Another day, another group of Republicans are in their feelings that America was and is racist as fuck. A school board in Georgiaโs Cobb County voted on Thursday to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools.
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According to AJC, the resolution was introduced by board Chairman Randy Scamihorn after he saw on social media that some teachers were using aspects of the curriculum in their classrooms. Scamihorn, whose knowledge of CRT Iโm going to assume comes entirely from Newsmax posts on Facebook, called the curriculum โa Marxist concept.โ
โItโs revisionist history and history should be thorough,โ Scamihorn said. Considering that we received an abridged version of Black history in school, the horrors committed by the colonial settlers were whitewashed, and Manifest Destiny was talked about like a good thing, I find this comment deeply, deeply ironic.
The board voted across party lines with the four Republican members voting in favor of the ban, and the three Democratic members abstaining from the vote. Board member Leroy โTreโ Hutchins expressed concern that the board was banning a concept they couldnโt define, and that they may wind up banning essential social and emotional learning programs that critics have called CRT-based.
โWe are now very dangerously getting ready to put something in place that will limit the responsiveness of our teachers...to meet the needs of all children here in Cobb County,โ he said.
From AJC:
Dozens of parents gathered Thursday outside the school districtโs offices to rally against the boardโs resolution, calling on the district to include discussions about slavery and racism in classroom lessons. A few people like Pamela Reardon of East Cobb, however, say critical race theory teaches white children that they are racist.
Cobb resident Janet Arnold Savage rejected that argument, adding the boardโs approval of the resolution amounts to โsuppressing the truth.โ
โThereโs a segment of this community and the country at large that feels that if you tell the truth about who we are, then youโre anti-American,โ she said. โYou have family members you donโt agree with, but you have to tell the truth.โ
Itโs sad that CRT and the 1619 Project have been boiled down to โyouโre calling white people racist!โ From my understanding, itโs mainly about examining the relationship between race and power, and how racism has been the root of many of Americaโs systemic inequities. You canโt acknowledge that racism was (and still is) the law of the land, but then get mad when people examine how racism shaped those laws.
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