(USA Features) Twenty states have joined in a legal fight against the Biden Department of Education over its push to add controversial Critical Race Theory curriculum to all public schools.
“We need to learn from the real evils of slavery and racism, but these proposals will only create more misunderstanding,” said Attorney General Dave Yost on Thursday after joining with the other states.
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“Critical race theory is nothing more than ideology posing as history, and we should not confuse the two,” he said.
Opponents of CRT say it teaches students that America is inherently racist and that whites are “oppressors” while persons of color are the “oppressed.”
Yost, along with attorneys general from the other states, sent a letter Wednesday to the Education Department, now led by Miguel Cardona, urging it to drop a proposal to add the curriculum to all public schools or clarify that no federal tax dollars can be used “to fund projects that are based on [critical race theory], including any projects that characterize the United States as irredeemably racist or founded on principles of racism (as opposed to principles of equality) or that purport to ascribe character traits, values, privileges, status, or beliefs, or that assign fault, blame, or bias, to a particular race or to an individual because of his or her race.”
Last month, the department issued a pair of “priorities” that would direct federal grant money towards projects that “incorporate racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives into teaching and learning” and projects that “promote information literacy skills.”
The money would go towards training new and veteran teachers on how to instruct students about U.S. history, civics, and government. The CRT curriculum would become a part of that instruction.
But critics of CRT say it essentially teaches overt racism and in particular, anti-white racism, rather than focusing on the historical context of periods including slavery in America in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as the civil rights movement in the 20th century.
The other states whose attorneys general signed the letter were Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Indiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia, Just the News .