Ivey, and others, wailing over critical race theory need to go back to school

Alabama state school board meeting

School board members Tonya Chestnut (from left) Stephanie Bell, Yvette Richardson and Belinda McRae discuss a potential resolution on critical race theory during a work session on June 10, 2021, in Montgomery.

This is an opinion column.

Somebody, break the glass. Now. The emergency is upon us.

The raging wildfire of lunacy over critical race theory has reached Alabama and it must be doused. Now.

The raging flames of ignorance.

The raging inferno of just plain wrong.

Grab an extinguisher and put it out. Now.

Before our kids get burned. Any more than they already are.

As our state continues to languish when it comes to educating our children, as too many of our neighbors still lack a now-indispensable broadband connection, as students are still reeling from more than a year of inequitable learning amid a pandemic, as the teaching of history in our state mostly remains a diminished whitewashed version of the whole ugly truth—amid all this, our leaders are suddenly wringing their hands over something they appear to know absolutely nothing about.

Something that’s not even a part of our secondary education curriculum and has never been proposed to be.

Over recent weeks, Tiki torches of torturous misinformation about an academic construct that’s been around for decades were lit in states throughout the south in a spate of laws and resolutions crafted by legislators and educators who couldn’t accurately describe CRT if the definition were scribbled on the palm of their hand.

The flames eventually—and, sadly, inevitably—reached Alabama and were senselessly fanned last week by Gov. Kay Ivey. On Thursday, this missive was sent by the governor’s spokesperson, Gina Maiola, to my AL.com colleague, education reporter Trish Crain:

“Critical Race Theory is not in Alabama’s current curriculum. Governor Ivey is working with Dr. [Eric] Mackey to ensure that our state is focused on providing all Alabama students the best possible education foundation – not on punishing kids for their skin color.”

Whoa. Let’s ignore for a moment the oxymoronic notion of being “focused on providing all Alabama students the best possible education foundation” when for too many years we’ve been seemingly just fine with providing among the nation’s worst education foundations, with being the education caboose—or close to it.

Let’s ponder instead this very simple truth (please take notes): Critical race theory is the framework for studying how racism is embedded in laws and policies that spawned myriad systemic inequities. (See: For instance, “redlining” of Black neighborhoods by government officials who deemed them unfit for bank loans that would allow residents to maintain and improve their property.)

Now write this down: CRT has absolutely nothing, not a thing, to do with “punishing kids for their skin color.”

No more so than critical thinking—which should be taught in our schools and our statehouse, but clearly is not—is criticizing someone for, well, thinking.

I expect many of our lawmakers to be fitted with dunce caps as they stumble through reasons for their misplaced outrage over CRT. For those words, however, to emanate from the office of our governor (a simple Google search would have debunked them) is yet another unequivocal embarrassment for our state.

No history teacher worth their whiteboard (pun very intended) is punishing a kid for their skin color. Or trying to make them feel bad for being white. For looking like those who perpetrated injustices too often and too long omitted from our state’s history curriculum. Remember when the Alabama archives admitted last year it had for decades intentionally omitted the history of Blacks in our state from its files while perpetuating the Confederacy’s “lost cause ideals”?

(Interestingly, no one gave a hoot about how I felt when studying how Black people were enslaved and inhumanely treated, how we were considered three-fifths of a human by our Founding Fathers, how Black men were ripped from their homes amid an over-criminalized “war” on drugs, how Black leaders were spied upon, demonized, harassed, and worse by the FBI, how… sorry, I digress.)

Ivey’s office also appears to be the spark behind a proposed resolution from the Alabama State Board of Education on the teaching of race and racism in our K-12 school. In a curiously clandestine move, State Superintendent Eric Mackey dropped the draft resolution on board members during Thursday’s working session without adding it to the agenda.

Mackey told Crain he’d met with the governor the previous day to discuss worries over CRT being taught in schools and whether Alabama should dive into the mosh pit of pandering by Republican lawmakers once again rallying around a solution in search of a problem.

One draft reads: “The Alabama State Board of Education believes the United States of America is not an inherently racist country, and that the state of Alabama is not an inherently racist state.”

Uh, okay.

Another section says, “no individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”

In case you’re wondering, “inherently” (a favorite word among Republicans when claiming not to be racist) is defined by Oxford as “in a permanent, essential or characteristic way.”

Can’t wait to read the final version; if our state school board is smart there won’t be one.

I don’t know who struck the first match and lit the ludicrous notion that critical race theory makes white kids feel bad and is being infused into our schools to bring a whole generation of them to tears. Maybe it’s best I shouldn’t know.

I do know this: The inferno is fueled by an unfortunate fear that teaching our children history’s whole truths will somehow diminish them.

That revealing to them all that was left out of history books since the first text was bound and sent into a classroom will somehow belittle them.

That teaching the plethora of vital contributions to this nation by Black and Brown people, teaching the heinous acts like the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, teaching how race and racism too-long infected us and brought our nation to this place of new reckoning will somehow punish them for the color of their skin.

Doing so, truthfully, will most likely achieve the opposite: It will douse the fires of fear before another generation is burned.

It will make them better. Better than us.

A voice for what’s right and wrong in Birmingham, Alabama (and beyond), Roy’s column appears in The Birmingham News and AL.com, as well as in the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register. Reach him at rjohnson@al.com and follow him at twitter.com/roysj

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