Should Teaching Critical Race Theory Be Banned? Capturing A Twitter Debate
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Should Teaching Critical Race Theory Be Banned? Capturing A Twitter Debate
Highlighting Tweets from Zaid Jilani, Conor Friedersdorf, Jeffrey Sachs, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Christopher F. Rufo, Kmele Foster, David Bernstein, and Colin Wright.
Lawmakers in the state of Texas and elsewhere recently announced bills to prohibit the promotion of critical race theory (CRT) in schools. These proposals have obviously sparked a lot of controversy, and rightly so. While there are many sound critiques of some aspects of CRT, we should pause to consider the free speech implications, including the extent to which state governments should dictate what individual schools can and cannot teach.
Instead of offering our own take on the matter, and in the spirit of encouraging open discourse, we wanted to present a series of debates on the issue we’ve spotted on Twitter in recent days from a wide range of voices.
First up, here’s a thread from journalist Zaid Jalani explaining what the bill actually does:
Over the past week, major media outlets have reported that Texas is trying to ban schools from teaching students about slavery and racism. This is completely false, but why it's false is also interesting.
What Texas lawmakers and others are trying to do is prohibit state sponsorship of stuff like critical race theory and the 1619 Project. Whatever you think about that, that's not prohibiting discussion of racism or slavery
But it suggests that large portions of the media now think that the 1619 Project is actually interchangeable with any thorough, objective story of slavery and that critical race theory is just your normal discussion of racism.
If people at the New York Times and NBC really think that telling people the United States was founded to protect slavery or that "white privilege" is an unassailable concept, they've separated themselves from the general public in a meaningful way.
Most people in the United States don't subscribe to woke racial ideas, in fact they're very unpopular when put up to surveys. It's not surprising that state officials don't want to promote ideas that are very unpopular among the taxpayers who would pay for that promotion.
But it's unclear whether our major media outlets really understand how unpopular and outside of established consensus these ideas are. And they clearly have not reviewed all the scholarly critiques of the 1619 project which came mostly from the left. inquiremore.com/p/is-texas-rea…
Should schools really use a series of essays that are full of ideas that major scholars in the field have complained is factually inaccurate and ideologically fringe? You can have any view on that question -- but it's not just your usual history of Jim Crow and slavery.
It also makes me wonder if people covering this issue in the media realize that there have been fantastic historians covering issues like the Founding, slavery, and Jim Crow long before most people who worked on 1619 Project were even employed at the NYT. That history is there.
Not so fast, says Acadia University Lecturer Jeffrey Sachs. This bill could still be chilling speech, which is concerning.
You may have seen this thread, and others like it, trying to persuade you that Texas's new anti-CRT bill is harmless. That leftwing critics are over-reacting and are making a mountain of a molehill. This is completely false, but why it's false is also interesting.
Zaid Jilani @ZaidJilani
First of all, here's the bill (or more precisely, the amendment) at issue. Read it carefully. Look closely to see what it does and does not prohibit. I'll wait.
Now Jilani, to say nothing of vocal supporters like Chris Rufo or James Lindsay, will insist that the bill merely prohibits teachers from endorsing one of the listed concepts. They can *discuss* these ideas; they just can't teach them as true.
Zaid Jilani @ZaidJilani
Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. This bill bans teachers from "[making]" these concepts "part of a course". It doesn't go after *how* teachers talk about one of these ideas in their courses -- it stops them from including it, full stop.
Tennessee is poised to pass something similar. This bill was sent to the governor's desk last week and apparently he plans to sign it. Look at it carefully. It's about *including* a concept, as distinct from endorsing or promoting it.
legiscan.com/TN/amendment/H…
So! Let's say you're a civics teacher in Austin or Memphis and you want to discuss the 2016 election. Not only are you forbidden from calling America racist (which, fair enough), but you are also forbidden from describing the theory that racism played a role in Trump's win.
For instance, could you assign this Monkey Cage article, which surveys Millennials' attitudes toward race? Could you and your students explore the concept of racism and its premise that that one race is superior to another? I really don't see how.
Or suppose you teach econ and you want the class to read and discuss this Times piece on sexism in the workforce. Allowed? No, not if these bills pass. Examining the claim that America is sexist, or even discussing the ideas *behind* sexism, is forbidden.
It helps to compare this language to the "divisive concepts" bills in states like New Hampshire or Oklahoma. You'll see that those ones, though still bad, specify that they are targeting promotion or endorsement, not mere inclusion.
legiscan.com/NH/text/HB544/…
webserver1.lsb.state.ok.us/cf_pdf/2021-22…
Both also clearly signal that neutral and objective discussion is permitted. No such provision exists in the Texas or Tennessee bill.
This is a very big deal. No wonder that the Anti-Defamation League, the American Historical Association, and even Christian theologians are coming out against them. They recognize the threat, even if national pundits don't.
idra.org/education_poli…
And importantly (this really is key), you need to remember that the people who will actually be parsing these terms won't be you or me. It will be the paranoid principal of a cash-strapped high school, yelled at by the town attorney about how it's better to be safe than sorry.
There’s more to Sachs’ thread that you can click through to read, but he does raise some important questions that are worth consideration regarding how the law would actually be enforced.
