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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed his state’s effort to shut out anti-racism education into law on Tuesday, making Texas the latest to adopt legislation that bans certain topics on race and racism from being discussed in the classroom.
The legislation doesn’t define — or even mention — the term “critical race theory,” but there’s no doubt what the bill is actually about. Efforts to craft bans on so-called “critical race theory,” have emerged as one of the latest manifestations of an uninformed culture war. The effort has been brewing for months, following anti-racism demonstrations that were sparked across the country in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.
The GOP freakout over a theory has bubbled up in the form of proposed legislation in at least 21 states, according to a survey by the publication EdWeek.
But Columbia law professor Kendall Thomas told TPM that the brouhaha from Abbott and others has a lot more to do with upcoming elections than it does with kids in school. (Abbott just happens to be up for reelection next year.)
“As I’ve been watching these skirmishes unfold in various parts of the country and in Washington, I’ve been struck by how much of the terms of the debates and decisions that purport to address critical race theory have very little to do with critical race theory at all,” Thomas said.
“The Republican Party has been given a set of talking points that it’s weaponized for a culture war, to tee up the 2022 midterm elections and beyond,” he added.
One of those talking points appears to be an assertion made by Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) who declared in the GOP response to President Joe Biden’s address to Congress in April that “America is not a racist country.”
Thomas, who is a co-founder and director of the Center for the Study of Law and Culture at Columbia Law School, has praised critical race theory for providing an alternative to assigning individual blame or guilt in discussions of racism and instead provide a bird’s eye view on how institutions put race to work in ways that reproduce inequality.
He does not recognize his field of study in the right-wing caricature, and said assertions like Scott’s have stunted the possibilities presented by critical race theory.
“What the approach offered by critical race theory gives us the opportunity to do is to ask ourselves what it would mean to imagine ourselves as an anti-racist country and then to act on that imagination in ways that allow us to see and address the colorblind racism that continues to shape and distort our society,” Thomas said.
Thomas said that discussions under the guise of the theory have perhaps more than anything provided a closer look into what he called efforts by Republican lawmakers to weaponize what people don’t know and promote fear.
“This is a political project that is about stoking racial fear and racial distrust to distract Americans from the failures of people like Governor DeSantis,” he said. (Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) had insisted during a Board of Education vote in his state last week that critical race theory would teach children “the country is rotten and that our institutions are illegitimate.”)
“It’s crucial to pay attention to the threadbare motivations behind this — which are political marketing, self promotion and monetizing racism,” Thomas said. “This is a case where they’re trying to make money by selling racism under the guise of these anti-CRT initiatives.”
While some GOP lawmakers who have cast critical race theory as liberal attempt to undermine American institutions, Thomas said it is in fact their efforts that put at risk some of the nation’s core values.
“I don’t think telling the truth has ever undermined American institutions,” Thomas said. “Critical race theory is inviting the country to participate in a conversation that the founders would very much recognize as being at the heart of our aspirations as a democratic republic. That’s the legacy they bequeathed to us.”