RACISM + POLITICS

Anti-CRT White Parents Are the New Segregationists

The idea of learning about race continues to ruffle feathers

America's parents have never reached a consensus on race. But we'd be kidding ourselves if we pretended there were two sides to this argument. Black parents have never led a systematic effort to deprive White children of educational opportunities. However, White parents used their privilege to impose segregation, abuse, and ridicule onto Black students. And sadly, that dynamic is still at play in the modern era. Instead of openly opposing integration, anti-CRT White parents are fighting against Black stories, history, and experiences presented in the classroom.

White segregationist parents animated the "Black people can't sit with us" ideology we see permeating our social landscape. Yet, throughout all of this, White parents have never had to face accountability for spreading hatred and fighting against Black students' rights. Perhaps that's why history keeps repeating itself in America.

After the Supreme Court unanimously decided in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation was unconstitutional in the spring of 1954, White parents had no choice but to accept Black students attending the same schools as their White children. But, if you think that White parents just gave up quietly and went home, you'd be sadly mistaken. Even six decades after Brown v. Board of Education, America's schools are still segregated by race and ethnicity.

White segregationists fought tooth and nail to keep Black students out of their schools. "A powerful draw for white families into any school is other white families." Thus, the opposite is also true that the presence of Black students often causes White parents to remove their students, which is why nowadays White parents use "school choice," as coded language for "schools Black people could not choose to go to."

Segregation doesn't have to be blatant like holding signs and screaming racial profanities at Black people; it can be much more covert, like supporting policies that defund public schools or refusing to let your White child attend a school with a diverse student body. "There is a body of evidence indicating that information on racial composition dominates school choice." In other words, White folks' idea of "choice" is choosing not to send their students to school with Black children. But let's double back to critical race theory.

Anti CRT parents have become the new segregationists. To be clear, America's schools are already mainly divided along racial lines — true integration appears in name only. Schools cannot forbid Black students from attending, but they can create other barriers similar to the provisions used to gut the voting rights act. However, Anti CRT parents have picked up the mantle their parents left behind by fighting against inclusive curricula.

Efforts to erase work like Morrison’s are part of the Republican Party’s attempts to cancel the teaching of American history — as have been the extended campaigns to ban public school teachers from utilizing Nikole Hannah-Jones’s 1619 Project (from op-ed by Peniel E. Joseph)

You cannot understand American history properly without taking race into account. After all, the country only protected the rights of White, landowning men in the beginning. Yet, ironically, if teachers bring up race, White parents will rail against critical race theory because heaven forbid we actually learn facts in school. In 1964, one White parent held up a sign in Fort Lauderdale that read, "segregation forever." Now, in 2021, we have parents holding signs that say, "save our schools," while another parent held one that claimed CRT stands for "creating racial tension."

Sadly, these White parents keep peddling the lie that learning about racism promotes racism when in reality, avoiding a conversation about the harm racist beliefs, policies, and practices cause are the true travesty. Imagine someone telling Jewish people that they were being antisemitic for wanting students to learn about the horrors of the Holocaust or telling a woman she is sexist for wanting students to learn about the passing of the 19th amendment. White anti-CRT parents became the new segregationists when they decided to play the "I'm rubber and you're glue" game race instead of conceding the point that racism is problematic. We should take measures to eradicate this ideology.

Like a seal doing backflips, White parents desperately want us to clap for their antics, but common decency forbids us from doing that. Black people don't get to learn much about Black people in school, even when they attend schools with predominately Black people. This type of erasure negatively impacts Black students because they attend schools and learn from curricula that center on the white experience. Thus many internalize a subordinate status.

We hear a lot of talk about how White students will be impacted if we learn about race in school. Still, none of those same critics discuss how the current educational landscape affects Black students who are often marginalized even within their own classrooms. Recently, Republican Glenn Youngkin won the gubernatorial race in Virginia riding on the curtails of anti-CRT White parents. Conservatives railed against attempts to diversify curriculum and used Toni Morrison's award-winning book, Beloved, as an example, claiming it gave a high school student nightmares.

White parents are holding their children back from learning about race which is why the truth is so shocking when they hear it. With the holiday season coming around, I'm sure many parents will lie to their children about Santa Claus. Can you imagine waiting until your child was 16 years old to tell them the truth? If you do, they may start crying or throw a tantrum because, wait for it, you made them believe a lie, and they found comfort in that lie.

Some White students feel challenged by CRT but not because of Black parents; it's because White parents lie and gaslight their children about race for so long that they don't understand the racial dynamics of the country they live in. The truth horrifies them, that people who look like them could have beat, spit on, and lynched, and enslaved Black people.

Protecting children from the truth sounds a lot like lying because it is. We send students to school to learn, not be indoctrinated. Furthermore, it seems that withholding information attempts to force a belief system onto someone, whereas presenting students with the facts necessary to shape their own beliefs is more respectful of their intellect and more productive for young learners.

"White Americans implemented a strategy of 'massive resistance' to desegregation," and now many White parents are engaged in an effort to erase Black history, to deny Black experiences, and to maintain America's segregated educational system.

Anti-CRT White parents are the new segregationists, and the question becomes what, as a society, do we plan on doing about that? Should we continue to pretend there are two sides to educating America's children about the truth, racism will continue to define this nation. The only way out of the pit is to start climbing, and we can't do that when White folks promote fear instead of hope and embrace selective ignorance rather than a critical analysis of race in America.

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