Next up, author and cultural critic Thomas Chatterton Williams sets off a lively discussion on the issue with this statement:
Ideas have to be refuted. I don’t see why so many seem to only care about freedom of expression when they agree with the ideas being silenced. Freedom of expression has to be a principle not a tactic.
The past year has convinced me freedom of expression has to be nearly absolute. Hitchens is right: "Every time you violate or propose to violate the free speech of someone else, in potentia, you’re making a rod for your own back."
It always comes back at you.
The Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo, a staunch opponent of teaching CRT in schools, replies to Williams:
@thomaschattwill This is reductive. Public schools should not compel students to believe in race essentialism, collective guilt, and racial superiority theory. Individuals have a right to preach critical race theory; they don't have an entitlement for the state to promote it for them.
@thomaschattwill If the Klan sponsored a public school curriculum that promoted race essentialism, collective guilt, and racial superiority theory, I would support legislation to ban it from schools—while still granting them their right to express it as individual citizens.
@thomaschattwill The Supreme Court has ruled consistently that restrictions on curricular speech are not restrictions on free speech. In fact, it is the responsibility of state legislatures to craft a curriculum that reflects the values of their citizens. Nobody has the right to indoctrinate.
@thomaschattwill @SwipeWright Public education isn't a "marketplace of ideas"; it's a state-run monopoly with the power to compel children. In monopoly conditions, restrictions are wise, necessary, and even justified under the most libertarian philosophies.
Colin Wright, Managing Editor of Quillette, weighs in here:
@thomaschattwill @realchrisrufo I see the battle over school curricula as quite different than our individual right to free speech. People are free to advocate for CRT in their personal lives, and teach it academically. They can even TRY to mandate it for public schools. But we should be able to say no.
@thomaschattwill @realchrisrufo We can say, "these ideas are toxic and racist, and we don't have to sit passively as our children are being indoctrinated." Private schools, maybe. Public schools? No way. I don't want my tax dollars funding state-sanctioned racism.
Kmele Foster of Freethink Media and Rufo continue the conversation:
@realchrisrufo @thomaschattwill @SwipeWright Confronting efforts to indoctrinate via public school curriculum is great. In fact, there are laws on the books to address this.
If the feds incentivize indoctrination, this is a legit problem too. The fix* may well be political. But agitation for any new *bans* is a 🚨🖍 line.
@realchrisrufo @thomaschattwill @SwipeWright I'm a libertarian.
Redundant laws make me queazy.
State restrictions on speech make me queazy (especially where political and/or religious speech is involved).
Public education tends to make me queazy too.
Almost tangentially related; I'm prone to motion sickness too.
@kmele @thomaschattwill @SwipeWright 😅
Two points:
• Public education is not a free marketplace of ideas; it's a state-run monopoly, justifying restrictions even on pure libertarian grounds.
• The courts have ruled that restrictions on curricular/state speech are not restrictions on free/individual speech.
The Atlantic writer Conor Friedersdorf also presents a good question that sparks further back and forth:
I think I've found the right question to distill where I disagree with @realchrisrufo but let's see:
@realchrisrufo, if I'm a high school civics teacher and I want to do a unit on the 1st Amendment where we read passages from Mill, *Kindly Inquisitors,* and *Words that Wound,* a foundational text of critical race theory, should I be able to do that?
@conor64 Of course, that sounds like a contextually rich class that poses questions; I would want my own children to attend.
My view: public schools should not *compel children to believe* in concepts such as race essentialism, collective guilt, and unequal treatment—see the Idaho bill.
@conor64 The problem is that many schools are not teaching contextually with multiple perspectives. They are saying "you are an oppressor, your are oppressed," and peddling fringe racial theories as official dogma. This is anathema to liberal education—and a violation of conscience.
@conor64 @realchrisrufo You’re getting rolled by Rufo here. It’s already unconstitutional to compel speech. Most of these bills, including Idaho’s, target many other kinds of heretofore permissible speech as well, like “endorse”, “promote”, “teach as true”, or even “include”.
@conor64 @realchrisrufo He keeps pushing and celebrating bills that severely restrict the expression of ideas. But when pressed, he insists that he is merely trying to restrict the coerced adoption of ideas. Don’t let him fool you. Just look at the actual bills he’s advocating for.
A constitutional perspective from George Mason University law Professor David Bernstein:
@conor64 @realchrisrufo "Should" is problematic here. If there is an assigned curriculum, and there are no deviations from it allowed by the school board, then no. If the teacher is given the freedom to devise her own curriculum, or parts of it, then yes. If Kindly Inquisitors or Words that Wound are
@conor64 @realchrisrufo specifically banned by the school board for whatever reason, then no. High school teachers are hired to teach what the school board wants them to teach, they have no First Amendment rights besides that. This is one reason why public schools are inherently problematic from a
@conor64 @realchrisrufo constitutional perspective, as they inherently involve the government engaging in viewpoint discrimination.
@ProfDBernstein @realchrisrufo Sure but my question isn't do I have a First Amendment right. My question is, should we pass state laws that forbid such a thing or should the law allow such a thing.
Much of this debate hinges on what state governments might constitutionally be able to do (i.e., prevent the promotion of a particular viewpoint) and what the bills actually say (i.e., whether they are overly broad and prevent speech and discussion of certain ideas).
We will continue to follow this debate as it unfolds as well as what state governments are doing.
Comment or Tweet a link to this article with your thoughts on the topic.