During the worst months of the Covid lockdown, I read five nonfiction books focused on the African American experience. My first was historian David W. Blight’s biography, “Frederick Douglass Profit of Freedom”; then two books written by Isabel Wilkerson, “Caste” and “The Warmth of Other Suns”; then the autobiography “Becoming” by Michelle Obama; and Annette Gordon-Reed’s “Juneteenth.”
I finished reading the last of the five books just as the hottest educational topic, Critical Race Theory (CRT) became the lightning rod for attendees screaming at school board meetings. To be clear, this is the meaning of Critical Race Theory (CRT): A curriculum designed for discussion at the university level by law students.
Extremists on the right successfully grabbed CRT and reduced it to a lesson that is taught to students from elementary to high school. Not True.
It didn’t stop there. A school board representing students in York, Pa., announced its banning of nearly 50 books for grades kindergarten through senior high. Numerous books on this list were written by African Americans or other people of color – some from outside America. Students’ protests were successful in forcing the York School Board to revisit its decision.
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