One of the most controversial topics swirling around schools today is the teaching of critical race theory (CRT). Furthermore, with the upcoming midterm elections, this topic will be an issue many candidates will have to address.
As a result, “Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver wasted no time discussing the matter coming off his three-month hiatus. CRT refers to a body of legal scholarship that tries to comprehend why racism and inequality have continued after the Civil Rights movement.
However, opponents of CRT argue the framework unfairly criticizes white students and instructs kids to be embarrassed about their born skin color.
“To be clear, CRT is graduate-level legal theory. Unless your five-year-old is currently pursuing a law degree, they’re not reading Kimberlé Crenshaw,” Oliver said.
Oliver claims schools aren’t teaching CRT. Furthermore, the weekly late-night host states conservatives have been marking any lessons regarding race under this banner.
He continues by saying these politicians want to galvanize political action to implement school choice, a controversial policy in which students are given an option to attend a school other than their district’s public school.
The legal theory isn’t being studied in classrooms nationwide; some schools have gone ahead and tried to educate kids on race and privilege, occasionally in a cringe-inducing method. Oliver mentioned several cases of how schools fumbled these studies.
“We have talked before on this show about the multiple problems with teaching kids a sanitized version of US history and how, as far back as a century ago, groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy were reshaping textbooks to downplay its horrors,” Oliver said.
“And it seems, here we go again. Here’s the thing: you can ban all the books you want. You can try to legislate it away. But, as any black woman on the Bachelor can tell you, talking about race is unavoidable. Not just unavoidable, it’s essential.”
Eduardo Razo is the Assistant Content Editor for BNM, which includes writing daily news stories on the news media industry. He can be found on Twitter @eddierazo_ or you can reach him by email at eddie1991razo@gmail.com.
