This past year, schools have been the target of a politicians. For the first time, the Texas state legislature passed a law that regulates what can an cannot be taught in the classroom in regards to American History, current events, and race. This law was passed without much public debate and discussion. There was opposition from the Texas Council on Social Studies, The Texas PTA, parents, students, and multiple districts throughout the state. These laws went into effect This past year, students at Trinity University embarked on a research project under the supervision of Dr. Habiba Noor to capture stories on the ground from students and teachers.
This podcast is the introduction to this project. In this episode, student researchers, Miranda, Morgan, Lauren, Shelby, Emmanuel, Adam, and Bella, frame the anti-CRT movement, introduce SB3 and present the goals of the research.
This past year, schools have been the target of a politicians. For the first time, the Texas state legislature passed a law that regulates what can an cannot be taught in the classroom in regards to American History, current events, and race. This law was passed without much public debate and discussion. There was opposition from the Texas Council on Social Studies, The Texas PTA, parents, students, and multiple districts throughout the state. These laws went into effect This past year, students at Trinity University embarked on a research project under the supervision of Dr. Habiba Noor to capture stories on the ground from students and teachers.
This podcast is the introduction to this project. In this episode, student researchers, Miranda, Morgan, Lauren, Shelby, Emmanuel, Adam, and Bella, frame the anti-CRT movement, introduce SB3 and present the goals of the research.
Welcome to our journey. The stories we are about to tell connect us to what is happening on the ground in schools after the passing of anti CRT laws that regulate discussions of race and current events in Texas classrooms. Welcome to Story lab, culture war in schools. My name is Miranda Vega, class of 2022. This podcast is composed by university students who have researched the fallout from the anti CRT movement and its impact on schools. In this episode, we're going to give you all some context to the background of this project. We address a few questions briefly. What is critical race theory? How did critical race theory become a household term? What are these new laws in Texas regulating the discussion of race in classrooms? And what is the fallout of the anti CRT movement in Texas schools?
Shelby:Story Lab is a research course intertwined with the education and sociology department at Trinity University, where students are trained to tick sneaks to gather, analyze and share stories primarily through interviews and ethnography. Over the past year, education has become increasingly polarized. We have heard growing calls for regulating what should be taught in schools. This is part of a historical pattern. We have seen this before. What happens in schools have been politicized since Horace Mann led the common school movement. But what is distinct about this current movement, efforts have been made in 36 states to restrict education on racism from kindergarten to high school. The allegation is that CRT is being taught in schools and must be stopped. One of the claims in the anti CRT discourse is that teaching about structural racism and slavery causes emotional injury when learning these challenging histories. Is this true for students in Texas? First, let's get some definitions. Randa, can you tell us a bit about CRT?
Miranda:Sure. Thanks, Shelby. By now some of you are wondering, What even is critical race theory? And where did it come from? Here's a very brief overview. According to the founders and early writers, the critical race theory movement began with legal scholars engaged in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism and power. The movement considers many of the same issues that conventional civil rights and ethnic studies discourses take up, but places them in a broader perspective, CRT questions the foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, enlightenment, rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law. Critical Race Theory sprang up in law schools in the late 80s, as a number of lawyers, activists and legal scholars across the country realized that the advances of the civil rights era of the 1960s had stalled, and in many respects were being rolled back. They felt that new theories and strategies were needed to combat the subtler forms of racism that were gaining ground. The leaders of this field put their minds to the task. CRT tries not only to understand our social situation, but to change it, setting out not only to ascertain how society organizes itself, but to transform it for the better. There are many basic tenants of critical race theory, I'm going to highlight three of them. One tenant is that racism is ordinary, not aberrational. This means that racism is difficult to address or cure, because it is not acknowledged, which leads to colorblind perceptions of equality. This is often expressed in rules that insist only on treatment that is the same across the board. Another tenant states that races are not objective, inherent, or fixed, they correspond to no biological or genetic reality. Rather, races are categories that society invents manipulates, or retires when convenient. And finally the last tenant occur concerns the notion of a unique voice of color. The voice of color thesis holds that because of their different histories and experiences with depression, black, American, Indian, Asian and Latin X writers and thinkers are able to communicate to their white counterparts matters that the whites are unlikely to know. Many of us listening to this today didn't read or hear about these things in middle school or high school. So Lauren, how did it become such a big deal?
Lauren:It's interesting because most of us didn't know what the terms here as he was before this past year, we talked about racism in schools, but the term CRT was previously unheard of. Now the term has come to the forefront of racial discussions and has undergone a sort of rebranding, morphing it into a political buzzword Various powerful individuals have used their platforms to propagate the current panic around security and are largely responsible for its transition. In order to understand how this term has become popularized, we need to know a bit about a man named Chris Ruffo. Christopher Ruffo is 37 is a journalist turned activist. He is a senior director of the newly founded initiative on CRT at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank and policy machine. Chris Ruffo is arguably the reason why the term CRT has become such a hot button issue refers critical of those who believe that racism inequality was the outcome of social structures. He believes that diversity training and anti racism efforts in schools in the workplace have gone too far. You can say that Ruffo sees racism as a thing of the past and holds colorblind mentality as the ideal mode of interaction. He denounces anything other than colorblind mentality as quote, explicitly endorsing principles of segregation ism, group based skill and race essentialism for Ruffo. Things like diversity training, anti racist education and identity politics all fall under the umbrella of CRT. He claims that CRT is pervaded every aspect of the federal government and poses an existential threat to the United States. This is something that actual CRT scholars would dispute. He has noted rather explicitly that the term severity was a quote, promising political weapon. Individually, the words critical race and theory appear hostile, academic, divisive, and race obsessed. To most average Americans. You can say that CRT was the perfect boogeyman due to the ambiguous nature of the term. Revell has said that we're in a moment of, quote, narrative warfare, he has stressed the need for quote new language for discussing issues around race. He shared his intention for a quote, new model of conservative activism to over 300,000 Twitter followers. His use of this language is neither random nor arbitrary, but rather an intentional effort to call Americans to action. rhetorically, the phrase CRT was the perfect weapon to do so.
