Both the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) appear intent on supporting teaching the school children of America that their country is an oppressive nation and has been since its inception.
After 26 states have adopted some form of ban on racist critical race theory (CRT), Randi Weingarten, the president of the AFT, blamed Republicans on Wednesday of bullying teachers against the teaching of “honest history.” Weingarten said, “There are legislators, mostly from the Republican Party, who are currently bullying teachers and trying to stop us from teaching kids honest history.” (Emphasis added.)
By honest history, Weingarten means teaching American history in such a way that the nation’s heritage is presented as one long episode of oppression of blacks. “Culture warriors are labeling any discussion of race, racism or discrimination as [critical race theory] to make it toxic.”
While Weingarten insisted on Wednesday at the virtual convention of the union that CRT “is not taught in elementary schools or middle schools or high schools,” the day before she said the union was “preparing for litigation against states which ban it.” This seems odd — if it is not being taught, and she claims she is not advocating that it be taught, then why sue states that are banning it? Weingarten protested that CRT is just an academic theory being taught in colleges and universities. (She is correct that CRT is being taught in higher education, but she knows full well that if college students who are preparing to teach in our elementary, middle schools, and high schools are indoctrinated in the CRT dogma, many, maybe even most, will parrot its racist views themselves when they teach their young students — our children.)
Despite her protests, Weingarten presented Ibram X. Kendi, the author of How to be an Antiracist, who urged teachers to talk to their students about racism and inequality. Kendi promoted the teaching of CRT in the schools.
In line with CRT — the view that America is structurally racist — is the so-called 1619 Project, published by the New York Times in 2019 in an effort to argue that it had been 400 years since the first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia (the first English colony), and that this marked the beginning of American history. According to the 1619 Project, slavery, segregation, and racial discrimination against persons of black African ancestry is the central theme of American history.
This stands history on its head. Actually, the first blacks who came to Virginia from Africa had been slaves — in Africa. In Virginia, however, they became indentured servants — not ideal, but not slavery. It was in America that the worldwide movement to abolish slavery began. For example, several states abolished slavery after being free from the British Empire, and at the urging of Thomas Jefferson, banned slavery in the old Northwest Territory in 1787 — before the Constitution was even adopted.
It should be understood that CRT is simply a branch of Marxist Critical Theory, which asserts that all of history has been one of an oppressing class and an oppressed class. Since no actual legal class structures existed in the United States, CRT advocates argue that the oppressed class are the non-white peoples of the country.
Meanwhile, the National Education Association (NEA), the country’s largest teacher’s union, was meeting online at the same time as their rival union, the AFT. (It should be noted that while these two unions hate each other, this is nothing unusual among leftists, if one recalls the long bitter struggle between Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky, and their adherents). Attendance at the annual meeting has been declining since the late 1990s (nearly 10,000 were in attendance in 1998), and this year only 5591 logged in.
The NEA, however, chose to spin these low numbers, tweeting that nearly 8,000 delegates gathered. (New Math, I suppose). The NEA created a task force to identify criteria for “safe, just and equitable schools, including exploring the role of law enforcement in education” (emphasis added), and called for the teaching of critical race theory in the classrooms, and like their rivals, the AFT, opposed efforts to ban its teaching.
While one can understand that the NEA does not care much for the AFT, as they are seeking members (and their dues) from the same pool, they are generally huge advocates of unionization. But there is an exception: police unions, which the NEA apparently doesn’t care for. A committee was formed to “make recommendations to the labor movement of what role we should play in putting an end to police unions’ ability to protect violent cops, harmful policing practices and racist policies that too often lead to the terrorizing and deaths of our students and their family members.”
This way of using their “students” well-being as a reason to attack police officers as racists, terrorists, and killers reminds me of a conversation I had with the vice-president of the NEA’s state affiliate, the Oklahoma Education Association (OEA) in the 1980s. I was curious as to why the NEA had chosen to take a stand against the Reagan administration’s support for the Contras in their struggle against the Communist Sandinista government then ruling Nicaragua. After all, I reasoned, what does a civil war in Central America got to do with educating America’s school children?
She said that was easy — there are schools and students in Nicaragua. In other words, any issue can become one taken up by the NEA, if one can somehow say it is “for the children.”
In a way, this is about the children who these two leftist unions want to indoctrinate to hate their own country. And we must oppose these efforts, to avoid America from accepting these lies about its own history.
Steve Byas is a university professor of history and government and is the author of History’s Greatest Libels. He may be contacted at [email protected].
