Welp, it happened; Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed a white fragility bill pushed by state Republicans to restrict Critical Race Theory from being taught in the state’s schools and universities.
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By now, you’re aware that across the country, GOPropagandists have embarked on a mission to rid the American education system of the scourge they believe to be any curriculum that doesn’t center whiteness or protect white feelings. They’ll tell you it’s about teaching history that is accurate and non-indoctrinating, but as The Root has demonstrated ad nauseam, Republicans only object to things like CRT and The 1619 Project because they undermine America’s status quo of teaching history that centers whiteness and perpetuates historical falsehoods that frame the nation as noble and the institution of slavery and the civil rights movement as mere footnotes in U.S. history that rose from America’s extraordinary journey, not the systemic racism of its institutions.
In other words: They want to continue defaulting to white lies being taught instead of introducing Black perspective into the curricula.
They also have no fucking clue what CRT is.
From The Guardian:
The bill, H 377, prevents teachers from “indoctrinating” students into belief systems that claim that members of any race, sex, religion, ethnicity or national origin are inferior or superior to other groups. Signed into law last week, H 377 also makes it illegal to make students “affirm, adopt or adhere to” beliefs that members of these groups are today responsible for past actions of the groups to which they claim to belong.
I guess it simply doesn’t matter that Critical Race Theory in no way teaches that “any race, sex, religion, ethnicity or national origin are inferior or superior to other groups,” or that “members of these groups are today responsible for past actions of the groups to which they claim to belong.” In fact, CRT actually has nothing to do with any race of people at the individual level and is really an academic study on how the undeniable systemic racism in America’s history has been embedded in American law and other institutions that exist today. As the Guardian noted, CRT “seeks to challenge racism and improve equitable racial power through legal reform.”
Despite Little writing in the bill’s transmittal letter to the state’s Republican House speaker Scott Bedke that “We must be focused on facts and data, not anecdotes and innuendo,” Little and Republicans across the nation have absolutely embraced feelings over facts—a thing conservatives constantly accuse progressives of doing.
It’s also worth asking why Idaho—a state that is nearly 90 percent white and traditionally conservative as fuck—even needs a bill like this in the first place.
Were institutions of learning in the state even planning to incorporate CRT into their curricula, or are Idaho Republicans, like Republicans across the nation, only pushing these bills out of paranoia because they see demographic and ideological shifts in the country making their beloved America more and more unrecognizable to them?
I’m really starting to believe that the culture war is all conservatives have left.
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