, became in the hands of E. Duhring, Wilhelm Marr,  H.S. Chamberlain, A. Rosenberg, a deadly weapon.  A fundamental principal of the Nazi movement from the outset, was called National Socialism.  It was officially and precisely formulated by the NUREMBERG LAWS in 1935.  Intermarriage between Jews and "Aryans" were sternly forbidden and the new Jewish disabilities were extended to all persons with 2 or more Jewish grandparents.  This conception was applies somewhat less rigorously in Fascist Italy in 1938 and in various Nazi-occupied countries of Europe  from 1939 to 1945, the length of World War II."  

On it was based the extermination policy carried out by the Germans in this period, extending in many instances to persons with only the vaguest Jewish associations and even to Christian clergymen and priests.  The alleged "scientific " evidence of racialism, based on craniometry, etc, are wholly untenable.  They measured the head and made decisions about race and people. "

"Germany has had to face this in their education since their government allowed 6 million Jews to be exterminated.  They were teaching racism and treating Jews as being sub-human.  "According to historian Alon Confino, the Nazis and other Germans made 1,448 laws, policies, and decrees designed to remove Jews from the country’s political, economic, and cultural life between January 31, 1933, and August 31, 1939. In 1933 alone, 316 anti-Jewish measures were taken in Germany by the national, state, regional, and local governments as well as by civic associations throughout the country. The following is a partial list of the anti-Jewish laws, policies, and decrees made in 1933."  This is what racism does.

• Berlin: Jewish physicians are excluded from the list of doctors approved to receive patients under welfare and health insurance plans.
• Prussia: Jewish judges and lawyers working at courts are immediately removed from office; the percentage of licensed Jewish lawyers should be equal to the percentage of Jews in the population; Jewish lawyers cannot represent the state.
• Cologne: Jews cannot use the city’s sports facilities.
• Frankfurt: Jews must submit their passports for verification."

                                       

"A group of states also rejects critical race theory, the New York Times' 1619 Project and similar curriculums that teach that racism is endemic and institutionalized in American society."  Critical race theory is one of several programs, then, trying to teach  this subject.

"Donald Trump’s election as the 45th President of the United States has been marked by the brewing storms of racial conflicts. A rise in racial incidents ensued in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s victory in November 2016.

With so many Muslims from the Middle East immigrating into the USA, they are looked upon as a race more akin to the Blacks and are associated with the attacks on Israel and the way they have treated the Jews of late.  Earlier, their countries were a haven for Jews expelled from European countries.  The threat of Jews developing that tiny corner of Palestine into Israel has lit a fever in their minds of non-acceptance and attacks.  After 73 years, that problem between Jews and Muslims is being addressed favorably.  We are now left with anti-Semitism in the USA.  

 Since the beginning of 2017, over 100 bomb threats have been made against Jewish community centers and schools. Trump’s travel ban, signed in late January 2017, initially affected about 90,000 people from seven Middle Eastern countries; 87,000 of those banned were Muslims. Minorities such as American Muslims and black Americans have expressed fears over racial relations under Trump. Undeniably, the topic of race—and racism—has gripped America and the world throughout."

The USA has within it states evidently teaching the critical race theory in their schools.  The senate in Texas just approved a bill banning  it, however.  Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry argue that critical race theory lacks supporting evidence, relies on an implausible belief that reality is socially constructed, rejects evidence in favor of storytelling, rejects truth and merit as expressions of political dominance, and rejects the rule of law. 

Additionally, they posit that the anti-meritocratic tenets in critical race theory, critical feminism, and critical legal studies may unintentionally lead to antisemitic and anti-Asian implications. 

In particular, they suggest that the success of Jews and Asians within what critical race theorists argue is a structurally unfair system may lend itself to allegations of cheating, advantage-taking, or other such claims. 

A series of responses to Farber and Sherry was published in the Harvard Law Review. These responses argue that there is a difference between criticizing an unfair system and criticizing individuals who perform well inside that system.