Morgan:As we've seen, the definition of critical race theory has gone through some rebranding by Chris Ruffo. The meaning of this term has been circulated and tweaked to the point the real definition is almost secondary to help people perceive and understand it. In some ways, the definitions by quote unquote normal people are the most important ones because these are the understandings that have come to impact our laws and policy. any misunderstanding of what CRT is has real implications and consequences. When we did our interviews, we tried to ask our interviewees what they thought CRT meant and what they knew about it. Let's look at some examples of responses we received when doing our interviews. 120 year old university student said there are a lot of problems in it. In particular specifically in that it teaches people a more divisive nature in a sense. So there are pros and cons, but there are a lot of costs in that it teaches a more divisive nature by identifying identifying people solely on the basis of their skin color, which by definition is racist in itself. CRT is often seen as something divisive in its nature. This is a very popular understanding of what CRT is. This definition, the rebranded definition of CRT is the reason for these laws that have been put in place. However, while Chris refroze doings have produced definitions of divisiveness, it's also produced a curiosity and interest in what CRT truly is. So we end up also having definitions from people that look like this one. It's a theory. So you apply it to certain situations. It's not learning that racism is something that we should feel guilty for. It's simply that it is inherent. But again, it's a theory. It's not a set of definitions that kids need to learn or a set of books they need to read about racism. Both of these definitions have very real and different consequences in our lives. The rebranded definition of CRT from Chris Ruffo has created concepts of divisiveness, while simultaneously has created more activists and supporters for CRT.
Emanuel:While Rufo wages his narrative war, we can't overlook the fact that this new boogeyman has produced new laws which impact what gets taught in schools. For the next few minutes, I'll briefly go over some of the key components of SB three, the Texas law that seeks to regulate conversations with race, history and current events and Texas public schools. SB three mandates that no Texas public or charter school grades K through 12 can require teachers to discuss current events or controversial topics. Should a teacher choose to cover a current or controversial material they must do so objectively and without any political bias. The law however, doesn't define current or controversial, nor does it stipulate guidelines for what constitutes as unbiased teaching. We've already seen the effects of this ambiguity during one controversial incident at a high school in South Lake Texas, where teacher urged their fellow edgy theatres to balance teachings about the Holocaust with reasoning from the other side. In regards to more contemporary issues, SB three is vague wording on current and controversial material may also make educators reluctant to touch on the war in Ukraine for example, next, SB three states that racism cannot be taught as systematically embedded in our society, but instead as antithetical to true American values. The law ultimately decrease the neither blame nor morality can be attributed to people based on gender, race or ethnicity. Under SB three, all of the above guidelines on teaching also apply to educators staff to staff training. Additionally, schools cannot accept private funding for staff training programs talking about race or sex. SB three explicitly bans a 1618 project from being included in the curriculum. For context, the 1618 project is a New York Times journalism project by Nikole Hannah Jones. According to the publication, the 1619 project aims to reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the center of the United States is national narrative. SP three prohibits schools from giving course credit for civic engagement, such as internships, affiliations, or lobbying with organizations involved in policy advocacy. And I think about SB three relates back to its predecessor, HB 3979. Previously, that earlier law included a list of required content for the Texas State Board of Education to include in social study standards. This required content specifically included major contributions by women and black, indigenous and Latino people in the United States. When HB 3979 became SB three, this is required topics was repealed.
Adam:The bill was introduced and co authored by four State Representative Steve Todd Jeff, Jeff Leach will Metcalf and Greg Barney and Tim Parker. And then which later became the amended Senate bill SB three, which passed in July of 2021, which went into effect in December of 2021. And that was co authored by Brian Hughes. After this we saw after the passage of SB three, we saw a peculiar event in October last year, Texas representative Macron said asked schools to identify if they had any one of five benefit the books that and I quote, might make students feel some sort of discomfort of guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex.
Bela:Together, we conducted qualitative research. Our research has been approved by Trinity university's research board, we have insured confidentiality for those who want it. Doing so by having our interviewee sign an interview consent form prior to the interview. We all conducted semi structured interviews as he neutral and open ended questions such as a lot has been said about CRT, what have you heard about it? And what do you think the role of schools is in the discussion of race? We spoke to 33 students and teachers spanning all across the political spectrum. For the analysis portion we compiled transcriptions and shared them among each other while also conducting field notes. Within the next subsequent episodes, you'll hear some of the initial takeaways from this entire experience. Enjoy