Florida’s Ban on Critical Race Theory Raises Questions on the Role of Education in Addressing Racism

Classroom photo by Neonbrand on Unsplash.

Lara Coiro / Staff Writer & Samantha Soria / Contributing Writer

The Florida Board of Education voted to ban critical race theory lessons in the public K-12 education curriculum on June 10 at a board meeting attended by Florida educators, parents and community leaders.

The board passed an amendment that specifically prohibits critical race theory and the 1619 Project, a report initiated by The New York Times reframing American history from the arrival of the first slave ship to the country’s shores during the 17th century, from being taught in Florida public schools.

Critical race theory is a framework which analyzes the history of the United States through a lens of racial relations. It considers the long term consequences that white supremacy has had on the country, its people and its institutions. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis attended the board meeting via Zoom to share his support for banning critical race theory because he said it had “no basis in fact.”

“[Critical race theory] is trying to create narratives that basically are teaching kids that the country is rotten and our institutions are illegitimate–that’s not worth taxpayer dollars,” said DeSantis in his statement at the meeting.

Rosen Gordon, a rising senior at FIU who is double majoring in women and gender studies and Latin American and Caribbean studies and former president of the Pride Student Union, believes that the ban is a cover for racism.

“The attempts to ban critical race theory in schools, particularly in K-12 schools, is ridiculous,” said Gordon. 

FIU professor Laura Dinehart specializes in early childhood education and said that the recent ban is an attempt to avoid conversations around the legacies of racism in American society.

Laura Dinehart is senior associate dean for the School of Education and Human Development at FIU.

“It’s an effort to not talk about things that are really difficult to talk about. I think it is trying to create a world in which we keep pretending that everything is okay; that people are truly…treated equally, no matter their race or color,” said Dr. Dinehart.

Dinehart said that she believed the ban was politically motivated, rather than based on actual concern for students in public education. 

“I think the challenge is when we tell people what they can and can’t teach–and we do this in multiple ways…when we ban something like [critical race theory], we’re really setting a precedent for what the state is deciding people cannot talk about and cannot teach,” said Dinehart. 

Both Dinehart and Gordon agreed that K-12 classrooms were not actively teaching critical race theory, which is usually reserved for the college graduate level. But due to the country’s current social climate regarding race, it has become increasingly important to discuss these issues in educational settings.

“We have to teach the reality of history and what historical elements have gotten us here,” said Dinehart.

A year has passed since mass uprisings around the U.S. were sparked by the police murder of George Floyd. Since then, conversations about race have become central in American political dialogue.

In May 2021, the Marist Poll surveyed Americans’ opinions on domestic race relations and found that 42 percent of Americans believed that race relations had worsened, 39 percent believed they had stayed the same and 17 percent believed race relations had improved.

Graph by the Marist Poll depicting Americans’ opinions on Race Relations in America.

As American culture shifts, so do questions on how U.S. history has traditionally been taught. This notion has brought schools to the forefront of national politics. 

State legislation or other steps, such as educational amendments, to ban critical race theory from public schools has been proposed in twenty-six states and passed in nine. 

The controversy surrounding critical race theory gained even more momentum when U.S. Rep. (R) Matt Gaetz challenged Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chair General Mark Milley on if the military was “embracing” critical race theory.

“I do think it’s important, actually, for those of us in uniform to be open minded and be widely read. The United States Military Academy is a university and it is important that we train and we understand. I want to understand white rage and I’m white,” said Milley.

Milley considered a correlation between white rage and the riot at the Capitol that took place on January 6.

Tonette Rocco is a professor in FIU’s Department of Educational Policy Studies. Rocco is a co-author of the paper Critical Race Theory and Adult Education: Critique of the Literature in Adult Education Quarterly published by FIU. 

Tonette Rocco is a professor of Adult Education and Human Resource Development in the Department of Educational Policy Studies.

Dr. Rocco agreed that critical race theory encouraged students to view society from a perspective different from what they are typically used to. 

“[Critical race theory] is really a tool used to critique, to reconsider, to examine your preconceived notions about the way you were brought up, and what you were brought up to think, and to think about things a little bit differently,” said Rocco.

Dr. Rocco asserted that the theory could be utilized to promote critical thinking and problem solving skills, especially for college students.

Critical race theory was first developed in the 1970s by scholars Kimberlé Crenshaw, Derrick Bell, Alan Freeman and Richard Delgado. 

Institutions of higher education are not devoid of racism, as exemplified by stories like those of Derrick Bell, the first Black professor of Harvard Law School. Bell left his professorship in 1992 in protest of the university’s discriminatory hiring practices. 

In 1990, Harvard Law School only had 60 tenured professors; out of these professors, three were Black men and five were white women. Among them, there were no Black women. It wasn’t until 1998 when Harvard Law School hired Lani Guinier, who became the university’s first Black woman tenured professor.

Rocco stated that prominent conservative politicians like Texas Sen. (R) Ted Cruz and Gov. Ron DeSantis were being dishonest in their rhetoric against critical race theory. 

“Both of these men went to Harvard and both of them are of an age that they were at Harvard [when critical race theory was already established] as a legal theory. It’s taught in the law school and it originated at Harvard. So for these two guys to talk about it in the way that they are, they’re not being honest because they know better,” said Rocco.

The 1970s were marked by a general shift in attitudes regarding the civil rights movement as Black America began to recognize that the events of the 1960s had not produced the change that many had envisioned.

As Ricard Delgado and Jean Stefancic wrote in Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, “Unlike traditional civil rights…critical race theory questions the very foundation of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.”

Rosen Gordon is an FIU senior double majoring in women and gender studies and Latin American and Caribbean studies. 

Gordon said that critical race theory is more radical than liberalism. Unlike critical race theory, liberalism tends to promote the idea of “color evasiveness,” said Gordon.

This concept is commonly known as color-blind racial ideology (CBRI), which poses that the U.S. has progressed past racism and that skin color does not play a role in society today.

“‘I don’t see color’ or ‘We’re all equal, we have to treat everybody the same.’ [That is the] mentality of liberal policies,” said Gordon. “When using a critical race theory framework, you consider how race plays out into how people are treated, not just interpersonally, but also structurally.”

Gordon said that banning critical race theory in schools helps to ensure that questions around race do not occur, and delays “progressing as a society,” believing that the ban on critical race theory stemmed from a place of anti-Blackness. 

“Critical race theory being taught in the classroom, in the future, could help deconstruct racism, structurally and institutionally, in U.S. society more quickly,” said Gordon. 

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