In the Boston College Law Review, Jeffrey Pyle argues that critical race theory undermines confidence in the rule of law, saying that "critical race theorists attack the very foundations of the liberal legal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism and neutral principles of constitutional law".

"Calling critical race theory “deeply flawed and controversial,” 20 state attorneys general have urged the Biden Administration to strike it from history and civics guidance. By banning the teaching of the critical race theory, teachers cannot teach students that one race is inherently superior to another.  That's what the Nazis did,  making Jews an inferior race.  Also they cannot say that an individual is inherently racist because of their race. "  Understand that a racist is someone  who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.  "He has been targeted by vicious racists online"

Being a retired elementary school teacher and having taught children from K to 4th and 7th to 9th grades, I'm fortunate to not being presented with any lessons to teach such a subject as "critical race theory.  We're lucky to be able to have the time to spend teaching reading skills, writing and math, music, PE, geography, history and such with lesson plans suitable for that grade level. By history, I mean teaching about the community helpers, the postman, baker, etc in 2nd grade,, then  the city in 3rd grade, the state in 4th grade, Canada and Mexico in 5th grade, and so on.    I've taught classes where half the children were from Mexican migrant families to disturbed children from poor families to Israelis from 7th to 9th grade including Circassians.  College students could study such things, but younger ones?  Children enjoy being together and playing.  They love recess.  There are moments in a day where if any problems arise because of a racial difference, it should be easily smoothed over with the proper teacher who loves all children.  Nothing in schools should be presented that puts another down in front of their peers.  I do remember teaching my 4th grade and had a native American child in my class.  I taught the class that our government was based on the Indian way of government of one of the east coast tribes, as I vaguely remember, and she suddenly became so proud of herself, she just lit up.  Teach the accomplishments, that's the thing to do.  It's something I knew, not in my own lesson plan.  

I'm finding out that many of the thousands of homeless on our streets in our nation include small children.  Are they in school?  Aren't most of the generation we find living on the streets the children of the Hippie generation?  There's a social dilemna for you.  Give our children skills and the love of our nation and have them reading about our history with its exciting elements.  TV does it.  Schools have to do it, too with the textbooks they choose and the presentation, films, etc.  Remember, our aim to to make well-skilled self-sufficient and happy citizens.  

Who has been writing out lesson plans for others to follow along with this "Critical Race Theory?  Teachers with online only degrees?  And that's another topic.  

Racial problems between Black and white in our nation has topped the chart today along with the high incidents of anti-Semitism.  As an American Jew, I'm appalled at the atmosphere of believing in the Palestinian "innocents" who have taken the position of the underdog causing Americans to side with them while they rain down 4,000 rockets into Israel.  Surely, this is evidence of not being educated in the history of Israel or its people and their struggles of existence.  What this country has become today is not the country I was born into.  There was anti-Semitism then but the same exists today in different ways.  Time has marched on to the tune of a disharmonious trumpet.  I fear such a vague plan practiced by many teachers of various levels of abilities teaching such a plan as Critical Race Theory to all levels of classes.  What a title!  

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2021/05/22/how-critical-race-theory-came-to-dominate-education-debates-in-texas/

https://districtadministration.com/20-states-pressure-biden-admin-teach-critical-race-theory-schools/

https://www.learningforjustice.org/moment/racism-and-police-violence

https://www.pbs.org/weta/finding-your-roots/

https://goldwaterinstitute.org/criticalracetheory/?gclid=CjwKCAjw2ZaGBhBoEiwA8pfP_r6CvFFTIb1jzRr3ImVPz5P36VhujO8zSC862DoW4TqkH5WY7QhOEBoCA70QAvD_BwE

https://www.conservativenewsandviews.com/2021/06/12/accountability/news-media/patrisse-yoo-hoo/

https://edtrust.org/the-equity-line/the-bans-on-critical-race-theory-are-the-latest-attempt-to-legislate-ignorance/?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=equityline&gclid=CjwKCAjw2ZaGBhBoEiwA8pfP_qYkxy9TI_AHvVHn4zQyrXz0q29BhkDJ6LAhfZdnBJYNdrXgHgIrUBoCykAQAvD_BwE