Randi Weingarten Rips CRT Critics for 'Trying to Stop Us From Teaching Students Accurate History'

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Randi Weingarten Rips CRT Critics for ‘Trying to Stop Us From Teaching Students Accurate History’
The political and media elites that are whipping up anger over Critical Race Theory are furious with a teachers union leader for exposing their lies.

By John Nichols
JULY 9, 2021


(The Nation) The Republican Party’s cynical assault on Critical Race Theory is a political strategy that relies on controlling the message going into the 2022 midterm elections. So partisan apparatchiks, along with the talking heads that populate the GOP’s media echo chamber, have adopted a rigid approach to any dissent from the party line regarding what it hopes will be the new orthodoxy on teaching—or, to be more precise, not teaching—about historic and systemic racial injustice in America. If someone dares to suggest that what Republicans like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are proposing is not just shamelessly anti-historical but also threatening to freedom of speech and honest dialogue in the United States, the response is guaranteed to be rough.

Conservative strategists who see the assault on CRT as vital to their prospects for an electoral comeback are terrified that the absurdity of their arguments will be exposed. They want Democrats and progressives to avoid the subject so that Republican governors and Fox News hosts can convince suburban swing voters that the issue that matters most in their lives is the history curriculum at the local high school. It’s an old “culture wars” strategy, but it only works if the GOP spin goes unquestioned.

So challenges to the big lie du jour are treated as threats. Efforts to explain CRT as an academic project that seeks to expand thinking about systems that perpetuate racism are met with vitriol very nearly as intense as what might target a dissident calling out the false premises of an authoritarian regime.

But Randi Weingarten is unafraid of the right-wing speech police. The American Federation of Teachers union president took them on this week with a robust defense of public education that teaches the whole story of America. “Let’s be clear: critical race theory is not taught in elementary schools or high schools,” she said. “It’s a method of examination taught in law school and college that helps analyze whether systemic racism exists—and, in particular, whether it has an effect on law and public policy. But culture warriors are labeling any discussion of race, racism or discrimination as CRT to try to make it toxic. They are bullying teachers and trying to stop us from teaching students accurate history.” ...........(more)

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/critical-race-theory-teachers/

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1. Slavery GOP Revisionist History

Slavery GOP Revisionist History

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