Friend,

In a backlash against our growing racial justice movement, Republicans across the country are trying to ban any talk of race and racism in schools.

Right-wing media outlets and the GOP are spreading fear-based propaganda, warning white parents that even acknowledging the existence of systemic racism is itself racist (against white people).

As part of this dangerous disinformation campaign, GOP leaders in 22 states have introduced similar legislation punishing teachers or schools for talking about systemic racism.¹ It’s passed in 6 states so far and is growing in popularity.

In order for us to move forward as an equitable and just society, we must have an education system that reckons with the atrocities of our past—and acknowledges how our history shapes the present.

Please sign now to support Black history education in our K-12 schools and denounce these racist attacks by Republican leaders.

Some states’ proposed legislation, like Michigan’s, would restrict funding to schools that include mentions of systemic racism in their classrooms.²

This reinforces already long-standing inequities in education, which have led to chronically underinvested public schools in predominantly Black and brown communities like Detroit. As of 2019, school districts that serve higher populations of Black and brown students received $23 billion less in funding than predominantly white districts.³

And already, many states’ standard K-12 history curriculums sanitize our history—leaving out Black history and failing to adequately teach kids about the ways racism has shaped our country. This affects how students of color see themselves. Teaching a more inclusive curriculum can have huge positive effects on students of color, including improving their educational engagement and achievement.⁴

But ever since Trump slammed critical race theory while in office and signed a 2020 executive order banning diversity trainings that promote what he termed “divisive concepts” like “the United States is fundamentally racist or sexist,” the phrase “critical race theory” has become the latest dog whistle for racists.

Critical race theory is a way of interpreting the world that’s not taught at the K-12 level, but because most people don’t know what the term even refers to, it’s an effective bogeyman.

The GOP is claiming that any discussion involving systemic racism or white privilege constitutes “critical race theory”—even trying to ban any discussion of slavery as negative or harmful.

As Kimberlé Crenshaw, one of the founding scholars behind critical race theory, explains: “We know from the history of race in America just where sanitized and whitewashed versions of our past lead—to assumptions that yawning inequalities in health, wealth and a range of other areas are simply inherent features of American life.”⁵ Black and brown people then get blamed for their own oppression.

Without an understanding of historical oppression and power dynamics, we can’t recognize how injustices play out today. For example, this year’s wave of voter suppression legislation is the latest in a long line of attempts to suppress Black people’s political participation.

And this movement attacking school boards and teachers is just the latest manifestation of conservative attacks on school curricula, which have included public burning of textbooks and white outrage about integration.

Why are right-wing leaders trying to obscure and deny the basic reality that racism still exists? It benefits them if we falsely think we live in a post-racial society. Because if racism is swept under the rug as something that stopped a while ago, we won’t question the unjust status quo, and we won’t move to change things.

But centuries of disinvestment in Black communities and systemic racism in our institutions have led to continually widening inequities. For example, the wealth gap between Black and white families has expanded over the past 60 years, and the gap between white and Black home ownership rates is the widest it has been in 50 years. This is all after the civil rights movement, which conservatives are trying to claim ended racism.

In order to build the racially just country we need, we must denounce right-wing efforts to suppress discussions of racism and Black history education in schools. And we must push for a true reckoning with our country’s racist past and present.

Sign the petition: Republicans are attacking Black history education. We MUST stop their racist agenda.

Thank you for taking action!

In solidarity,

Rashida