As Part I of IDRA's policy series, listen here to Ana Ramon, head of the Texas Legislative Education Equity Coalition (TLEEC), speak in detail about how the anti-, anti-racist bill, House Bill 3979 passed during the last, regular legislative session (note: the bill doesn't actually say "Critical Race Theory," but the intent is clear).
Accompanied by well-spoken San Antonio student leader, Alejo Peña Soto, who reflects on the potential impacts of this legislation for students, Ana Ramon recounts the unprecedented maneuvering it took to get this bill passed into law.
It's clear that had the republicans followed time-honored, conventional procedures, this bill would not have become law. In fact, according to these very same procedures, it was presumed dead for a few hours. Instead, republicans were sly and underhanded in resurrecting it after it had ostensibly died—which is not the deliberative legislative process that we collectively extol in representative democracy.
This deviousness is captured well in a June 24, 2021 interview on anti-Critical Race Theory bills making their way across the country by MSNBC's Chris Hayes of University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Sociology Professor Tressie McMillan Cottom. Cottom nails it when she says (paraphrasing) that republicans do have a real concern, it's just not one grounded in reality, adding that they are "intellectually impotent" where cheating is their only resort since their own case against CRT can't stand on its merits.
So true. We as a public still have not gotten the evidence that CRT is getting taught in our K-12 schools. All we're getting is a campaign of misinformation, fraught with false, intentionally misleading, state-level propaganda.
Fascists states do such things, not democracies.
The fact that this anti-CRT agenda is getting prioritized alongside legalizing Texas' voter suppression bill—that led to the walkout by democrats in the last day of the session—speaks to the larger agenda of disenfranchising our youth and communities.
As voiced by General Mark A. Milley in his cogent testimony last week before
Congress, CRT should be addressed front and center in the U.S. military, adding that all should be open-minded and widely-read. He said that he's white and would like to understand better the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. He welcomes CRT.
Congress, CRT should be addressed front and center in the U.S. military, adding that all should be open-minded and widely-read. He said that he's white and would like to understand better the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. He welcomes CRT.
Were only our state republicans so open-minded and widely read. They, in fact, demonstrate exactly why CRT should get taught in our nation's schools, particularly at the secondary level, I might add, since it is a framework that is taught mostly at the college level—and even there, only in some areas of the academy such as in our nation's law schools, humanities, social work, and education, etc., and then again, only with select faculty within such colleges and departments.
These things said, CRT is at least 40 years old. It is a legitimate, mainstream framework in the academy among other legitimate, mainstream frameworks that we teach.
Do stay tuned for more, as we go soon into the special legislative session.
-Angela Valenzuela
@TxTLEEC @IDRAedu
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