Democrats and US voters should be asking why Republicans are preventing children from getting the best education to equip them to live and work in a modern pluralistic society. Instead of reacting, they should lead the conversation, as they did in earlier days of civil rights struggles.
Instead they seem locked in a counter-productive debate about the semantics of “Critical Race Theory”. Democrats scold the anti-CRT crowd by commenting that they are using the term incorrectly, failing to understand that it is a law-school theory, usually taught at the post graduate level to some legal specialists.
When the Democrats bring this quibble forward, they seem to expect it will shut down debate but, predictably, it just throws fuel on the flames as parents, who are uncomfortable with aspects of the changing curriculum in schools, feel scolded and put down. Rather than listening to these parents, Democrats have convinced them that Dems are the elitists that Republicans have told them they were. This is not a vote-winning message. Nor does it advance civil debate.
There’s a lot of fragility involved in this conversation. Yes there is white fragility. It is hard to feel the shame and pain of acknowledging the wrongs done by your ancestors, but it is necessary for healing and moving forward, But there is also some degree of black-fragility involved. Not all diversity education curriculum is equally good and there may be legitimate complaints about accuracy or age-appropriateness. We won’t know if we don’t talk to each other.
Anyone who has ever attended a totally awful diversity training workshop on the job, knows that sometimes they really can do more harm than good. No one rises up by putting others down and there is just too many put downs in today’s political climate–on both the left and the right.
Instead of assuming that parents upset about “CRT” in their kids schools are racists, wouldn’t it be more productive for US democrats to step into a leadership role to initiate conversations on inclusive education. Let’s find the common ground of the values we want our children to have and the experiences we want them to take away from school.
All parents want their children to be successful and happy and that will best be achieved by a fact-based rigorous curriculum that prepares children for a pluralistic international community.
