Over the past year a sharp debate has broken out over how to teach U.S. history. At its center are virulent attacks on critical race theory (CRT). Critical race theory, which the New York Times describes as “a graduate-level academic framework that encompasses decades of scholarship,” is primarily a course of study at the university level. Its originators are not demanding it replace the curriculum in elementary schools or high schools. Nor is it the only approach on the subject at the graduate level. These facts do not matter to those who attack it. This first part of a three-part series explains how the right-wing “Stop CRT” campaign is aimed at preventing the teaching of essential facts of U.S. history; particularly those related to chattel slavery, the U.S. Civil War, Radical Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation, the civil rights movement, and the institutionalized racism prevalent in the U.S. to this day.
