WASHINGTON (Nexstar) — There’s a spotlight on the academic concept of “critical race theory” as Republican legislatures around the country try to ban it. But a person involved in education policy said K-12 schools do not teach the theory.
Khalilah Harris, the acting vice president of K-12 education policy at the Center for American Progress, said President Joe Biden’s remarks commemorating the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 are an example of critical race theory.
Biden said, “Millions of white Americans belonged with the (Ku Klux) Klan. And that hate became embedded systematically and systemically in our laws and our culture.”
“The concept is that it is important to take a critical lens to American history,” Harris said about the theory.
GOP lawmakers, like North Carolina Rep. Dan Bishop, are attempting to ban what they claim “critical race theory” teaches students.
“Critical race theory is a divisive ideology,” Bishop said, “that whites are an oppressor race and other identity groups are oppressed.”
But Harris said, “I”ve never heard an educator say white people are inherently bad.”
Learning about historical injustices can be uncomfortable, she said. But she added K-12 schools do not teach critical race theory and worries that restrictions advanced by GOP legislatures could limit any topics related to racism and history from being accurately taught.