2020s controversies around critical race theory

Following the 2020 protests of the murders of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, as well as the killing of Breonna Taylor, school districts began to introduce additional curricula and create diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)-positions to address "disparities stemming from race, economics, disabilities and other factors".

[6] In the run-up to and aftermath of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, opposition to CRT was adopted as a campaign theme by president Donald Trump and various conservative commentators on Fox News and right-wing talk radio shows.

[10] Trump also issued an executive order directing agencies of the U.S. federal government to cancel funding for programs that mention "white privilege" or "critical race theory", on the basis that it constituted "divisive, un-American propaganda" and that it was "racist".

According to The Washington Post, CRT became a "flash point" in the culture wars in the United States, and is used as "a catchall phrase for nearly any examination of systemic racism" by conservative lawmakers and activists.

In December 2020, Trump appointed former Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant as a member of the 1776 Commission, which would to produce a report in response to The New York Times' 1619 Project.

[18] The commission also criticized what they alleged as being CRT's theoretical underpinnings—Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, Herbert Marcuse, and the Frankfurt School, identity politics, and Howard Zinn.

[19] Republican senator Tom Cotton introduced an amendment to the 2021 budget reconciliation package that would prohibit the use of federal funds in CRT promotion in Pre-K programs and K-12 schools in August 2021, which passed 50 to 49.

[25] Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute,[26] has been one of the most active critics of CRT,[27] saying that it is anti-American, poses a "an existential threat to the United States", and had "pervaded every aspect of the federal government".

[27] In 2021 he wrote on Twitter, "The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think 'critical race theory'"[28] and "We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.

[30] Media Matters for America has described No Left Turn in Education as one of the "leading groups fearmongering about the teaching of critical race theory in schools".

Fishbein had pulled her children out of Gladwyne Elementary School and sent the superintendent of Lower Merion School District (LMSD) an email on June 18, 2020, challenging the LMSD's decision to introduce additional lessons in "cultural proficiency" in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, and that as an unspecified number of non-white students were launching a campaign calling for "antiracist education", Fishbein "rejected the premise of antiracism, CRT, comprehensive sex education (CSE), and climate change".

[2] Media Matters for America reported that in June 2021, Fox News network mentioned "critical race theory" a record high of 901 times.

[37] In February 2021, William A. Jacobson, a conservative blogger and law professor at Cornell University, launched an online database of colleges across the United States teaching what he calls "critical race training", in order to enable parents to avoid those schools.

On their website, the PAC wrote: "CRT is a theoretical framework which views society as dominated by white supremacy and categorizes people as 'privileged' or 'oppressed' based on their skin color....It also teaches kids to hate America.

[51] In early 2021, Republican-backed bills were introduced to restrict teaching about race, ethnicity, or slavery in public schools in several states,[52] including Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.

[17][54] In mid-April 2021, a bill was introduced in the Idaho Legislature that would effectively ban any educational entity from teaching or advocating "sectarianism", including critical race theory or other programs involving social justice.

[56] On June 10, 2021, the Florida Board of Education unanimously voted to ban public schools from teaching critical race theory at the urging of governor Ron DeSantis.

[61] Timothy D. Snyder, historian and professor at Yale University, has called these new state laws memory laws–"government actions designed to guide public interpretation of the past".

"[62] From January 2021 through February 2022, 35 states had introduced 137 bills that limit what "schools can teach with regard to race, American history, politics, sexual orientation and gender identity".

[4] PEN America, an American nonprofit association of writers "dedicated to free speech" that is affiliated with the International Freedom of Expression Exchange has been monitoring this legislation.

[63] Jeffrey Sachs, who is tracking the legislation, said that the "recent flurry" of bills means that the classroom has become a "minefield" for educators who want to teach "slavery, Jim Crow laws or the Holocaust".

[64] An April 2022 article in Education Week said that 42 states had either introduced legislation or "taken other steps" to restrict "teaching critical race theory" and, "more broadly, limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism in class.

[57] In April 2022, when Republican Governor Brian Kemp signed bills banning CRT, he said that the state was protecting parents' fundamental rights to direct their children's education by preventing classrooms in Georgia from becoming "pawns to those who indoctrinate our kids with their partisan political agendas.

In Australia, the conservative Coalition government supported a Senate motion by Pauline Hanson to ban the teaching of critical race theory in the Australian National Curriculum.

[92] In January 2022, the French minister of education Jean-Michel Blanquer called for "combat against an intellectual frame originating from American universities [...] which seeks to essentialise communities and identities, which is something that goes against to our republican model".

So I would like to make a call to have the Dutch debate about slavery, and not the American debate.In the United Kingdom, educators were warned that teachers teaching white privilege would be breaking the law.

[97] Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch, who is of Nigerian descent, said during a parliamentary debate to mark Black History Month, "We do not want to see teachers teaching their pupils about white privilege and inherited racial guilt [...] Any school which teaches these elements of critical race theory, or which promotes partisan political views such as defunding the police without offering a balanced treatment of opposing views, is breaking the law.