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‘Because the word ‘race’ is used,’ conservatives ‘think it’s dangerous to white people’

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed an executive order late last month which bans the teaching of critical race theory in the state’s public K-12 schools.

The order directs Louisiana Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley to look over state DOE policies and “eliminate” anything which “posit[s] that an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive,” the Louisiana Illuminator reports.

Brumley also is tasked with

flag[ging] claims that moral character is necessarily determined by someone’s race or sex, or that, by virtue of their race or sex, they bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex [as well as] weed[ing] out anything that suggests meritocracy or traits such as a strong work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a particular race or sex to oppress another race or sex, or encourages students to discriminate against someone based on any characteristic protected by federal or state law.

Academics pounced on the executive order, making the common claim that CRT is an “advanced academic concept” taught at the graduate-school level, not in K-12 schools.

LSU’s Belinda Davis, a political science professor who as an appointee of Gov. John Bel Edwards “fought back against claims of student indoctrination at the hands of liberal teachers,” said Landry’s edict serves to “satisfy the extremists in his party by solving a problem that doesn’t exist.”

MORE: ‘Equity’ professors detail how to fight back against parents’ critical race theory beefs

According to The Hullabaloo, Tulane ethnomusicology professor Matt Sakakeeny (pictured), whose work “relates music and sound to structures of inequality,” said he believes conservatives don’t want to be taught about “white supremacy and racism.”

Sakakeeny said Landry had to issue an executive order because state lawmakers couldn’t even figure out what critical race theory is, hence no legislative bill.

Tulane Law School’s Robert Westley, a former chair of the Annual Critical Race Theory Workshop, said “certain members of the general public” have no idea what critical race theory is about. “They just hear the word race, and they react negatively to it on that basis,” he said.

Westley added that conservatives have “an implicit negative reaction to [CRT] because the word race is used, and therefore they think it’s dangerous to white people.”

In 2022, the Manhattan Institute surveyed over 1,500 recent high school graduates about whether they had been taught critical race theory-related concepts such as “America is a systemically racist country,” “white people have white privilege,” “white people have unconscious biases that negatively affect non-white people” and “America is built on stolen land.”

Majorities ranging from 57 to 69 percent reported “either being taught about the topic or ‘hearing about it’ from an adult at school.”

MORE: Left-wing teachers still can’t decide if they do or do not teach critical race theory

IMAGES: Colored Lights/Shutterstock.com; Tulane U.

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