Part of the reason Republican campaigns against critical race theory have been so successful is that the Left’s only rejoinders are: CRT isn’t actually being taught in public schools, or it’s racist to not want CRT taught in public schools.
Neither argument is convincing, but the former is especially stupid, as there is a massive amount of evidence that CRT has, in fact, made its way into the public school system.
Take, for example, a recent CNN interview in which host Brianna Keilar insisted to Sen. Rick Scott that CRT is “not in the curriculum in Virginia.” Scott then cited examples from the Virginia Department of Education’s own website that prove elements of CRT have been in Virginia’s schools for years, including a 2019 memo in which Superintendent of Public Instruction James Lane endorsed the “foundations of Critical Race Theory in education” and the narrative of “white fragility” as an important “tool.” He also cited a 2015 seminar sponsored by the state government in which teachers were instructed to “embrace Critical Race Theory” and “engage in race-conscious teaching and learning.”
A few more examples Scott didn’t mention show that CRT has been in Virginia’s social studies curriculum since at least 2018. At that time, Fairfax County Public Schools Social Studies Coordinator Colleen Eddy led a deliberate effort to overhaul the county’s curriculum to correct the “overrepresentation of white and Eurocentric history” and the lack of “diverse perspectives in education.” The result was a new history curriculum that included teaching that “the U.S. was founded on protecting the interests of white, Christian men who owned property.”
Fairfax officials also rolled out an initiative called “One Fairfax” that emphasized “equity.” As part of this initiative, a Virginia elementary school shared on its website a radical video titled “Woke Kindergarten 60 Second Texts: Safe” that suggested police are dangerous to be around.
In short, CRT is very much present in Virginia’s public schools. But even after being confronted with a plethora of evidence confirming as much, Keilar continued to deny the truth: “Just to be clear, it’s not in the curriculum in Virginia,” she told Scott. And again: “It’s not part of the curriculum.”
This denialism is not convincing anyone. I doubt Keilar even convinced herself. And that’s because it’s hard to gaslight people about something that they’re seeing with their own eyes. It didn’t work in Virginia earlier this month, and it won’t work in 2022 either.
