The chairman of the second largest teachers union in the United States strongly opposes the recent laws restricting the teaching of racism in public schools.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a speech on Tuesday that she was prepared to protect teachers from strong opposition from “teaching honest history” and was forming a “legal defense fund” to discredit This cultural movement against critical racial theory. .
The theory is a 40-year-old academic concept. It claims that racism is a social construction that has been integrated into history and shaped legal systems and policies.
“It is not radical or wrong to tell the truth,” Wengarten told union members in her virtual speech.
Weingarten pointed out in her speech that critical racial theory is not taught in elementary, middle and high schools. She pointed out that the theory is only taught in law schools and universities.
Many state legislatures are debating bills seeking to prohibit the use of it in the classroom. Republican legislators believe that this field of research is based on Marxism and poses a threat to the country.
But scholars say it explores the ways in which the history of inequality and racism continues to affect American society. CNN pointed out.
Kimberle Crenshaw, a pioneering critical race theorist and a law professor at UCLA and Columbia University, talked about the importance of understanding race in American history.
“Critical racial theory not only focuses on the transformative role of the law, which is often praised, but also on its role in establishing the rights and privileges that will be abolished by legal reform,” Crenshaw tell us in May.
The American Historical Association issued a statement In June, it opposed legislative efforts against discussions of racism in schools and universities.
The organization stated: “To prohibit the tools that make these discussions possible is to deprive us of all the tools we need to obtain citizenship in the 21st century.” “A whitewashed view of history cannot change what happened in the past.”
