There is a malicious plot developing in our nation’s schools. This shadowy scheme threatens to destroy the fabric of our society and tear this country asunder by brainwashing our students and turning them against one another. It is nothing short of Marxist indoctrination, and its hateful, anti-American ideas imperil our democracy and freedoms. I refer, of course, to critical race theory — or at least the version of it you may be familiar with if you subject yourself to the endless hours of fear-mongering and conspiracy theory peddling of Fox News, Newsmax, and Breitbart. Critical race theory is the latest target of the right-wing disinformation machine, and while it has created unnecessary discord across the country, it is worth asking what critical race theory is and why it has become so divisive.
The debate on critical race theory began shortly after the horrific string of murders and racial unrest in the summer of 2020. Then, activists and organizers began pushing for anti-racist curricula to be taught in public schools. The effort to honestly teach students about the often dark and ugly history of racism was, at that time, largely uncontroversial. A Brown University poll conducted last year showed overwhelming support for racial education even among Republicans. People, regardless of race, political ideology, and parenthood, understood schools simply were not doing a good enough job to teach students about race in the United States.
From poorly written and inconsistent textbooks to tone-deaf and offensive slavery lessons, our education system has failed generations of schoolchildren and left them wholly unprepared for the realities of race in our society. And for one brief, shining moment in the darkness of 2020, it seemed like progress could be made on the racial education front. Thousands of public school districts began offering students ethnic studies electives while others made them required courses, with Connecticut becoming the first state to require that all public high schools offer ethnic studies and include Native American studies in their social studies curricula. But post-January 6th, the GOP suddenly became obsessed with critical race theory as conservative media outlets attempted to distract from the GOP’s role in the insurrectionist attack on our Capitol.
They cowered behind a self-invented version of critical race theory rather than reporting on the consequences of their actions and manufactured a culture war to help unite their base at the expense of the rest of the country. So, critical race theory went from an obscure, decades-old legal doctrine mentioned less than half a dozen times on Fox News in November of 2020 to a subject mentioned 901 times in June, prompting fiery protests from concerned parents in school board meetings across the nation. And before we knew it, myths and misconceptions about critical race theory found themselves squarely at the center of our public debate, with conservative pundits offering civilian review boards for schools and body cameras for teachers as ridiculous solutions to a problem they themselves created.
The fact is, there is nothing hateful about critical race theory, and the fact that it exposes an inconvenient truth about America does not make it dangerous. Not every effort to teach kids about equity and inclusion is a Trojan horse for critical race theory, and children will not learn critical race theory because it just isn’t taught in grade school—not because of the vain bills banning it in 26 states. Critical race is graduate-level legal theory, not primary education. And while that may bring a sigh of relief to indignant conservatives, the truth about racism in America remains. Race fails to distinguish us as individuals, but it does differentiate us in our society. As much as we like to think we live in a post-racial age so different from the world our grandparents lived in the 50s and 60s, race still presents many of the same challenges it has throughout our history, and as long as race remains a shorthand in this country for social outcomes, we cannot claim to have realized Dr. King’s dream. Let us reject the false choice presented to us by the fomenters of fear and division that it is somehow impossible to criticize an imperfect nation and still love it.
While it is sometimes difficult to imagine, someday soon we will become parents tasked with the responsibility of going to school board meetings and fighting for the kind of education we want our children to receive. When that day comes, we should choose a racially equitable education that neither teaches our children to hate America nor instill in them a blind faux-nationalism, but enlightens them, tells them the truth about our history, and prepares them for the troubled world they will soon enter. In the meantime, we can continue pushing for accurate representations of our history in our school districts at home and right here at Yale. Much like our country, the history of Yale is riddled with ugly realities and inconvenient truths. Acknowledging Yale’s ties to slavery is one small step in the right direction, but there is so much more that needs to be done to build the better world in which we all want to live. That work begins in our schools, it begins with you.
MICHAEL NDUBISI is a first year in Saybrook College. Contact him at michael.ndubisi@yale.edu.