She read foundational CRT scholars, such as Kimberlé Crenshaw, Derrick Bell and Richard Delgado, but also Christian critics of CRT, including Neil Shenvi and Pastor Voddie Bauchman. She felt that the Black Lives Matter movement had little to say about Black victims of crime apart from those killed by police, and she began seeking out new sources of information, including Dr Thomas Sowell, a prominent Black conservative intellectual who argues that “systemic racism” is an untestable hypothesis and has compared it to Nazi propaganda. Raised in a “staunchly Democrat” household, King experienced a change in perspective in 2017 that was part political, part spiritual, she said. King signed on as a co-chair of Moms for Liberty and began advocating against an ideology she had been reading up on: CRT. The district was debating renaming certain local schools, including Robert E Lee high school, and King thought that the argument for making the change – that the name was damaging to Black students – was disrespectful of those students’ ability to succeed. When Moms for Liberty first came to Jacksonville, Florida, the nascent conservative parents’ group was talking about one of the issues that worried many parents during the coronavirus pandemic: mask mandates for kids.īut Quisha King, a mother of two who worked for the Republican National Committee and the Black Voices for Trump campaign in 2020, also wanted to address other concerns. “It’s going to take a massive campaign to try to push back against that.” Origins of an activist “This was a massive campaign that has borne fruit in very dramatic fashion,” said Emerson Sykes, a first amendment lawyer with the ACLU, which is exploring litigation to combat these bills. Statewide resolutions against CRT have also been passed in Florida, Georgia and Utah. Legislation seeking to limit the teaching of CRT has been introduced in at least 22 states this year, and enacted in six: Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas. That movement has gained tremendous ground at great speed. The videos, and their spread online, are emblematic of the way the campaign to ban CRT has combined genuine grassroots anger, institutional backing, and a highly effective rightwing propaganda machine to propel critical race theory from academic obscurity to center stage in the US political debate.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |