Citizens In Reno Continue The Fight Against Critical Race Theory In The Classroom
Critical race theory persists as a hot button issue in America as those in the middle, left, and right of the political spectrum quarrel over its true definition.
As town-halls and forums work to hash out the details over whether the ideology is safe for Americans to adopt, based on violent rhetoric and actions seen in the past year after the death of George Floyd, teachers unions and school boards are working diligently to ensure its implementation in our classrooms is already complete by the time everyone reaches an agreed meaning to the ideology.
This week, a conservative group in Reno was spotted protesting outside of a school board meeting that was holding discussions to expand its K-5 curriculum to "include more teaching about equity, diversity and racism," according to an AP report.
The report largely generalized the group as MAGA hat-wearing Republicans; however, the dangers of CRT continue to be debated on both sides of the political aisle based on its assessment of which races have priority over others.
Per Wikipedia's definition, critical race theory is seen as "an academic movement of civil-rights scholars and activists in the United States who seek to critically examine the law as it intersects with issues of race and to challenge mainstream liberal approaches to racial justice."
Redefining the issue continues to be a tangent, even distraction, for concerned Americans while teachers and school boards have already made progress on implementing its teachings for children to adopt.
“You say there’s no CRT (critical race theory) in this curriculum,” said Reno resident Bruce Parks in the AP report. “It is being taught in our schools right now. When you use words and language like ‘white male privilege,’ ‘systemic racism,’ that’s straight out of CRT.”
The group even went as far as suggesting body cameras for teachers to keep the radical teachings out of middle schools.
CRT continues to see pushback across the U.S., especially with the hypocrisy displayed by BLM, a strong proponent of CRT's role in curriculum. The organization proves to contradict its own mission statement of protecting Black Americans by stirring more attention and outrage for the defunding of police stations as a rise in crime continues to overpower Black communities.
On Friday night, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that one of Chicago's most prominent plazas for Black businesses was met with gunshots that injured 10 people, including one fatality when a 29-year-old Black woman was shot in the abdomen and leg before succumbing to her wounds. An organization such as BLM-Chicago would surely be doing its job to promulgate the safety of the Black community by addressing this tragedy, yet a simple scroll through their Twitter feed contains more calls for defunding of Chicago police departments than it does reprimanding the Black-on-Black violence killing African Americans every day.
The nation's education system, once seen as an institution blind to the differences among races, remains a pillar of the American experience worth restoring in the fight for First Amendment freedoms and the principle of treating others by the content of their character, not their race.