Critical race theory originated in the mid-1970s in the writings of several American legal scholars, including Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Cheryl Harris and Patricia J. Williams. It aims to understand the relationship between race, racism and power. Beginning solely in legal studies, scholars started applying critical race theory in several diverse fields, including education, where valuable scholarship has added immensely to the work of the theory’s originators.

Critical race theorists are not monolithic thinkers by any stretch of the imagination, but they primarily agree on core tenets of the theory, including the following: (1) racism and the social construction of race are permanent parts of American life; (2) counter-storytelling offers powerful ways of disrupting and challenging simplistic premises and myths told especially by whites that are accepted as facts or truths; (3) the social construction of race must be understood through intersectional analyses, analyses that place race in direct relation to other identities and differences, such as age, class, gender, ethnicity, nationality and disability.

A small percentage of college and university graduates have received training in critical race theory. Most educators, including most Black educators, therefore, have not received training in critical race theory, which means they cannot teach something they don’t know. As one who has graduate training in critical race theory, including training in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where one of the pioneers of critical race theory in education, Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, taught before retiring in 2018, I recognize how it is an analytical tool that helps one unpack, discover and comprehend how race operates. Students who have received training in critical race theory know that it is nuanced and sophisticated — not a theory that tells racial and ethnic minorities that all white people are racists and that they should be hated.

These Republican governors and school board members have no idea what critical race theory is. Former President Donald Trump heard the term from someone, and then moved to advocating for banning it in schools, recognizing the term could engender a novel culture war beneficial for Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections and the 2024 presidential election. This led to his disciples and toadies to promote banning something they cannot even define. They heard and/or read “race” in the term, and then launched an anti-intellectual campaign against many educators they perceive as attempting to indoctrinate children with vicious distortions about America and American history through teaching critical race theory.      

As I previously mentioned, most educators don’t know what critical race theory is and have not received training in critical race theory. Also, these educators are too preoccupied with aiding their students in mastering state standards and passing high-stakes state-mandated tests to teach students critical race theory, which requires a depth of knowledge principally obtained by select law and graduate students.

Former President Trump intentionally stoked the fears of white Republicans that their children are being taught to hate America and resent being white. This sinister scheme deployed by a man, Trump, who has never taught two minutes in a public or private K–12 school.

In Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, Nobel Prize Laureate Toni Morrison posits that race “has become metaphorical — a way of referring to and disguising forces, events, classes and expressions of social decay and economic division far more threatening to the body politic than biological ‘race’ ever was.” For Morrison, therefore, “race” is used as a veiled vehicle, a disguised weapon to say and do things that people lack the courage to engage in openly.

What Trump and many Republican school board members who champion prohibiting the teaching of critical race theory in K–12 classrooms are afraid of is truth itself. They are afraid that an honest and critical exploration of race in the classroom will lead to their children learning some unsettling truths about America — about her past and present. For instance, they might just learn that it’s impossible for Christopher Columbus to have “found” America when people, Native Americans, were already in America long before he and other Europeans arrived.

Trump loves to use the word “hoax” disingenuously, but the real hoax is this spurious culture war on teaching critical race theory in K–12 classrooms he instigated. Educators, especially those who teach English and History, shouldn’t allow this racist and anti-intellectual war on teaching race to hinder them. This is an attempt to trample on academic freedom — as political elites, including former President Trump, some Republican governors, and school board members loyal to Trump, are attempting to dictate how and what teachers teach.

If you’re going to try to outlaw teaching critical race theory in K–12 classrooms, please learn what it is. Please be able to give a coherent definition of critical race theory. Muster enough courage to say publicly what you really want to convey and legislate — instead of employing critical race theory as a euphemistic mask.